Rajnigandha, 1974@50...Early Sprouts of Different Love?

Katherine J. Chen, ‘In Praise of “Plain” Heroines: Why Mary is my Favorite Bennet Sister ‘, Literary Hub, July 23 2018:

“...Could Mary Bennet, in actuality, be considered the bravest, most self-assured, and most independent of her sisters? Pride and Prejudice tends to throw women in two black-and-white categories: wives and spinsters. But with her outspokenness and her desire for “knowledge and accomplishments,”  Mary seems the most well placed to break the suffocating confines of the traditional marriage plot. Ironically, with everything going against her, she is also the most likely of anyone to defy expectations and, ultimately, to surprise....”

I watched Rajnigandha, 1974,  after a few decades, on Hotstar in November 2019.

My feeling:  How it could have turned out to be a wonderful story of lesbian love (not exactly 'Blue Is the Warmest Color', 2013) without any nudity. It's to the credit to the director Basu Chatterjee (1930-) that he has allowed the film (at least for people like me) to take some hue of that love.

It's possible that the love is largely one sided....married Ira (played well by Rajita Thakur) developing those feelings towards single Deepa (played by the late Vidya Sinha), primarily because of the long absence of her husband. But it could be a little more than just the absence of male intimacy and heterogeneous sex. 

I really enjoyed the scenes between Ira and Deepa.

Especially the ones where while sleeping in the same bed of Deepa, Ira puts her leg around Deepa's body and they keep gossiping well into the night. No sex is shown or hinted at. At the beginning at the scene it's Deepa who says that Ira is giving Deepa her husband's place!

Or when Ira bids goodbye to Deepa at the station, whispering how their nights together would be missed.

I found it all very beautiful and moving. 

all pictures above, courtesy of the copyright owner of the film