Aishwarya Rai in Chokher Bali

In this Tagore adaptation, Aishwarya plays Binodini, a full-blooded woman who stridently spurns the pallid life that a repressive society expects her to lead after she becomes a widow. This turn-of-the-last-century Bengali widow revels in sensual pleasures (early in the film, director Rituparno Ghosh deftly captures her joy at secretly eating a forbidden-for-widows chocolate).

In a sharp departure from the usual weeping widows, Aishwarya pragmatically recognises that not many options are open to her. She also understands that the route to a better life will have to be through a man. She calculatedly tries to stir the passions of two men -- the married Prasenjit and the bachelor Tota Roy Chowdhury. In a dramatic sequence, she consecutively begs acceptance from both men.

Ultimately, she realises that the ethical compromises she has to make are as unwelcome as the cloisters of an unforgiving society. Binodini chooses to become the symbol for the right to self-determination of women. Chokher Bali is remarkable for Aishwarya's immense, steely-sensitive eyes and its portrayal of a woman who refuses to accept her predetermined lot, instead preferring to make her own mistakes, earn her realisations and, ultimately, chart her own destiny.

In the picture: Aishwarya Rai and Raima Sen in Chokher Bali

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Aishwarya, Urmila go ethnic!

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