Leela Chitnis

Satyam Shivam Sundaram is a Hindi drama film based on the life of a small village girl whose face gets accidently burnt. An engineer fall in love with her without knowing the reality and gets married. Their life changes when both learn the bitter truth of their life.

Truth, beauty and Godliness are subjective and humans have not been able to find an objective definition for either through centuries of search. It is a human's love, faith and devotion that gives any meaning to any of the 3. The story is set in a village where Roopa (Zeenat Aman) lives with her father, the village priest Pandit Shyam Sunder (Kanhaiyalal). Roopa is unconsidered a jinx as her mother died while giving birth to her. Bansi (A. K. Hangal) is Roopa's uncle and protects her from Pandit's wrath. Pandit wanted a boy and hence hated Roopa as a burden on himself. From the very early age, Roopa had a fabulous voice and she supported her father, the temple priest, in conducting religious ceremonies for patrons, which requires singing devotional songs. Still, the priest does not value Roopa and does not even celebrate her birthday as he says that he lost his wife the same day and does not know how to celebrate that day. As a young child (Padmini Kolhapure), the right side of Roopa's face and neck were burned by a pot of boiling oil which she spilled on herself while cooking a meal for her father. She was cooking the meal on occasion of her birthday, which Bansi insisted should be celebrated, leaving part of her face disfigured. Due to this dis-figuration, she is unmarried and everyone in the village pities her. Henceforth, Roopa keeps her right cheek hidden under the veil of her sari. Despite the terrible accident, Roopa remains religious and goes to the village temple daily, singing hymns and devotional songs. Pandit is eager to get Roopa married as she is old enough, but Shastri (Subroto Mahapatra), Roopa's prospective father-in-law & Shastri's son (Javed Khan) demand a hefty dowry to take her on. Despite the cruelty of her own father, Roopa understands her fate and says that she is resigned to stay at home and does not want Shyam to exert himself in his old age to gather money for her dowry. Rajeev (Shashi Kapoor) is a dashing engineer who arrives in the village to oversee the operation of a major dam. He lives in a guest house managed by dam supervisor Bade Babu (David Abraham Cheulkar) and Bade Babu's wife (Leela Chitnis). Jai Singh (Vishwa Mehra) is the supervisor. Rajeev's mom and dad have already passed away. Rajeev abhors anything ugly and he even gets scared when he sees his optically disfigured face in mirrors at the village fair. He hears Roopa's lovely singing at the temple and then later at the inauguration function of the new dam and meets her when she arrives at the temple again early morning. Rajeev does not see her disfigured side, and falls in love with her. Village belle Champa (Sheetal) is also in love with Rajeev. Rajeev mistakes Champa for Pooja and expresses his love for her. When he realizes she is not Pooja, he runs away, angering Champa. Rajeev continues to pursue Roopa during her morning singing sessions at the temple. He follows her to a waterfall where he watches her bathe and return to the temple. Rajeev introduces himself to Roopa and it is clear that he is attracted to her. Roopa hides her hideous side from Rajeev. One day Roopa and Rajeev both share a sensuous moment under the waterfall, where Pooja also finds herself attracted to Rajeev. Rajeev kisses her that day. He wants to sleep with her, but Roopa says she will have sex only after marriage. Rajeev then asks her father's permission to marry her. Roopa does not want to cheat Rajeev because she loves him deeply and first request his father to reject the marriage proposal. But everyone from the village (including the Panchayat) request her to change her mind. They even donate funds for her wedding festivities and thereby she agreed to get married to Rajeev thinking he may accept her with her condition as he claimed to love her truly. After the wedding, Rajeev discovers the truth and thinks that he was cheated and forced to marry someone else, at which point he disowns Roopa and drives her out of the house. Rajeev roams around the village at the wedding night in search of another Roopa, as he think there is another girl with the same name, waiting for him. On the other side, after being rejected by Rajeev at their wedding night, Roopa decides to commit suicide but rescued by Rajeev, when he thought he found the girl he fall in love with, not his wife. After being rescued, Roopa decides to meet him at night, using a veil to hide the scarred side of her face. Rajeev spends his days ignoring his wife, and his nights loving his mistress including having sex with her in the darkness of night, not knowing they are both the same woman. Rajeev's servant Jaisingh notices that Roopa is meeting Rajeev as his mistress at night. During one of their nights together, they make love and Roopa gets pregnant. When Rajeev finds out that his wife is pregnant, he accuses her of infidelity and refuses to believe that his "mistress" and wife are the same. He publicly shames her and wont relent even when Jaisingh also confirms that Rajeev's wife is Roopa and there is no other girl, and sends her back to her home. Seeing it, Roopa's father dies out of agony. Roopa vows that she will never ever return to Rajeev as his mistress. A terrible storm ravages the village, breaking open the dam which Rajeev had come to repair. The village is being evacuated as the dam's shutters are opening. In the swirling waters of the flood, Rajeev sees how shallow he has been. He finds his wife singing a lovely song in her sweet voice and comes to the realization that Roopa and his wife are the same woman, and saves Roopa from drowning. The dam waters flood the village and break the bridge that the villagers were using to cross over to the other side and safety. Once safe in the vicinity of the temple, Rajeev ask for Roopa's forgiveness and accepts Roopa as his wife.

