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Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastaan

aka The Strange Fate of Arvind Desai 1978 118’ col Hindi d/co-s Saeed Akhtar Mirza pc Yukt Film Coop co-s/co-dial Cyrus Mistry co-dial Vijay Tendulkar c Virendra Saini m Bhaskar Chandavarkar lp Dilip Dhawan, Anjali Paingankar, Shriram Lagoo, Om Puri, Sulabha Deshpande, Rohini Hattangadi

Mirza’s first and most experimental feature tries to elaborate its own political film language. The somewhat wimpish young Arvind Desai (Dhawan), the son of a businessman (Lagoo), occasionally dates the company’s secretary (Paingankar) and discusses politics and art with a Marxist colleague (Puri). However, the film constantly juxtaposes Desai’s views with other information: e.g. his views on his sister’s marriage are contrasted with his acquiescence in an arranged marriage; when luxurious carpets are hung in the family’s shop, the film shows the weavers who made the carpets. Critic Bikram Singh suggested influences of Antonioni, Ben Barka’s politics and, for the epilogue (summing up and placing the central character), La hora de los hornos (1967). This was the second and last film by the Yukt Co- op, a group started by FTII film-makers and technicians (Ghashiram Kotwal, 1976).

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