Malhar

(1951)

In the large mansion of the Thakur Sahib, lives his renegade son, Anand, his pretty daughter Reshmi, and son of a deceased friend of his, young Rattan. Rattan had been brought up by Thakur Sahib as his own child. Years rolled by and the three children grew up. Reshmi and Rattan showed an unmistakble fondness for each other, an attachment upon which aging Thakur smiled in silent benediction and his hot-tempered, wastefull son frowned malignantly. So, as soon as the old Thakur was creamted, Anand promptly ignored his father's bedside behest that the Reshmi-Rattan should be married. He turned Rattan out of the house and give away his bitterly anguished, sister in marriage to a rich, happy-go-lucky college friend of his named Bihari. Rattan had inherited from his father an old family mansion. So, about the same time as Reshmi was going the seven steps with Bihari around the sacred fire, another larger fire-started by the disappointed lover-was consuming his own large house. Reshmi as a wife performed her duty with a fanatic fervour that held people spellbound. She obstinately refused to listen to the anguished cry of her heart. She overworked herself. She tried all that could to forget the past, to think only of the present. But it was an unequal struggle, Reshmi found herself overwhelmed by this psychological conflict. She fell ill, recovered fell ill again and given up as incurable on the suggestion of a selfish, short sighted mother-in-law, was segregated into the hut of their gardener and there left to die.