Her Flat Is Dark And Dingy, The Only Thing She Has To Fill It Is Her

Her flat is dark and dingy, the only thing she has to fill it is her memories, which both comfort and entomb her. She exists on the periphery of society and the themes of loneliness and isolation explored are absolutely universal. Themes that are illuminated by the intense detail that goes into framing violet within her flat to illustrate the monotony of her life and her extreme loneliness.
Violet briefly becomes invigorated by a friendship with a young couple. She agrees to let Samaresh (Dhiritiman Chatterjee) the boyfriend of her former student Nandita (Debashree Roy) use her apartment to write his novel. She feels as if she is bonding with the couple, and finally has the human contact and company that she has so desperately longed for. However she does not realise that the couple are deceiving her and using the apartment for some privacy. The important thing to recognise is that it is Samaresh who takes the lead in the deception; Nandita takes on the role of vulnerable young lady.
Once Nandita and Samaresh are married with their own apartment they have very little use for Violet. They stop coming to see her. Even when she makes the effort to go to them they cannot make the time to see her. The couple are selfish and uncaring; they have no time for a little old lady. We return again to the words of authors K. Moti Gokulsing and Wimal Dissanayake who surmise the closing shot of the film and the concern of the film. the final image of her is on a dark wet night, all by herself reciting her favourite Shakespeare lines to a desolate street. Director Aparna Sen has poignantly captured the loneliness of a middle aged woman, and does so from within the consciousness of the lonely woman.
Violet is a woman who is under appreciated at home and at work. She takes upon the role of the good mother to Nandita And Samaresh but they are ungrateful of her affection. Those who have the power to use her because of her loneliness and isolation use her. The story here although, not dealing with specifically Indian concerns rather universal themes of isolation, does speak out about the women in Indian society who feel as if they are under appreciated, used and unfulfilled.
Sen's follow up to 36 Chowringhee Lane was 1984's Parama. Parama explores the life of its eponymous heroine; she is a good wife in the traditional sense that is that she performs her duties as wife and mother. However she is imprisoned by her role within the family to the point where It appears that she has totally managed to submerge her true self into the various roles assigned to her.
Parama (Raakhee) meets and slowly falls in love with a much younger man by the name of Rahul (Mukul Sharma.