Agnisnaan

The story is set in a small town in the late 1930s. Mohikanta, a vain and domineering man, has grown rich from a rice mill set up with the help of a British Deputy Commissioner. His wife Menoka is cultured, patient and devoted, and her tolerance has held the family together through years of his drinking and arrogance.

One day Mohikanta rides out on an elephant at the head of a wedding procession and brings home a poor young girl, Kiran, as his second wife. The household watches in shock. Menoka stays composed, moves her four children into one room and accepts Kiran with a stoic kindness.

When Mohikanta later returns to her door, Menoka tells him that she has accepted everything he brought into the house, but he must never touch her again. His anger and cruelty grow. Her eldest son Indra, bewildered and sullen, drifts toward the household's rebels, Mohikanta's brother Bhadrakanta and the thief Madan, searching for some way to ease his mother's humiliation and to take revenge on his father. The film becomes a study of a woman who is wounded, outwardly obedient, and quietly determined to settle accounts.

Saikia wrote the screenplay and directed the film, and was also credited as producer. The material comes from his novel Antareep, a book known for its close attention to psychological detail. The cast brought together Moloya Goswami, Biju Phukan, Indra Bania, Kashmiri Saikia Baruah, Chetana Das, Ashok Deka, Arjun Guha Thakuria and Arun Nath.

The film won the National Award for Best Screenplay for Saikia and the Rajat Kamal for best regional film, both in 1985. It was selected for the Indian Panorama and invited to international festivals in Nantes, Pyongyang and Dhaka, and to the Silver Jubilee Festival of Independence in Algeria.

Agnisnaan stands among the key works of the parallel-cinema movement in Assam, and a landmark for a director who was equally celebrated as a novelist.