Rag-Birag

The film follows a middle-class urban family of the 1990s, in which each member has a different idea of liberation, release and happiness. The search for happiness, and the confusion it causes, is shown symbolically through a monk and a young woman.

Bhargav, a family member, left home fifteen years earlier to become a devotional monk. Worry returns to the household when his nephew Surajit prepares to renounce the world too. Bhargav has three nephews: Surajit; Arnab, who has already left to join a revolutionary organisation; and Montu, who works in the restaurant business. A woman named Pari plays a prominent part. She was once close to Arnab, but that ended when he went off to the rebels. Later she befriended Surajit, who began to withdraw from her as he turned toward renunciation.

When everyone, including the grandmother, fails to talk Surajit out of leaving, the grandmother asks for Bhargav to be brought home. Pari fetches him from his ashram. While trying to persuade Surajit, Bhargav realises that he has never known a woman's love, and finds himself drawn to Pari. He tells her so, but she cannot accept it.

Bhargav is filled with remorse, feeling that his long spiritual practice has been undone. He returns to the ashram determined to begin his discipline anew. Surajit also leaves home to take up the monastic life with his guru, while Pari begins a new journey with Montu, who seeks life's happiness through work.

The film was produced by Bhabendra Nath Saikia and Khanin Barua (credited in the source as Bhaben Barua and Khanin Barua) and directed by Bidyut Chakrabarty. Sher Choudhury composed the music, though the film contains no songs. The lead cast included Gyanada Kakati, Pranjal Saikia, Sagar Sangam Sarkar and Chimi. Mrinal Kanti Das was the cinematographer and A. Sreekar Prasad the editor.

At the national film awards held in 1997, Rag-Birag won the Indira Gandhi Award for best first film of a director. The award came with a Swarna Kamal and a cash prize of 25,000 rupees for the producer, and a Swarna Kamal with an equal sum for the director.

A. Sreekar Prasad won the national award for best editing for the film, and Mrinal Kanti Das won the national award for best cinematography for his work on Rag-Birag and Adajya. The film was the opening film of the Indian Panorama in 1997 and was also screened at the Cairo film festival in Egypt.

In Bidyut Chakrabarty's filmography, Rag-Birag was followed by Nisiddha Nodi (2000) and Gun Gun Gane Gane (2002).