Director: Vishram Bedekar; Writer: Vishram Bedekar; Cinematographer: Pandurang Naik; Cast: Shanta Hublikar, Indu Natu, Balabai, Kusum Deshpande, Baburao Pendharkar, Dinkar Kamanna, G.D. Madgulkar, Vishnupant Aundhkar
Summary: A prime example of the growing popularity in the 40s of a formulaic comedy genre satirising Maharashtrian middle-class aspirations towards modernity. Inspired by the Vinayak-Atre style of comedy, Bedekar’s film tells the story of Dhananjay (Pendharkar), who belongs to a conventional family, and his modern wife Chitra (Hublikar, in a screen image continued from
Mazha Mulga, 1938). Chitra’s sister Banu (Natu) and her husband are birth-control zealots. When Chitra and Dhananjay settle down in his ancestral home in the village, a series of vignettes on the theme of married life show Chitra’s efforts to change things greatly resisted by the family. This reaches crisis point when she presides over a public meeting on birth control. She leaves to become a schoolteacher. Dhananjay joins her and she gets pregnant, in spite of her sister’s admonitions. When the child is born, the proud Dhananjay goes to show it to his dying father. In the end, Chitra is shown accepting the traditionalist strictures imposed on her modernity by Dhananjay’s parents. The noted scenarist Madgulkar debuted here as a lyricist (e.g.
Lagle mitaya dole).
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