Aditya Srivastav

It is about a travel agent called Sarika ( Urmila Matondkar) who meets and falls for a mysterious businessman Karan Rathod (Saif Ali Khan in his first negative role). After Karan involves Sarika in looking after a suitcase full of illegal firearms belonging to his friend, a hit man, she is arrested for having links with the underworld and is remanded to judicial custody. Karan sends Kamalesh Mathur to her, a defense attorney, seemingly to fight her case, but who in fact tricks her into confessing that she knew the hit man and was acting of her own free will. The judge sentences her to 7 years hard lab our without parole. Sarika then realizes that Karan is actually an associate to the underworld and that he had her framed to keep police eyes away from himself. She finally escapes from prison with help of another prison-inmate. The way she is made to confess to a crime she did not commit, the portrayal of the hard life in prison and her friendship to a prison inmate who ultimately helps her escape the prison seems to be inspired from the novel If Tomorrow Comes by Sidney Sheldon. Once outside, she begins to plot revenge on Karan. Not only does Sarika want to kill Karan, she wants him to suffer and wants to humiliate and frighten him. First she kills Mathur and throws his body off the balcony of his multi-storeyed flat. Karan remains oblivious to the fact that the murder could have been done by Sarika, even though he knew that she had escaped from prison. He blames the murder on rival gangs. Sarika then books a hotel room immediately next to Karan's and follows him for days. Karan is staying with a new girl in his hotel room, and she watches him and this girl go shopping, dining, swimming, and enjoy life as a whole. However one evening Karan is whisked by underworld men to meet their leader and Sarika follows them. Karan meets Sanjeev, brother of underworld don Nanda. Sanjeev is shown counting a huge booty of cash. Sarika watches Karan and Sanjeev exchange heated words through an open glass window. Karan leaves Sanjeev's room after a while and returns to his hotel. Half an hour later, Bilall, an aide of Sanjeev, getting no response from Sanjeev's room decides to check for himself. Bilall is shocked to see Sanjeev murdered, and the entire load of cash missing. Everything points to Karan being Sanjeev's murderer. The underworld's begins to hunt down Karan. Sarika, whose long patience has paid off, enjoys this moment. Not content with Karan hurt and frightened, Sarika meets Karan when he was trying to elude hit men sent to kill him. She pretends to be still in love with him, feigns surprise and happiness. She offers him refuge in her hide-out, so that she can enjoy his misery first hand. Karan feels that he has been framed by Bilall and goes after him. After he has killed him, police come and arrest him. They interrogate him about Sarika who they think are involved with him since they were staying at the same hotel and since they feel that she has killed Mathur. The realization that Sarika was there with him at the hotel, leads Karan to finally realize that Sarika is the person who framed him. However, before the police can take him to the police station, he manages to escape during a shoot out between the police and Nanda's men who have come after him. Karan then takes Sarika forcefully to Nanda, Sanjeev's elder brother, but a police raid cuts short their heated exchanges. Sarika escapes, as does Karan, but Sarika manages to take him hostage in his car. At gunpoint Sarika asks Karan to drive to some hills miles away from the city. She takes him inside a cave, knocks him unconscious and ties him with chains to the rocks. On regaining consciousness, Karan finds himself captive, and Sarika leaving him after telling him that she had searched for days to find such a place for him to die slowly in. She leaves her torchlight. Once the light from the torch goes out, rats come out and begin to attack him, as Karan used to tease Sarika for her fear of the pests. Karan dies a long and painful death. Sarika voluntarily returns to jail as she had had the pleasure of killing Karan in the manner she desired

A disturbing saga about male chauvinism and mistreatment of women in India. A woman, attended by two midwives, is giving birth in a small village in India. When the child's cry rings, the father bangs on a steel plate to attract the attention of all the villagers, who assemble, eager to hear the good news. But when the midwife announces that the child is a daughter, the banging stops, followed by a stunned silence. Shortly thereafter the father takes the baby and drowns it in a Calderon of milk. This practice continues on and as a result, many years later there are men and boys everywhere and no women. A widowed man, Ramsharan, ponders his plight and that of his two grown son, who he is unable to get married. No marriage has taken in this village for 15 years, save for one, which was annulled as the young 14-year old bride turned out to be a 14 year old boy. But there is hope when a friend informs Ramsharan that he has located a bride for his eldest, a beautiful young woman named Kalki, who lives nearby, sheltered by her father. Ramsharan pays a substantial dowry for Kalki and gets her married to his eldest - or so he hopes - for every male in the village, including his younger son, Sooraj, and he himself wants a piece of Kalki - for himself - and are willing to do anything to satiate their non-existent sex-life. —rAjOo (gunwanti@hotmail.com) Over a basin of milk used ceremoniously to drown a newborn girl, a narrator says, "Thousands of baby girls are either aborted or drowned at birth every day in India. Dowry is the cause. Where will this crime lead us to?" In an imagined near future where there are virtually no women, a high-caste village man pays dearly for a wife for his five adult sons. It's the first wedding in the village in 15 years. The bride is Kalki, who puts her faith in the youngest son (the only family member who is not a brute), then in her father, and then in a servant lad. Her desperation worsens as family and village turn against her. Caste tensions rise. Is there any hope for her? —<jhailey@hotmail.com>

Amarkanth Varma, an All India Radio presenter, meets a mysterious woman, Megha, and is immediately drawn to her. When he approaches her, she turns him down, but she soon returns to his life. However, Amar is unaware of her ulterior motives.