Astitva, meaning identity, remains one of the best, least self-aware performances of Tabu. This was a time when Tabu, the great actress that she is, was largely unaware of her greatness. Back then, she worked more by instinct than craft, in Atitva and also in Madhur Bhandarkar’s Chandni Bar.
In both these neo-classics of their times, she deep-dived into her characters and emerged spontaneously with whatever the characters had to say. That said, Astitwa remains problematic but pertinent. Satyajit Ray was once asked about Madhabi Mukherjee’s character in Charulata having an affair with her young brother-in-law.
Ray had spoken about how as a young filmmaker he was eager to score feminist points in his cinema. Some such creative vanity guides Mahesh Manjrekar’s hands in Astitva as he glides with enthusiastic elegance through his heroine Aditi Pandit’s life. Initially, Aditi is shown to be docile and passive in her marriage to Srikant(Sachin Khedekar).
She is the lamb-like housewife, the obedient door-mate who breaks free when her husband and grownup son gang up against her after an extamarital affair from the past is revealed. We are told in a pointedly poetic flashback that Aditi had a torrid affair with her music teacher Malhar while Srikant was away on a business trip. Would it not have happened if Srikant had worked from home? (All said and done, Covid did have its advantages).
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