{ "id": "epegssv76b", "slug": "arvind-desai-ki-ajeeb-dastaan", "title": "Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastaan", "updated": "2026-11-01", "topic_path": [ { "id": "culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture" }, { "id": "culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" }, { "id": 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"label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.ind.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "geo.ind.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.ind.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" }, { "id": "geo.ind.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.indian-cinema", "label": "Indian films (individual works)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.ind.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.indian-cinema" }, { "id": "geo.ind.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.indian-cinema.hindi-films-of-the-1970s", "label": "Hindi films of the 1970s", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.ind.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.indian-cinema.hindi-films-of-the-1970s" }, { "id": "geo.ind.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.indian-cinema.hindi-films-of-the-1970s.yr-1976-1979", "label": "Released 1976 to 1979", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.ind.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.indian-cinema.hindi-films-of-the-1970s.yr-1976-1979" } ] } ], "excerpt": "Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastaan (अरविन्द देसाई की अजीब दास्तान, The Strange Fate of Arvind Desai) is Saeed Akhtar Mirza's 1978 Hindi parallel-cinema debut: a 118-minute Yukt Co-op/NFDC drama about a rich businessman's alienated son, starring Dilip Dhawan, Om Puri, and Shreeram Lagoo, a Filmfare Critics Award winner shown at Berlin.", "snippet": "Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastaan (अरविन्द देसाई की अजीब दास्तान, The Strange Fate of Arvind Desai) is Saeed Akhtar Mirza's 1978 Hindi parallel-cinema debut: a 118-minute Yukt Co-op/NFDC drama about a rich businessman's alienated son, starring Dilip Dhawan, Om Puri, and Shreeram Lagoo, a Filmfare Critics Award winner shown at Berlin.", "node": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.indian-cinema.hindi-films-of-the-1970s.yr-1976-1979", "markdown": "# Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastaan\n\n**Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastaan** (अरविन्द देसाई की अजीब दास्तान; English: *The Strange Fate of Arvind Desai*) is a 1978 Indian Hindi-language drama directed by Saeed Akhtar Mirza, about the son of a wealthy Bombay businessman who dates his father's secretary, discusses Marxism with a leftist friend, and faces an arranged marriage. It was Mirza's first feature film and a work of the Indian parallel cinema movement.[1](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077179/) • [2](https://indiancine.ma/texts/indiancine.ma%3AEncyclopedia_of_Indian_Cinema/text.pdf)\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Release | 5 May 1978 (India); 118 minutes, color, 35 mm Hindi[1](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077179/) • [3](https://www.3continents.com/en/film/arvind-desai-ki-ajeeb-dastaan/) |\n| Director | Saeed Akhtar Mirza (b. 1943), his first feature[4](https://www.iffk.in/index.php/filmdetail/MTE2NjIyMjAzLjI4) |\n| Writers | Story and screenplay by Mirza and Cyrus Mistry; dialogue by Vijay Tendulkar[1](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077179/) |\n| Lead cast | Dilip Dhawan (Arvind Desai), Anjali Paigankar (Alice D'Costa), Shreeram Lagoo (Dharmsi Desai), Om Puri (Rajan)[5](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/arvind_desai_ki_ajeeb_dastaan) |\n| Production | Yukt Film Co-operative Society, produced with National Film Development Corporation of India; NFDC financed it with Rs 500,000 (about $61,000 at the time)[1](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077179/) • [6](https://www.globalindiantimes.com/p/saeed-mirzas-journey-from-advertising) |\n| Key crew | Cinematography: Virendra Saini; music: Bhaskar Chandavarkar[4](https://www.iffk.in/index.php/filmdetail/MTE2NjIyMjAzLjI4) |\n| Recognition | Screened at the Berlin film festival; won the Filmfare Critics Award for Best Feature Film[7](https://www.dff.nic.in/images/Documents/74_43rdNfacatalogue.pdf) • [8](https://www.tuliresearchcentre.org/saeed-akhtar-mirza/research-centre/all/journal-deshpande-journal-of-arts-and-ideas-january-march-1983-2) |\n\n## Spoilers\n\n### Plot and central character\n\nArvind Desai (Dilip Dhawan) is the only son of Dharmsi Desai (Shreeram Lagoo), a rich, domineering businessman who deals in luxury handicraft and export products; Arvind manages his father's shop.[1](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077179/) He occasionally dates the office secretary Alice (Anjali Paigankar), discusses politics and art with a Marxist colleague, Rajan ([Om Puri](https://www.edgepedia.org/om-puri)), and visits a brothel, while his family arranges his marriage to the daughter of another businessman, a high-society girl just back from Paris.