Page 40 - Seniors Toady March 2020

and the loving relationship starts cracking up.
Chandravati’s condition worsens and Ketki
takes her to a nearby town for treatment,
with Rambaran escorting them. Nobody has
ever cared for her the way Rambaran does.
Chandravati gets into a relationship with
Rambaran and is ecstatic to find herself pregnant,
proof that she was never barren.
On receiving a letter of apology from her
husband, Ketki returns home, and, with a loan
from Rambaran, helps her husband get out of
the clutches of Tirpat. Even the manipulative
villain has to concede, “Your wife has beauty and
brains.”
Caste atrocities
Ketki also takes on Tirpat over the exploitation
of a lower caste woman Kanti (Shilpa Shirodkar)
and insults him in front of the entire village.
When he sees his power base eroding, Tirpat is
like a snake whose tail has been stepped on. Just
when Ketki discovers her own pregnancy, Tirpat
has Vinay blown up with a bomb, not expecting
a lone widow to remain standing against him.
His attempt to rape Ketki fails, but he and
Abhay Singh unite against the women when
Chandravati’s pregnancy is discovered.
They all march towards Ketki’s home, with the
idea of killing her and Chandravati. But Tirpat’s
wife (Abha Dhulia) warns them and when the
group of armed men arrive, they are met with
Priyanka Chopra in Jai Gangaajal
40
Smita Patil in Mirch Masala
an army of women. Tirpat’s wife, who had been
driven almost mad by his atrocities, now looks
him in the eye and lands the first blow. Ketki then
picks up Tirpat’s gun, strides out after him as he
runs and shoots him. A voiceover says that she
will bring up her child never to inflict injustice on
the weak.
Although violence is not the solution to
anything, Prakash Jha builds up a multi-layered
and gripping story, in which a woman resorting
to killing her tormentor and the scourge of the
entire village is justified.
Jha made other films on social issues, but
Mrityudand was the only one that examined a
male-dominated feudal society from a woman’s
perspective. Years later, he cast Priyanka Chopra
as a cop in Jai Gangaajal, set in the same milieu,
but it was not as effective in its portrayal of
women.