G.Aravindan:Vasthuhara

Vasthuhara - 1990
(The Dispossessed)

Aravindan's last film is based on a short story by C V Sreeraman. Set in the city of Calcutta, Vasthuhara is a story of dispossessed people who lost their land, wealth and identity.

It is a departure from rest of my works because it blends the political reality with a personal situation…The script is based on a real life story, so it has that touch of authenticity.

Venu, an officer working for the Rehabilitation Ministry in the Andaman Islands, while on duty at Calcutta (Kolkata), selects refugees to be taken to the islands. He chances to meet Arti Panikker, his late uncle's Bengali wife, who is a refugee living in penury at Calcutta, abandoned by his family.

This contact with his relatives, whom he had never met, makes Venu acutely aware of the pains of being dispossessed of one's identity, of being mentally and emotionally rootless, which is far more intense than getting dispossessed of material belongings and of people being uprooted for no fault of theirs, swept away and forced to seek refuge in alien lands.

The 1947 post-partition exodus of people from East to West Bengal forms a prologue and the 1971 exodus from Bangladesh to West Bengal an epilogue to the story.

Vasthuhara won the State Film awards for best film and director in 1990.

Direction & Screenplay: G Aravindan
Cast: Mohanlal, Shobhana, Neelanjana Mitra, Neena Gupta, Padmini
Cinematography: Sunny Joseph
Editing: K R Bose
Music: Salil Choudhury

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