A father mortgages his home for his son's medical education. After the son succeeds and marries rich, family tensions rise. When the father goes blind, he and his wife face hardship as their elder son grows distant. A family drama with a special focus on two generations of the Chopra family. Dinanath Chopra lives in a small tenement with his wife, and two sons Baldev, and Chandramohan. Dinanath re-finances his house in order to get Baldev to study further and be a doctor, and also gets him married with Rekha who comes from a very wealthy family. Chandramohan studies in college, and has a sweetheart in the form of the gorgeous Asha. Asha lives with her mom, and dad, a sort of quack. Differences in the Baldev emerge and multiply. Baldev and Rekha move to their palatial house. The birth of a baby boy to Rekha does lighten things up a bit, but not for long. Dinanath loses his eyesight in an accident and becomes blind. Chandramohan goes out of town to look for employment, leaving his sick mother and blind father at the mercy of an uncaring daughter-in-law, and eventually the older couple are forced to leave Baldev's house. Chandramohan returns and is unable to locate them. What will be the fate of his parents in an unfriendly, cold, and heartless city? —rAjOo (gunwanti@hotmail.com)

The movie was shot in an era when educated people in cities were getting influenced by the western culture hence the people from rural areas who placed a lot of importance to values and culture, strongly abstained from marrying into city people's homes. Geeta is a girl from a well to do family and is well educated, her parents had brought up her with traditional values and respect for those values. After her graduation, her parents decide to marry her off with Ratan Chowdhury, the son of a zaminder, who had the mind frame that a highly educated wife would be incapable of handling and managing a home, specially in a joint family. Later he marries Geeta but his mentality and the talk of others stop him from accepting her. He disowns her and poor Geeta has to go back to her parents' house. Even after lot of insistence from her parents and friends she refuses to remarry. Instead she continues her studies to become a doctor. After garnering a degree in medical science she goes back to Ratan's village as Vidya. She wants to clear the wrong perceptions that Ratan has about her. Ratan couldn't recognise her, as he had not even seen her face, even during marriage. He falls in love with Vidya and intends to marry her, but one day during the annual cart race, Ratan meets with an accident and suffers a very bad injury post which needs surgery. Due to unavailability of any other doctor, Geeta has to do the job. She performs it successfully. Will Ratan accept Geeta in her new avataar?

"Awara", a film that introduced Raj Kapoor`s tramp character inspired by Charlie Chaplin, is regarded among the greatest films of all time. The film tells the story of Raj (Raj Kapoor) the estranged son of a wealthy judge Raghunath (Prithviraj Kapoor) who throws his wife out on the streets suspecting her of adultery as a result of which Raj and his mother live in poverty. Raj meets Rita (Nargis) in school and she leaves an impression on him, but they drift apart when Raj is expelled from school. Raj is convinced by Jagga (K.N. Singh), a crime boss, to take up a life of crime to escape his life of poverty. He encounters Rita again who is now a lawyer and a ward of Raghunath. Through dramatic twists and turns, Raghunath discovers that Raj is his son and a contrite Raj goes to jail with Rita promising to wait for him.