Published Paper Details:

Father-Daughter Relationship can be oversimplified in binary opposites such as positive/negative or good/bad. Banaras movie presents a positive father-daughter relationship, as Shwetambari identifies with her father Mahendranath, but the present paper aims at explaining the grey shades in their relationship that accounts for the drastic turns in daughter's trajectory of life. She has high self-worth and self-esteem. Her father has raised her in a permissive parenting style and secure attachment pattern. He reflects her image in positive qualities and she proudly possesses sattvik Guna that her Papa exhibits. Equally significant is the role of family as socializing agent: it makes aware its young ones about social differences and cultural prejudices, or it adopts ideal ways to overlook socio-cultural biases. Mahendranath committed the mistake of posing himself as a liberal humanitarian in front of her. Ironically, this image of an inner father gets shattered when Shwetambari overhears his guilty confession. This was too much for her; she drifts away from him and returns after sixteen years only to forgive him at his last breath. Her expressive images on the plasma screen reveal her inner mind and her true self that informs her mystical vision and also her focus on realizing salvation from worldly desires. She is above grudges, jealousies, ambitions and mundane ideology of discrimination. She looks at her family relationship in a very compassionate understanding without demanding anything in return. She resolves the conflicting emotions that generated from the father-daughter relationship.