Uski Roti

Balo, the wife of the truck driver Sucha Singh, prepares his food every day, walks a long way through the fields and waits for him on the highway where he passes the village. Sucha Singh lives his own life; he plays cards with his friends, spends time with his mistress, comes home once a week and still expects his wife to be a devoted one in the traditional sense. One day Balo is late, having tried to protect her sister from a villager’s advances; Sucha Singh, angry, drives off without his food, and she decides to wait for him until nightfall. Mani Kaul’s first feature was adapted from Mohan Rakesh’s story of the same name. Kaul deliberately broke up realist narration and said he built the film the way a painter would; it counts as one of the founding works of the Indian new wave.