Tatsam Mukherjee

Early on in Jayant Digambar Somalkar’s Sthal – four men can be seen discussing a woman’s complexion. “She seems fair, doesn’t she?” one of them asks, only to be shut down by the other: “It is all make-up. Didn’t you notice her elbows? They gave it away.” The woman, actually a young girl named Savita (Nandini Chikte), barely out of her teens, in her final year of college pursuing B.A (Sociology), is being looked at as a prospective bride. Those men could be talking about livestock. Such is the ‘marketplace’ for arranged marriages – especially in India, where such casual indignities are fair game.