Indian cinema is renowned for its diverse, multi-ethnic filmmaking that tells powerful stories, from large-scale extravaganzas to socially conscious art films. One such movie is Manthan which means churning.  The 134-minute 1976 film was a transposed narrative of the origins of a dairy cooperative movement that transformed India from a milk-deficient nation to the world’s leading milk producer. The story drew inspiration from Verghese Kurien who is known as the “Milkman of India” for revolutionising milk production in the country. Amul is born out the revolution.

The greatest fact about this movie is that the movie Manthan was crowdfunded by farmers. Each of the 500,000 farmers contributed ₹2 from the sale of their milk, becoming both the film’s financiers and producers of their own story.  This unique funding model was conceived by Verghese Kurien, to support the creation of a film about the cooperative movement that he championed. Crowdfunding is the use of small amounts of capital from many individuals to finance a project.

Manthan boasted an excellent star cast, featuring Girish Karnad, Smita Patil, Naseeruddin Shah, Amrish Puri, Kulbhushan Kharbanda and Mohan Agashe in key roles. Vijay Tendulkar, a prominent Indian scriptwriter, contributed multiple scripts. Director Shyam Benegal was a leading Indian director of nonmainstream Hindi cinema and one of its most prolific filmmakers, he selected one of the scripts given by Vijay Tendulkar for the film. Renowned music composer Vanraj Bhatia best known for his work in Indian New Wave cinema and was also one of the leading composers of Western classical music in India.  

In the film, a city-bred government veterinary doctor and his team arrive in a deeply divided village in Gujarat with plans to start a dairy cooperative. As he starts his work, the vet is caught in the violent politics of change and faces challenges from a private dairy owner, the village head and a volatile local milkman. The film focuses on the caste conflicts and social injustices that arise in a rural village when a veterinarian, Dr. Rao, tries to start a milk cooperative.

Director Shyam Benegal instructed the lead actors of the movie to wear the same clothes for the 45-day duration of the shoot. The movie was made in just 45 days’ time.   He did this to achieve maximum realism for the movie, which was set in a drought-affected village in Gujarat. The film was shot on location in the village of Sanganva, which had a severe water shortage at the time. Benegal felt it was important for the actors’ appearances to reflect the villagers’ reality, who rarely had water for bathing or laundry. While actor Naseeruddin Shah took the instruction literally and did not change his clothes for the entire shoot, his co-star Smita Patil would wear the same outfit but washed it regularly. It seems director Shyam Benegal told the cast, which included Girish Karnad and Amrish Puri, “If they stank, they would stink jointly”.

What made the film a superhit? The proposal by Dr. Kurien to the farmers to accept a lower payment for their milk, with the difference going towards the film’s production.  The funding was intended to empower farmers and an effort to break economic inequality and caste discrimination through a cooperative movement. Farmers saw a hope for positive change in their lives. The film itself was distributed for free to hundreds of villages to spread the idea of milk cooperatives and inspire more farmers to start them. Manthan became a legacy and a symbol of the cooperative movement and its significant impact in transforming India into the world’s largest milk producer. Half a million farmers felt inspired because they produced their own story. The result was the unique approach resulted in the world’s first crowdfunded feature film.

The 1976 Indian classic film Manthan received a red-carpet premiere at the 77th Cannes Film Festival in May 2024, nearly 50 years after its original release. This was for a meticulously restored 4K version of the film. A 4K version of a movie offers a significantly sharper image with four times the resolution of Full HD, resulting in greater detail and clarity. The restoration was undertaken by the Film Heritage Foundation, with funding from the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd. (Amul).

The restorers recovered the negative and one of the prints. They borrowed and digitised the sound from the print and repaired the film. The scanning and digital clean-up were conducted at a Chennai lab under the supervision of a renowned Bologna-based film restoration lab, with both Benegal and his long-time cinematographer Govind Nihalani overseeing the project. The film’s sound was fixed and improved at the Bologna lab. Some 17 months later, Manthan was reborn in ultra-high definition of 4K. Benegal, one of the doyens of Indian cinema, said the film remains very close to his heart.

