MFAH Film – Movies Houstonians Love: The Jewel Box (Goynar Baksho) (Introduced by author Chitra Divakaruni)

Often surprising and always intriguing, Movies Houstonians Love has become one of the Museum’s most popular film series.

Local luminaries from different fields—the arts, politics, sports, education, restaurants, medicine, and beyond—share anecdotes from their personal moviegoing histories, and then take a seat to enjoy the incomparable experience of watching the film on the big screen, with an audience.

The Jewel Box (Goynar Baksho)
Introduced by author Chitra Divakaruni.

Director Aparna Sen
Released 2013
Language in Bengali with English subtitles
Country India
Running Time 141 minutes
Format Digital, Color
Website http://www.chitradivakaruni.com/

Aparna Sen’s (Mr. and Mrs. Iyer) adaptation of Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay’s famous tale about three generations of Bengali women and their changing position in society, as seen in relation to a box of jewels, handed down from one generation to the next.

The box belongs to Rashmoni (Moushumi Chatterjee), who treasures the contents, and only gives away pieces to new brides in the house. When Rashmoni dies, her ghost convinces the shy daughter-in-law Somlata (Konkona Sen Sharma) to hide the box from greedy relatives.

The ghost of Rashmoni becomes a guardian angel for Somlata—building her confidence, and helping with business matters and daily obstacles.

About the Speaker
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an award-winning and bestselling author, poet, activist and teacher of creative writing at the University of Houston. Her work has been published in over 50 magazines, including the  Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker, and her writing has been included in over 50 anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories, the O. Henry Prize Stories and the Pushcart Prize Anthology.

Her books have been translated into 29 languages, including Dutch, Hebrew, Bengali, Russian and Japanese, and many of them have been used for campus-wide and city-wide reads.

Several of her works have been made into films (The Mistress of Spices; Sister of My Heart) and plays.

She lives in Houston with her husband Murthy and has two sons, Anand and Abhay, who are in college.

Community partner: Inprint.

TWITTER: https://twitter.com/cdivakaruni