I was in my second year in Presidency college in 1959 when Prof. Kajal Sengupta was appointed as a teacher in the English department. Presidency being a co-educational college, there was no dearth of female faces in the campus and addition of a new one would not have aroused much of an interest except for the fact that Prof. Sengupta was the first woman teacher to be appointed in the college. We used to look at her with a bit of awe as she walked briskly past us along the corridor and up the wide stairs to take up her classes. Being the only woman among the teaching fraternity could not have been easy for her. That too in a college which took great pride in maintaining its tradition of excellence . She must have been conscious of the responsibility that she had taken as a lone representative of her sex to prove herself equal to the task. That probably explains the reserve and aura she maintained at all times. It could be a defensive shield also in a predominantly male preserve. At that time some of us youngsters who never knew her or attended her classes, did not realise it though . We mistook it for a superior air which we thought she had imbibed from Oxford.
Girls were going to schools and colleges in quite large numbers by then but not many could be found going to work.Women were already in some professions like the medical or teaching professions but those were still in the nature of exceptions. This reminds me of the first working woman I came across few years before. It was in the mid fifties when I was possibly in class eight. I would often meet this young lady on my way to school. Dressed in a starched and pressed cotton saree, she would be crossing the wooden bridge connecting Kalighat and Chetla on her way to catch a bus at the Rashbehari crossing. I could guess she was going to the office like all the men rushing from the Chetla side of the bridge at that hour.
As time passed, more and more women were joining the workforce in various fields. Economic compulsions brought middle class women out of their homes to look for and join work - in the telephone department, in post offices and other organisations. Slowly and imperceptibly social mores were changing, though it was not easy for the Bengali middle class to accept and adjust to them.
Satyajit Ray's Mahanagar captures this period of transition. The film was released in 1963 and narrates the story of a traditional family in which the housewife is compelled to join work as a door to door sales person to supplement her husband's income and make both ends meet. There are tensions in the family as a result which form the theme of the movie.The husband's parents do not approve of her going out to work and the husband himself starts developing a complex when he finds his wife become the major breadwinner of the family.
The film records the hesitant and tentative steps a middle class woman was taking as she stepped out of home and into the outer world and the stresses she had to go through, both in the family as well as in the workplace, as she proceeded to gain confidence and achieve a sense of independence.
The period of transition is still not over. Women are in large numbers at the workplaces today, they are in almost every profession, in every sphere of economic activity. They have proved themselves equal to men and many have excelled in their chosen fields. Society has grudgingly accepted the emergence of the new woman but has not yet been able to shake off its ambivalent attitude towards her. Habits die hard, social attitudes die harder. The dog beneath the skin - it lurks beneath many a liberal skin - longing for the stereotype of the demure, submissive woman who should better be at home tending to her folks, bares its fangs only too often.
Girls were going to schools and colleges in quite large numbers by then but not many could be found going to work.Women were already in some professions like the medical or teaching professions but those were still in the nature of exceptions. This reminds me of the first working woman I came across few years before. It was in the mid fifties when I was possibly in class eight. I would often meet this young lady on my way to school. Dressed in a starched and pressed cotton saree, she would be crossing the wooden bridge connecting Kalighat and Chetla on her way to catch a bus at the Rashbehari crossing. I could guess she was going to the office like all the men rushing from the Chetla side of the bridge at that hour.
As time passed, more and more women were joining the workforce in various fields. Economic compulsions brought middle class women out of their homes to look for and join work - in the telephone department, in post offices and other organisations. Slowly and imperceptibly social mores were changing, though it was not easy for the Bengali middle class to accept and adjust to them.
Satyajit Ray's Mahanagar captures this period of transition. The film was released in 1963 and narrates the story of a traditional family in which the housewife is compelled to join work as a door to door sales person to supplement her husband's income and make both ends meet. There are tensions in the family as a result which form the theme of the movie.The husband's parents do not approve of her going out to work and the husband himself starts developing a complex when he finds his wife become the major breadwinner of the family.
The film records the hesitant and tentative steps a middle class woman was taking as she stepped out of home and into the outer world and the stresses she had to go through, both in the family as well as in the workplace, as she proceeded to gain confidence and achieve a sense of independence.
The period of transition is still not over. Women are in large numbers at the workplaces today, they are in almost every profession, in every sphere of economic activity. They have proved themselves equal to men and many have excelled in their chosen fields. Society has grudgingly accepted the emergence of the new woman but has not yet been able to shake off its ambivalent attitude towards her. Habits die hard, social attitudes die harder. The dog beneath the skin - it lurks beneath many a liberal skin - longing for the stereotype of the demure, submissive woman who should better be at home tending to her folks, bares its fangs only too often.
usually i am the last one to post a comment, but strangely enough, no one has ventured to comment on this particular post. I guess it's the dog in question,who runs the risk of being starved to death these days.
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