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Gharaonda (घरौंदा)

Gharaonda (घरौंदा; "The Nest") is a 1977 Hindi-language drama film directed and produced by Bhimsain Khurana, starring Amol Palekar and Zarina Wahab as a middle-class working couple in Bombay whose attempt to buy a home before marrying ends in financial ruin and a painful compromise¹. It was Bhimsain's first feature film, made after he had established himself as a pioneer of Indian animation¹. The trade press listed it in English as Gharaonda (The City Has a Heart of Stone)².

Key fact	Detail
Release	1977, India; Hindi language; drama and romance³
Director and producer	Bhimsain, under the banner Climb Films, Bombay; his first feature⁴^•¹
Writing	Story by Dr. Shankar Shesh; screenplay by Gulzar; dialogues by Gulzar and Bhushan Banmali⁴
Music	Jaidev (composer); Gulzar (lyricist); playback by Bhupinder Singh and Runa Laila³^•⁵
Lead cast	Amol Palekar (Sudip), Zarina Wahab (Chhaya), Shreeram Lagoo (Mr. Modi), Sadhu Meher (Guha), Jalal Agha (Abdul), Dina Pathak (Guha's mother)⁶
Runtime	2 hours 21 minutes (141 minutes)⁷^•⁶
Awards	1978 Filmfare Awards: Best Supporting Actor (winner), Best Lyricist (winner), Best Actress (nomination)⁸

Spoilers

Plot

Sudip (Amol Palekar), a clerk, and Chhaya (Zarina Wahab), a typist, work at adjacent desks in a small office and fall in love. Both come from lower-middle-class families, and they resolve to marry once they have a home of their own in Bombay⁵^•⁸. Their savings are lost when the builder they deal with turns out to be a fraud who absconds with their money⁹.

The setback changes Sudip. Out of desperation he proposes a solution he himself calls depraved: that Chhaya marry his employer, the wealthy middle-aged Mr. Modi (Shreeram Lagoo), a heart patient recuperating from a serious condition, so that the couple can escape their misery⁵. Chhaya agrees, in part to fund her younger brother's education abroad, and marries Modi, whose late wife she resembles⁵^•¹⁰. When Modi later tries to give Sudip financial help, Sudip refuses, and he announces his intention to leave the city, telling Chhaya the exact departure time of his train; at that moment she remains with her husband⁴. The film ends on a note the TV Guide synopsis describes as not taking the easy way out, with Sudip staying in Bombay to fight rather than leave⁸.

Production

Bhimsain Khurana (died 2018) was already known for animation before this film: his short Ek Anek Ekta made him a pioneer of Indian animation filmmaking, and his award-winning shorts were regularly broadcast on Doordarshan in the 1970s and 1980s¹^•¹⁰. Gharaonda, released in 1977, was his first feature¹. He also took screenplay and dialogue credit on the film¹¹.

The crew listed in the trade record includes A. K. Bir on cinematography, Waman B. Bhosle on editing, and Binod Pradhan is also credited with cinematography on the Hindi-language film page⁴^•¹². Retrospective accounts single out Bir's unadorned imagery, with most sequences set in daytime at recognizable Bombay locations including the Bandra Fort, the beaches, the Charni Road overbridge, and the now-defunct Naaz cafe⁵^•¹⁰.

Music

Jaidev composed the score and Gulzar wrote the lyrics³. The film carries only three songs, “Do deewane shaher mein,” “Ek akela is shaher mein,” and “Mujhe pyaar tumse nahi hai,” performed in Runa Laila's and Bhupinder Singh's voices⁵. The songs are tied to the couple's situation: they sing about finding a house together so they can marry¹³. Gulzar won the 1978 Filmfare Award for Best Lyricist for the film⁸.

Reception and awards

At the 1978 Filmfare Awards the film won Best Supporting Actor for Shreeram Lagoo's performance as Mr. Modi and Best Lyricist for Gulzar, and Zarina Wahab was nominated for Best Actress⁸. Retrospective critics have treated the film as a classic of 1970s middle-cinema: Rediff's retrospective places it against the same year's entertainers Amar Akbar Anthony, Dharam Veer, and Hum Kisise Kum Nahin as a critically acclaimed account of the city's matchbox dwellers⁵. On IMDb the film holds a rating of 7.2/10 from about 288 user votes¹⁴.

Theme and legacy

The film's subject is the Bombay housing market. A study of housing in Indian cinema describes Gharaonda as capturing "the impossibility of finding an affordable home in Bombay," with a romantic song sequence staged among concrete pillars and staircases of a building under construction, the couple's hoped-for matchbox homes remaining beyond their means¹⁵. Scroll, marking the 2018 release of Love Per Square Foot, another Mumbai housing drama, called Gharonda "one of the most resonant films about Mumbai's housing woes" and one of the most enduring movies about the link between house buying and soul selling¹⁰.

The film is also read as part of the late-1970s wave of disillusionment with Bombay as the promised escape from India's slow-growth economy, alongside Gaman (1978), which shared Jaidev as composer but had the less successful album¹⁶. Zarina Wahab, interviewed after Bhimsain's death in April 2018 at age 82, described the film as bold and well ahead of its times, a path-breaker about the housing problem in Mumbai¹.

References

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

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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