p 　　Siddartha Dhritiman Chatterjee is forced to discontinue his medical studies due to unexpected and brutal death of his father He has to now find a job in stead In one job interview, he is asked to name the most significant world event in the last ten years His reply is 三九 the plain human courage shown by the people of Vietnam 三九 , instead of the expected - man landing on moon The interviewer asks is he is a communist Needles to say that he does not get the job br 　　He reaches a coffee shop where he is offered to work for the communist party When he does not show any interest the party leader tells him about an opening for a medical representative To escape from the heat and have a snooze, he goes in to a cinema As a government propaganda newsreel is being shown before the feature, a bomb explodes in the cinema hall In the stampede that follows, Siddartha, breaks his watch He goes to a watchmaker but he cannot afford the repairs br 　　Waiting to cross the road, he notices a sexy girl He drifts back to his days as a medical student in a flashback The professor is explaining anatomy of female breast Many flashbacks and dreams occur to Siddartha through the film br 　　On his way to hostel, he has an encounter with some hippies Along with an ex-classmate, he goes out to see a porn film but to their disappointment, the film turns out to be not-so-pornographic br 　　In such constant wandering in a Calcutta, disintegrated relationships with his sister and a Naxalite militant communist brother, his friendship with Keya is only thing that keeps him sane br 　　Keya is a simple girl They enjoy each other 三九 s company but they cannot make any commitment to each other due to the circumstances br 　　After yet another attempt at a job interview, Siddartha leaves the big city to take a modest job of a salesman in a far off small town He writes to Keya that he still cherishes their relationship And that he has heard that bird call again but this time it is for real, and not his mind After completing the letter, he comes out to the balcony of his modest room The bird calls again He also hears the sombre chants of a funeral procession As he turns to the camera, the picture is frozen br 　　This is the first film of the Calcutta Trilogy The other two were and Seemabaddha Company Limited, 一九七一 and Jana Aranya The Middle Man, 一九七五 All the three films study the effect the big city of Calcutta has on the educated youth and the price it extracts from them br 　　The seventies were a difficult period for India and West Bengal The Corruption was rampant the Naxalite movement had created havoc in Calcutta In fact, they had turned parts of Calcutta into 三九 liberated zones 三九 By the time the Naxalite movement died down, in 一九七五, Mrs Indira Gandhi then, Prime Minister of India suppressed the fundamental rights and declared quot Emergency quot for her own political survival Her son, Sanjay Gandhi became a dictator of sorts without any official designation The opposition leaders were thrown into prisons br 　　About his social responsibilities as a filmmaker, in an interview with Cineaste magazine, Ray commented, quot You can see my attitude in The Adversary where you have two brothers The younger brother is a Naxalite There is no doubt that the elder brother admires the younger brother for his bravery and convictions The film is not ambiguous about that As a filmmaker, however, I was more interested in the elder brother because he is the vacillating character As a psychological entity, as a human being with doubts, he is a more interesting character to me The younger brother has already identified himself with a cause That makes him part of a total attitude and makes him unimportant The Naxalite movement takes over He, as a person, becomes insignificant quot br 　　In a letter to Seton in 一九七0, Ray wrote that Pratidwandi was the most provocative film he had made till then The film is said to have evoked extreme reactions quot People either loved the film or hated it quot , Dhritiman Chatterjee told Andrew Robinson, Ray 三九 s biographer p