Saraswatichandra

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Saraswatichandra is a black-and-white 1968 Hindi film directed by Govind Saraiya and starring Nutan and Manish. The music is by Kalyanji-Anandji, who won a National Film Award for the "originality of the score".

The film was based on Saraswatichandra, a landmark Gujarati novel, written by Govardhanram Madhavram Tripathi, a famous author of early twentieth century Gujarat, India. The novel, written in five parts, narrates the lifestyle and ideology of people in the early 20th century. It depicts the social fabric of that time: extended family life and the beginning of the meltdown of old customs and traditions. It starts with a romantic courtship between Saraswatichandra and Kumud, followed by a complex plot where Kumud ends up a Sadhwi (a minister or a preacher) and spends a life of celibacy. A peculiar feature of the novel is that names of all characters in the novel, over thirty of them, represent their personality. For example the hero, Saraswatichandra, is a very learned man, an author and a poet, and Saraswati is the goddess of literacy, while the leading lady is Kumud, which means beautiful like a water lily.