Rao Saheb (film)

Synopsis

A young barrister, Rao Saheb, returns from England after his education, and brings progressive ideas back with him. In other words, he is enamored of western ways and customs and conditioned to regard his own society as backward and repressive. He returns to his childhood home, a large mansion in small-town Maharashtra, where life goes on as placidly as it always has, quite unmoved by western ways or the officious efforts of modernists to bring about a social revolution. Rao Saheb's father is a conventional man who holds dear the values of his Brahmin caste: education, religion, tradition, austerity (frugality) and self-denial in personal life. His great tryst with modernity was to send his son, at very great expense, to England for higher education. His sister, who keeps house for him, is a childless widow of even greater orthodoxy. Mausi ("auntie"), played by Vijaya Mehta herself, is the vanguard of Brahminism at the start of the film. Radhika, a young widow who lives in a neighbouring home, is a great friend and protégée of the elderly widow. In Radhika, auntie sees the picture of her own lonely youth as a young widow, and the prospect of a lonely old age. Radhika however is inclined to rebel against the customs of austerity and self-denial which were expected of Brahmin widows at the time. Auntie, she of the unshakable orthodoxy, is torn within herself when she finds that her nephew is growing alarmingly close to the nubile young widow. As Rao Saheb begins to get closer to Radhika, empathizes with her and comes close to her, Mausi ends up as a champion of modernity and a denouncer of Brahminical values such as austerity, self-denial and the strictures of religion or tradition.

Cast