[2](https://indiancine.ma/texts/indiancine.ma%3AEncyclopedia_of_Indian_Cinema/text.pdf) • [5](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/arvind_desai_ki_ajeeb_dastaan)\n\nHis feelings toward his father are mixed: he hates the man's dominating nature yet admires his power and lack of scruples.[1](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077179/) The film's core conflict is that Arvind questions the values of his own class but is unable to live by his ideals.[8](https://www.tuliresearchcentre.org/saeed-akhtar-mirza/research-centre/all/journal-deshpande-journal-of-arts-and-ideas-january-march-1983-2) The German festival catalog for the 1979 Panorama of New Indian Cinema describes him as a young man full of contradictions whose main difficulty is his inability to accept the easygoing city life with a clear conscience; he knows the artisans who make the carpets and objects sold in the shop are underpaid, while foreign buyers are overcharged, and he carries guilt over both.[9](https://www.arsenal-berlin.de/assets/Legacy/katalog_blaetter/1979_PanoramaDesNeuenIndischenKinos_ArvindDesaiKiAjeebDastaan.pdf) Mirza said in a 2022 interview that the character was based on people he met during his years in advertising, an alienated, educated man trapped by a small business with no close ties to family or friends.[6](https://www.globalindiantimes.com/p/saeed-mirzas-journey-from-advertising)\n\n## Style and reception\n\nThe film avoids linear narration, using a collection of vignettes rather than a conventional plot; the critic Bikram Singh suggested influences of [Michelangelo Antonioni](https://www.edgepedia.org/michelangelo-antonioni), the politics of Med Hondo (Ben Barka), and, for the epilogue, *La hora de los hornos* (1967).[2](https://indiancine.ma/texts/indiancine.ma%3AEncyclopedia_of_Indian_Cinema/text.pdf) [The Indian Express](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-indian-express) account records that when Mirza's mother saw a preview, she felt there was \"no story,\" and describes the film as a portrait of a bourgeois drifting through life, reconciling privilege with half-hearted social commitment, a film \"where nothing significant happens,\" remarkable for that very reason.[10](https://indianexpress.com/article/entertainment/opinion-entertainment/parallel-cinema-movies-6375603/334/)\n\n**Formal approach.** The Tuli Research Centre describes the film's style as a Brechtian realism articulated through static framing, extended takes, and observational detachment, critiquing liberal guilt and capitalist alienation.[8](https://www.tuliresearchcentre.org/saeed-akhtar-mirza/research-centre/all/journal-deshpande-journal-of-arts-and-ideas-january-march-1983-2) The *Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema* notes the film's method of juxtaposition: Arvind's views on his sister's marriage are contrasted with his own acquiescence in an arranged marriage, and when luxurious carpets are hung in the family's shop, the film cuts to the weavers who made them.[2](https://indiancine.ma/texts/indiancine.ma%3AEncyclopedia_of_Indian_Cinema/text.pdf) A 1978 Film Finance Corporation catalog praised Virendra Saini's photography of Bombay, from the red of the BEST buses to rainwashed streets, as deliberately dazzling images in a film probing the city's decay.[11](https://dff.nic.in/images/Documents/143_IPCatalogue1978-79.pdf)\n\nThe film won the Filmfare Critics Award for Best Feature Film and launched Mirza's career, cementing the New Wave's focus on urban disenfranchisement.[8](https://www.tuliresearchcentre.org/saeed-akhtar-mirza/research-centre/all/journal-deshpande-journal-of-arts-and-ideas-january-march-1983-2) It was screened at the Berlin film festival.[7](https://www.dff.nic.in/images/Documents/74_43rdNfacatalogue.pdf) On IMDb it holds a user rating of 7.1 from 207 votes.[1](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077179/)\n\n## Place in Mirza's career and parallel cinema\n\nArvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastaan was the second and last production of the Yukt Film Co-operative, a group started by [Film and Television Institute of India](https://www.edgepedia.org/film-and-television-institute-of-india) film-makers and technicians whose first film was *Ghashiram Kotwal* (1976).[2](https://indiancine.ma/texts/indiancine.ma%3AEncyclopedia_of_Indian_Cinema/text.pdf) It began Mirza's run of socially conscious features, followed by *Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyoon Aata Hai* (1980), *Mohan Joshi Hazir Ho!* (1984), *Salim Langde Pe Mat Ro* (1989), and *Naseem* (1995), along with the television series *Nukkad* and *Intezaar*.[4](https://www.iffk.in/index.php/filmdetail/MTE2NjIyMjAzLjI4) A contemporary FFC account groups it with films such as *[27 Down](https://www.edgepedia.org/27-down)* and *Gaman* among the parallel-cinema works on alienation that avoided arranged happy endings.