FLASHBACK: K A Abbas

Prithwish

Khwaja Ahmad Abbas is best known for being an adventurist. He not only worked with diverse topics and themes but also delved deep into India's socio-political and the economic sturucture. He was a man who boldly and sometimes subtly portrayed the issues pertaining to the society.

His first film Dharti Ke Lal (about the deadly famine) -- a critics delight -- was a breakthrough film which narrated the insensitivity as well as greed of the British as well as the hoarder who created a man-made famine which wiped out 3 and a half million lives.

He never backtracked from showing the greed and malice which existed in the society and his films reverberated the underlying discontent of the masses against opportunism.

Some of his brilliant works are:

Rahi -- a film about the lives of Indian tea pickers who are lured to malaria-infected tea estates of Assam

Munna -- a film about a child's search for mother where he highlights the adult world as seen through the eyes of the child

Shehar Aur Sapna -- a film which shows how a rural rustic man, dazzled with the glitter of the Mumbai metropolis comes to the city in search of fortune and his disillusionment thereafter

Do Boond -- a film in which he takes us to the drought-striken Rajasthan and narrates the beautiful dream of a man who wanted to construct a canal to bring water to the barren lands

We salute this master filmmaker of a bygone era through our blog.