“There can have been no more quietly impressive debut on the Indian sub-continent over the last few years than Mohapatra's. Born in Orissa, he is a lecturer at the Film Institute at Pune. But this story about the pressures and strains of family life is the reverse of academic. Amazingly, the cast is peopled by the director's friends, and so sure is the playing that you would scarcely believe that they are not experienced professionals. ‘I intended the film to be a compassionate look at a family inexorably progressing towards its break-up. I belong there, to the small-town middle-class, and am fascinated by its dreams and its agonizing nightmares. In it, I see warmth, fellow feeling, the sharing of experience and a sense of responsibility. But I also see the tightrope-walking of the married sons, the bitterness of the locked-up daughters-in-law, the maladjustment in marriages and, above all, the selfishness that can damage a family's very fibre.' Mohapatra has created some unforgettable characters, and the longer you watch his film, the truer it seems.” Derek Malcolm, London Film Festival ‘85