[11](https://dff.nic.in/images/Documents/143_IPCatalogue1978-79.pdf) ThePrint characterizes its position as between the two worlds of 1978 Hindi film, too political for commercial cinema and too aspirational for the art circuit, with Marxist themes approached through a protagonist who lives on the comfortable side of the class divide.[12](https://theprint.in/feature/reel-take/arvind-desai-was-the-angry-young-man-bollywood-never-made/3035037/)\n\nThe film has remained in circulation through NFDC-related channels: it received a streaming release on 7 November 2018,[5](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/arvind_desai_ki_ajeeb_dastaan) and the National Film Archive of India screened it in Pune on 29 July 2023.[13](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nfdcindia_arvinddesaikiajeebdastaan-filmscreening-activity-7090909322104209408-cFot)\n\n## References\n\n1. [Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastaan (1978), IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077179/)\n2. [Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema entry, indiancine.ma](https://indiancine.ma/texts/indiancine.ma%3AEncyclopedia_of_Indian_Cinema/text.pdf)\n3. [Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastaan, Festival des 3 Continents](https://www.3continents.com/en/film/arvind-desai-ki-ajeeb-dastaan/)\n4. [Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastaan, Saeed Mirza Retrospective, IFFK](https://www.iffk.in/index.php/filmdetail/MTE2NjIyMjAzLjI4)\n5. [Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastaan, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/arvind_desai_ki_ajeeb_dastaan)\n6. [Saeed Mirza's Journey from Advertising to Films to Books, Global Indian Times (2022 interview)](https://www.globalindiantimes.com/p/saeed-mirzas-journey-from-advertising)\n7. [43rd National Film Festival catalogue, Directorate of Film Festivals](https://www.dff.nic.in/images/Documents/74_43rdNfacatalogue.pdf)\n8. [Saeed Akhtar Mirza, Tuli Research Centre for India Studies](https://www.tuliresearchcentre.org/saeed-akhtar-mirza/research-centre/all/journal-deshpande-journal-of-arts-and-ideas-january-march-1983-2)\n9. [Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastaan, Panorama des neuen indischen Kinos 1979 catalogue, Arsenal Berlin](https://www.arsenal-berlin.de/assets/Legacy/katalog_blaetter/1979_PanoramaDesNeuenIndischenKinos_ArvindDesaiKiAjeebDastaan.pdf)\n10. [Our ultimate guide to the 1970-80s parallel cinema gems, The Indian Express](https://indianexpress.com/article/entertainment/opinion-entertainment/parallel-cinema-movies-6375603/334/)\n11. [Indian Panorama catalogue 1978-79, Directorate of Film Festivals](https://dff.nic.in/images/Documents/143_IPCatalogue1978-79.pdf)\n12. ['Arvind Desai' was the angry young man Bollywood never made, ThePrint](https://theprint.in/feature/reel-take/arvind-desai-was-the-angry-young-man-bollywood-never-made/3035037/)\n13. [NFDC post on the 29 July 2023 NFDC-NFAI screening, LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nfdcindia_arvinddesaikiajeebdastaan-filmscreening-activity-7090909322104209408-cFot)\n\n---\n*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Indian films (individual works) › Hindi films of the 1970s › Released 1976 to 1979*\n\n*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n", "same_as": [], "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/arvind-desai-ki-ajeeb-dastaan", "markdown_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/arvind-desai-ki-ajeeb-dastaan.md", "license": { "name": "Edgepedia Community License 1.0", "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license", "summary": "Free with credit, commercial use included. AI training is open to everyone. For other uses, organizations over USD 100M in revenue or 100M monthly users license separately.", "spdx": "LicenseRef-Edgepedia-Community-1.0" }, "credit": "\"Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastaan\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/arvind-desai-ki-ajeeb-dastaan. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "credit_md": "\"[Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastaan](https://www.edgepedia.org/arvind-desai-ki-ajeeb-dastaan)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), [https://www.edgepedia.org/arvind-desai-ki-ajeeb-dastaan](https://www.edgepedia.org/arvind-desai-ki-ajeeb-dastaan). [Edgepedia Community License 1.0](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license).", "credit_html": "\"Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastaan\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/arvind-desai-ki-ajeeb-dastaan. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "speakable": "Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastaan is Saeed Akhtar Mirza's 1978 Hindi parallel-cinema debut: a 118-minute Yukt Co-op/NFDC drama about a rich businessman's alienated son, starring Dilip Dhawan, Om Puri, and Shreeram Lagoo, a Filmfare Critics Award winner shown at Berlin." }