Page 147 - The Apu Trilogy_ Satyajit Ray and the Making of an Epic

134 The Apu Trilogy

to hearing it at the annual immersion of the Durga image during
the Durga Puja festival in Calcutta (although the English words
are long since lost). This juxtaposition of Apu and the band is
enriched by our earlier memory of Apu listening to a wedding
band play ‘Tipperary’ in Pather Panchali; but in those far-off days
he was thrilled by the sight, whereas now he is blasé, Calcutta-
returned.
The bridegroom turns out to be mad, of course, and Apu has
to come to the rescue of Aparna by marrying her himself. The
psychology of his decision was discussed earlier (in chapter 2),
but not its aftermath, which begins with one of the most touch-
ing scenes in the film.
Immediately after the wedding, Apu and Aparna are seen
alone for the first time, standing apart from each other in a flower-
strewn bedroom. A western viewer naturally assumes that their
inaugural togetherness follows on the various marriage prayers
and vows, but in fact a traditional Hindu couple must await the
third night of their wedding; in between, they sleep separately,
the bride surrounded by her female relations, the groom by his
male ones. When the third night comes, custom lays down that
the groom be alone with the bride in his own house. Apu is too
poor to do this. As he tells Aparna: ‘Have you ever heard of a
bride and groom spending their phulsajya [‘bed of flowers’] in
the bride’s home?’ Not surprisingly, he feels that he is there on
false pretences – does Aparna know anything about the man she
has married? His mood is self-lacerating, as plangent boatmen’s
songs come drifting through the window from the dark river
outside; but at the point where Aparna softly tells him that she
can accept poverty, he lightens up with a joke about his Calcutta
neighbours: ‘I told them I was going to a wedding, and now I’m
returning with the bride!’ Her transparent devotion having won
him over, the poignant esraj expressing their love (in raga Lachari
Todi) changes into the fast rhythm of the sitar initially used to
express bachelor Apu’s carefree nature as he walked back to his
room along the railway tracks near the beginning of the film.

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