Prem Rog

Manorama is the daughter of a wealthy, orthodox family and is married off young. Her childhood friend Deodhar has never been able to tell her what he feels, and the marriage leaves him without hope. Her husband dies a few days after the wedding and Manorama is left a widow. From then on her family treats her as though she were serving a sentence: put in a separate room, fed apart, allowed to wear nothing but white. She is raped by her brother in law, and that too is hushed up as though it were her fault. Deodhar stands against all of it and argues for a widow’s right to marry again. The difference of caste between them opens a second front in that fight. The film does not take tradition as something beyond question; it asks whom it serves. Padmini Kolhapure plays Manorama and Rishi Kapoor plays Deodhar in Raj Kapoor’s hundred and seventy two minute Indian film, completed in 1982.