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Mohan and Manu are childhood sweethearts. They grow up and become engaged. Mohan goes off to the city to buy jewellery for the wedding. He gets attacked and robbed and is taken to hospital where he remains unconscious for nearly a week.

Back in the village, folks are becoming worried. The wedding date is impending and the groom's a no-show. (Apparently, it doesn't occur to anyone to go and find out what may have happened to Mohan). The Panchayat (village court) accepts the lies of the villainous Mahku and his sidekick, Kalva that Mohan must have run off with a city girl.

Despite the protests of Mohan's father and the distraught Manju, the Panchayat decides that if a date has been set for a wedding, then a wedding there shall be. Makhu knows just where to find a groom; a rich contractor whose sister is looking to get some free home help. For a few rupees, Makhu does the deal with her.

The marriage takes place. Neither the bride nor the groom see each other's faces until after the ceremony. They are not a happy couple. The groom is an old man with a heart condition – and four young children. He didn't expect a young bride and promptly has a coronary - but manages to force Manju into promising to be a mother to the children.

Mohan returns from the city but he's too late and this tear-drenched, melancholic drama eventually reaches an improbable conclusion after much recrimination.

Even dedicated fans of Indian cinema are likely to find this movie hard to sit through. The camera remains rooted to the floor and the studio sets make it look like a filmed play rather than a motion picture. Even so, it does have compensations. The lovers' mating call is hauntingly beautiful and there are plenty of other songs (though the endless close-ups of Nargis' tear-streaked face do become a bit wearying by the end).

In films like "First Love", the rotund, gravel-voiced Eugene Palette used to do a great turn as a man who watches with detachment whilst his wife and offspring made fools of themselves. Eventually, his bottled up indignation would explode to good comic effect. In "Biwi Ho To Aisi " (roughly, "a wife should be like this") Kader Khan (or Kadar as he is credited here) is cast in the Eugene Palette role. He does a fine job of humouring his ill-tempered wife, whilst consoling her victims and confiding to the audience with direct-to-camera asides. Bindu, playing the domineering wife, roars round the house like a tornado, heaping high volume invective and scorn on all in her path whilst Salman Khan makes an energetic debut as a pop music loving teenager (in a sub-plot involving a deceitful girlfriend).

Farooq Shaikh (here credited as Farouque Sheikh) shows again what a fine actor he is. His role calls for him to be submissive towards his mother, pally with his father, tender towards his adopted sister and romantic with Rekha. Their scene together, as they take refuge from the "battle of the bindis", is particularly sensitive.

Rekha is at her best, playing a sort of Eliza Doolittle character. We see her first, dressed in a gorgeous South Indian costume, routing a village bully in an extended comic scene. Later, transplanted to the Bindhari household we see her circling her foe physically and psychologically; sizing her up during the battle of wills with Bindu. She also gets an opportunity to put her yoga training to good use in another action scene.

The usual, final plot twist is here made all the more enjoyable for being so deliciously implausible. Altogether, very entertaining.

The words "Sadaa Suhagan" can be translated as a wife's constant state of happiness whilst her husband is alive. It's a concept not universally experienced.

The film opens with Rekha waking up next to her still sleeping husband (Jeetendra). Perfectly made-up and without a hair out of place she ritually blesses him before rising. Having washed, she lays out his clothes, polishes his shoes, readies his shaving kit, puts toothpaste on his toothbrush, gets his breakfast, organises the servants, attends to the religious devotions, rouses the children, gets them dressed, and sorts out their breakfast. And all to the accompaniment of a song that includes the lyrics "…my home is like heaven … my husband is my lord……". It makes the Stepford Wives look like a bunch of anarchists.

The story rolls along nicely upon conventional lines and is what Halliwell was wont to call a civilised entertainment for those who have dined well though one suspects that this was not one of Rekha's favourite roles.