Ek Vivaah.../Tapasya

Those were the days when a woman-centric family weepie like Tapasya could turn out to be a hit. The Rajshri's new release this week, Ek Vivaah Aisa Bhi, takes its plot from their own 1976 production, directed by Anil Ganguly.

Indu (Raakhree) is the eldest daughter of Prof. Chandranath, she is studying and waiting to marry a doctor Sagar (Parikshit Sahani), whom she loves. Her life changes drastically when her mother dies, and her father falls ill. The responsibility of looking after her father (AK Hangal) and her younger brother and two sisters falls on her. Then the father passes away too and becomes the family's only support. Her fiancé offers to marry her and share some of the burden, but Indu thinks about it and refuses. She believes it is her duty to look after family and she must do it by herself, not push it on to her husband and in-laws.

She abandons her studies and to earn a living, starts a kindergarten in her house. She puts her own future on hold, till her siblings can stand on their feet. She asks Sagar to marry someone else and not wait for her. But he understands her dilemma and promises to wait for as long as it takes. Even his mother cannot not force him to marry anyone else. His love and admiration for Indu remains unshaken over the years. The siblings, for whom she sacrificed her happiness, prove to be selfish and ungrateful. She thinks when her brother gets a job, her problems will be solved, but he decides to marry his boss' daughter and become a ghar jamai.

It looks like Indu's tapasya will never end. It becomes a test of Sagar's love and patience. The film expectedly fetched Rakhee the Filmfare Best Actress Award. It had appropriate—though not hugely successful music—by Ravindra Jain teaming up with MG Hashmat for the heavy duty, emotion-laden lyrics like: Do panchhi do tinke kab leke chale hain kahaan yeh banaayenge ek aashiyaan and Jo raah tune chuni us raah pe raahi chalte jaana.

Tapasya was a good example of what is known as the 'woman's picture' in the trade, the kind of film that made women flock to it in droves, just to be able to cry and purge their own sorrows. Whether a film like that will work 32 years later, is the question that will be answered by the box-office fate of Ek Vivaah Aisa Bhi.