Summary: Radical journalist Diwakar (Modak) runs a printing press and edits a newspaper, much to the disapproval of his authoritarian middle-class father who believes that all respectable youths should get a job and settle down. Diwakar’s scheming politician friend Vithalrao (Thengadi) incites a strike and acquires the press and the paper with the help of Diwakar’s father, causing Diwakar to leave home in disgust. His rich girlfriend Nalini (Hublikar) also enters politics, first on the side of the corrupt Vithalrao, then campaigning for Diwakar who represents the slum-dwellers for the municipal elections. Although Diwakar’s father campaigns on behalf of Nalini, she tells people not to vote for her but to elect Diwakar instead. Although Nalini wins, the film presents Diwakar’s loss as a moral victory. Director Kale, himself a former radical journalist, made his first contemporary story as a critique of Maharashtrian middle-class materialism. He also published a long essay on the film,
‘Mazha Mulgachya Nimittane’, (1939). Launching the star combination of Modak and Hublikar, repeated in Shantaram’s hit
Manoos (1939), the film essayed a realist idiom new to the Prabhat Studio (esp. in the scenes at the printing press). Hit songs included
Pahu re kiti vaat (Hublikar) and
Ya sagle jan laukar ya (Modak).
