Inspired by an incident in the director's past, this passage along India's goddess river is far more than a poetic travelogue. The first film to shoot at the source of the Ganges, Vijay Singh's adaptation of his own novel chronicles the soul-searching odyssey of an exiled writer (Rais) from the Parisian tomb of the author Andre Breton to the sacred city of Benares, where his fate is decided.
Faint echoes of Vertigo can be heard behind Vanraj Bhatia's haunting score, as Sanjay invests his fantasies about a lost lover onto Jaya (Mishra), a courtesan who escapes her brothel to join him on his journey. But, this accomplished debut and elegiac treatise on the illusory nature of freedom and spiritual and emotional rebirth is as much concerned with Hindu myth and magic realism as with star-crossed passion.