This powerful film, set in Southern India and made in Telugu, depicts the ideas of a half-mad peasant living on the edge of society, on the outskirts of a village in Andhra Pradesh. The bitter iconoclast Vankaiah has his finger on at least one truth when he declares, "The people have always worked hard and yet they die of hunger; I prefer to die of hunger without working." And having made a disciple of his only son, Kistaiah, the old man has all the society he needs, thank you. "Basically, he's an absolutely positive character," Mrinal Sen has said. "He protests with all his strength against the bad organization of society." But when Kistaiah takes a wife and the disapproving father-in-law allows her to die during her pregnancy, Sen clearly challenges our own acceptance of this mad prophet, and pushes his narrative from the outskirts of realism into the realm of political parable.