Debashis Banerjee

A young woman is left to her own devices when her sickly husband dies. Based on the novel by Rabindranath Tagore.

It is Christmas Day in Calcutta and David Dawson is off to celebrate it with his sweetheart, Nandini Shom. The meeting does not go well as Nandini wants him to start working so that they can get married and start a family, while David wants a career as a musician. She tells him that she will never see him again. Despondent, he returns to his rented apartment and is chided by his landlady, Lillian, who threatens to have him evicted as he has been delinquent in paying his rent for over a year...

Rameshchandra Chaudhry, a lawyer by profession, is in love with Hemnalini, and is displeased when he finds that his father wants him to marry Sushilla, the daughter of a widow. He initially refuses despite of his father disowning him, but changes his mind when the bride's mother pleads with him, and gets married without even seeing, leave alone getting to know his bride. After the marriage, they board a boat which overturns after a storm, and they end up being the only survivors. Unable to get Hemnalini out of his mind, he refuses to be intimate with his bride. On talking with her gradually over the next few months, it slowly sinks in that she is not Sushilla but Kamla - the bride of another male! The question remains: what can he do under these circumstances, and what impact will this have on Kamla - who has traditionally accepted him as her husband.

Two 8-year-old boys navigate a growing religious divide in this beautifully observed portrait of childhood set after the destruction of India’s Babri Mosque.