Rajanigandha

aka Tube Rose 1974 110’ col Hindi d/sc/dial Basu Chatterjee pc Devki Chitra st Manu Bhandari’s short story Yeh Sach Hai lyr Yogesh c K.K. Mahajan m Salil Choudhury lp Vidya Sinha, Amol Palekar, Dinesh Thakur, Rajita Thakur, Master Chikkoo, Rajprakash, Gopal Dutia, Naresh Suri

The novelist Manu Bhandari (Mahabhoj, Aapka Banti) was also associated with the 50s literary Nai Kahani movement in Hindi. Her story chronicles the life of a working woman, Deepa (Sinha) torn between two lovers: her intended husband, the gregarious bank clerk Sanjay (Palekar) and Navin (Thakur) whom she meets in Bombay when applying for a teaching job. Palekar’s debut performance in Hindi established his best-known screen image as a bumbling common-man hero. The film’s claim to represent realistically the middle class through Sanjay’s persona is belied by an extensive use of glamourous soft-focus imagery. It was Basu Chatterjee’s breakthrough into mainstream Hindi cinema, encouraging the notion that low-budget art-house films can be commercially successful.

Film