Director: Kalpana Lajmi; Producer: Bhupen Hazarika, Kalpana Lajmi; Cinematographer: K.K. Mahajan; Editor: Bhanudas Diwakar; Cast: Shabana Azmi, Naseerudin Shah, Farouque Sheikh, Shreeram Lagoo, Dina Pathak, Shreela Mazumdar, Amal Sen, Sunil Mukherjee, Sunila Pradhan, Dr. Kumar Pradhan, Ranna Padya, Kuku Mehra, Bhupen Hazarika, Deepa Lagoo
Summary: Kalpana Lajmi’s directorial debut tells a story of
extramarital sex in the tea gardens of Assam.
Priyam (Azmi), married to the staid but loving
Ved (Shah), has an affair with her former
boyfriend Jeet (Shaikh) while her husband is
away. She becomes pregnant. Having already
had one miscarriage, she is determined to keep
the baby despite her boyfriend’s protests. On
his return, Ved eventually accepts both his
unfaithful wife and her baby. Lajmi explained
that she set the story in Assam to link the
heroine’s innocence and later loneliness with
the environment, but the easier if less
sympathetic explanation is reviewer Aloknanda
Datta’s (in Splice, July 1986) suggestion that the
gardens merely provide an exotic backdrop.
Famous Assamese singer-composer Hazarika
contributes some fine compositions,
overcoming the mandatory emphasis on
regional folk-music in films set in exotic
locales.
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