Aparna Sen is a leading film actress in Bengal and one of the very few women directors in India. Her acting credits include Satyajit Ray's Two Daughters and Pikoo, Salil Dutt's The Idiot and Mrinal Sen's Up In the Clouds. 36 Chowringhee Lane marks her directorial debut and has met with enormous success. It has been chosen as the Best English Language Film for 1982 in India, the Best Feature Film at the 1982 Manila Film Festival and was India's submission to the 1982 Academy Awards.
Jennifer Kendall is featured as an Anglo-Indian schoolteacher, Violet, whose home becomes the trysting place for a student and her boyfriend. The couple's Indian upbringing makes it impossible for them to have an affair, yet their European sophistication makes it difficult not to. In opening her life to them, Violet temporarily relieves her loneliness; but the mixture of motives on the part of her new friends leaves her confused and eventually bereft.
Satti Khanna writes: “With the British gone, the Anglo-Indians shrank to a marginal life as schoolteachers and railway guards while the anglicized Indians gained in sophistication and influence. 36 Chowringhee Lane deals with relations between Anglo-Indians and anglicized Indians in present-day Calcutta. The story is domestic, but as in all good stories, large meanings grow out of small events....”