An Interview With Rinki Bhattacharya
This interview transcript was first published in the print edition of Manushi Journal. (Issue-23, Jul-Aug 1984)
These are extracts from an interview taperecorded with Rinki Bhattacharya in January 1984. Rinki began corresponding with Manushi about two years ago and would send an occasional report about events organised by women’s groups in Bombay. Her letters were full of energy and vitality so that in my mind I pictured her as a young woman fresh from college. Therefore, when I met her for the first time in Bombay at a meeting at the Women’s Centre, I was pleasantly surprised to see that even though Rinki is the mother of three grown up children and is not as young in years as I had imagined her to be, she is young in spirit, indeed, a woman who is just beginning her life. This I found all the more remarkable after hearing the story she had to tell. Rinki is the daughter of the legendary film director, Bimal Roy, of’Madhumati’, ‘Sujata’,‘Do Bigha Zamin’, ‘Bandini’ fame. She is married to another well known film director, Basu Bhattacharya, some of whose better known films are ‘Avishkar’, ’Anubhav’, ‘Grihpravesh’ and ‘Teesri Kasam’. In this interview, Rinki describes how she came to choose Basu Bhattacharya for a husband and how she was compelled to walk out of her marriage. She is now filing for a divorce on grounds of extreme cruelty.
Throughout this interview, I was deeply touched by Rinki’s sense of dignity and by her lack of bitterness despite such a harrowing experience of married life. What seems most inspiring is her decision to speak out about her life so openly, even at the risk of facing more alienation and hostility from those she cares for, and her willingness to risk becoming a target of the cheap scandal mongering that is so typical of anything connected with the film industry.
Today, her struggle is no more only a personal one. She sees herself as part of a much larger struggle of women in India. She is an active member of the Women’s Centre in Bombay.*