This movie also portrayed the Anglo Indians with sensitivity. Movies made on Anglo Indians always portrayed women having a different lifestyle than the contemporary Indians. Satyajit Ray in Mahanagar portrayed them as lipstick-wearing alluring secretary who is teaching one or two steps of seduction to the nubile bengali woman. Saptapadi showed Rina Brown, an Anglo Indian girl not to be accepted by a Hindu household in an inter faith relationship. Julie, a hindi film made on the premise of inter faith relationship also showed prejudice. Aparna Sen broke this myth by portraying the loneliness of an Anglo Indian teacher in a Kolkata school. Jennifer Kendall played to perfection the role of Shakespeare loving spinster Violet Stoneham. Her lack of companionship, students not caring for Shakespeare she loves to teach and those rickshaw ride in tortuous Kolkata bylanes depicted her loneliness. Her student Nandita and Nandita's boyfriend Samaresh bonding with her was temporary and she realized in the end life moves on and her lonliness was not to go. Nandita and Samaresh used her room for their pre marital tete-a-tete in the pretext of writing and Violet mistook their company as friendship. Overall it was an important part of Kolkata displayed in the movie- place of Anglo Indians, lack of space for romantic couples and the love for Victorian relics the city inherited- the English language itself.
I will forever remember that last scene - desolate Violet Stoneham reciting Shakespeare to a dog strolling through Queen's Way. 36 Chowrighee lane movie is a piece of Kolkata etched in my heart. This is a movie where a city slowly seeps in as a character. This is a movie much ahead of time. It showed pre marital sex, a taboo in those days and never shown in films. It showed the need of space for romantically inclined couples. It showed Anglo Indians in movies in good light. Overall it became a classic for depicting one of the most humane feeling of Loneliness.
