PHOTO ESSAY: The Women of Junoon

Sanjana Kapoor has recently announced her departure from Prithvi Theatre, and the setting up of Junoon, an organisation that will take plays from around the country to smaller towns. Here is a look at a film in which she made her first appearance—Shyam Benegal's cult classic from 1978, the similarly named Junoon, in which a host of women had strong performing parts. This continues our restrospective on The Women of Benegal. Junoon, based on Ruskin Bond's novella, A Flight of Pigeons, and is amongst the few films that dealt with the 1857 mutiny, a list which includes Satyajit Ray's Shatranj Ke Khiladi and Ketan's Mehta's Mangal Pandey—The Rising.

 

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These images are screengrabs from the official release DVD. No copyright infringement intended.

We also feature a never-before edit of the Vanraj Bhatia song from the film—Saawan ki Aayi Bahar—in the voices of Asha Bhosle and her daughter, Varsha. This is actually a bidaai song by Yogesh Praveen, but it hasn't really been used in that context in this film. The song follows the arc of Deepti Naval's (in what is only Naval's second film) character in the film.