Cast
What it is about
Shankar and Bhawariya are childhood sweethearts separated by circumstance. Grown up, Shankar is a hunter with little formal education, while Bhawariya, now called Madhumati, is a traditional and very beautiful woman. When marriage proposals arrive for Shankar and for his cousin Suresh, a well-educated lawyer, family customs forbid each groom from meeting his own bride beforehand, though each may see the other's intended.
How it was made
Mohan Segal directed the film, based on the short novel Naa by Tarashankar Bandopadhyay, which had earlier become a 1954 Bengali film and a 1962 Tamil film, Padithaal Mattum Podhuma. Starring Dharmendra and Sharmila Tagore, it has music by Roshan and lyrics by Anand Bakshi, a partnership that produced their only joint hit. Several songs are built on Hindustani ragas such as Bhairavi, Patdeep and Pilu.
Reception and legacy
The Essential Guide to Bollywood (2005) highlights its roots in Bengali literature and its ironic twists of fate, with the leads bound to the 'wrong' spouses until the end. In 2014, The Friday Times noted that it was perhaps the only role comedian Deven Verma played that had shades of grey.
Trivia
Shared literary origin
The story comes from a Bengali short novel that had already inspired Bengali and Tamil adaptations before this film.
Songs built on ragas
Several of its songs are built on classical Hindustani ragas, such as Bhairavi, Patdeep and Pilu.
Original Cinematopedia text based on Wikipedia (en) and Wikidata.