Nayika Sangbad

This is the kind of very slight story, held together by little but a theme of inconsequential seeming-naughtiness, that was carried off much better by somebody like Hrishikesh Mukherjee in, say, Chupke Chupke - the necessary sparkly script mostly isn't there. But I found it watchable-to-enjoyable nonetheless, mostly owing to Uttam Kumar's charisma and the overall gentleness of the story-telling.

Anjana Bhowmick is Urmita, a young Hindi film actress who doesn't seem very enthusiastic even though she's apparently just become a star. When she accidentally is stranded in a remote Bengali town -- curiosity has impelled her to get off a train she is riding, and it leaves without her -- Uttam Kumar, the bachelor stationmaster, accommodates her in his quarters. A servant assumes she is his wife and spreads this news to the genteel neighbors.

That's about it. We find out a bit more about the characters. A positive here is -- no hysteria at all, and a bonus is a trip that the couple makes to a local fair, which looks to me as if its filming made documentary use of an actual local fair somewhere in Bengal in the middle 60s. The crowds of people and animals and odd attractions, like an aged man who uses a pet pigeon to tell the customer's fortune, or some traditional folk-singers of a kind I haven't run into in movies, make it more than worth a watch, as does the irrepressible beautiful smile of Uttam Kumar.

If you look at this movie critically, you can find too many loop-holes. There is basically no story and whatever it has, is very much predictable and not exactly very practical. But if you can overlook these problems, and just try to enjoy it, you can actually. It is at least not one of those movies, that tired to be serious but failed miserably - it did not try to be one. There are some lighthearted humorous dialogs and the story never tried to be complicated. Its a typical escapist type romantic comedy. The chemistry between Uttam Kumar and Anjana Bhowmik worked well and side characters - Pahari Sanyal, Anuva Gupta and Jahar played their part adequately. Have some fun while watching and then forget may be.