The movie was featured in the Cannes Classics section of the festival. At the Cannes red carpet was graced by the film’s cast and crew, including actor Naseeruddin Shah, who starred in the film. He was accompanied by his wife, Ratna Pathak Shah, as well as Prateik Babbar, the son of the late co-star Smita Patil. The screening received a five-minute standing ovation from the audience, affirming the film’s timeless relevance and impact. Naseeruddin Shah one of veteran actors of India described the experience as deeply emotional and touching, stating he never imagined a red-carpet appearance for the film decades later.

Manthan was a classy movie which created its own legacy in Indian cinema forever.

As per dictionary, definition of the word beauty is the quality present in a person or thing that gives intense aesthetic pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind or the senses. Beauty is a quality, trait, attribute of a person, animal, place (destination), object or an idea of a person that provides perceptual experience of happiness or satisfaction. Beauty is studied as part of aesthetics in sociology, social psychology and culture. An “ideal beauty” is presented in form of perfection.

The understanding of beauty often engages an interpretation of some entity as being in balance and harmony with nature, which may lead to feelings of attraction and emotional well-being. Because this can be a subjective experience, it is often said that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. There is evidence that perceptions of beauty is evolutionarily defined firmly as all those things, aspects of people and landscapes considered beautiful are classically found in situations likely to give enhanced survival of the perceiving human’s genes. We find somebody or a place, a piece of art beautiful in a frame of mind and situation. What today we find beautiful need not appear beautiful a month later.  It’s the mind’s perception and observation is a mood and disposition.

A beauty pageant is a competition that has traditionally focused on the physical beauty of its contestants. Although, such contests have evolved features such as personality, intelligence, talent, and presence of mind to answer the judges’ questions as judged criteria. These criteria are sometimes uncanny, but are based on varied contexts known to judges alone. Beauty pageants are also held for men, children, animals called by other names.  The pageants try to depict an unattainable perfect image that is illusionary most of the times.

Winners of beauty contests are remembered for some time; they grow older and are forgotten. In my opinion when comparison of beauty and brain comes to last faze we all go with character because beauty stays for a period of time but character stands till we die. In the gracious sense we follow those persons who have a character. For example world follows M.K. Gandhi, Einstein, Lokmanya Tilak or Nelson Madela not for his looks, but for their character because character is a source to identify the qualities of a person. These men were not well built, muscular or broad shouldered handsome guys. They had brains not brawns to show off. As we know “face is the index of mind”, our beauty deeply depends on our thinking, behaviour, character, etc these are the works of our brain. What the command given by our brain is done through our body. So according to me, both beauty and brain go hand in hand.

Why is the world obsessed so much with beauty? Appearances are so deceptive. But, most men and women try to look beautiful /handsome. Men and women try to copy actors and actresses. So much money is spent on camouflaging original looks; people are ready to go under knives of plastic surgeons just to change their originality. If somebody is labeled as ‘beautiful’ ‘handsome’ or ’cute’ is close to the mirror out of ‘vanity’, but out of insecurity. We forget that there are drawbacks to being attractive. As they are under much greater pressure to maintain their appearance. Also, studies show that attractive people don’t benefit from the ‘bias for beauty’ in terms of self-esteem. They often don’t trust praise of their work or talents, believing positive evaluations to be influenced by their appearance.

Beauty and brain insolently go hand in hand in the sense that all intelligent people seem beautiful once we get to know them closely. And that is pleasant experience. One should be beautiful by brain i.e., beauty by thoughts not by physical beauty. I wish to quote here example of APJ Abdul Kalam. He is not handsome literally; but when you hear him, he is the most handsome man! Mother Teresa became the most beautiful woman because of her compassionate qualities.

“Looking for a slim, homely and fair girl for our son” – that is usually how most matrimonial ads read, the stress being on the word “fair” and “slim”. Many say it is proof of our obsession with a person’s skin colour. The cosmetic industry is growing in leaps and bounds because of our obsession with looks, colour and shape.

So with or without beauty success can be achieved or not is not an issue. If a person has talent then he can achieve his goals.

I think the Indian cinema – Bollywood grew with some intelligent actresses like Smita Patil, Shabana Azmi and Dipti Naval. Also some offbeat actors not very handsome in appeal but very intelligent guys like Nasiruddin Shah, Sanjiv Kumar and Faroqu Shaikh. They portrayed very complex characters on screen and off screen too they are/were intelligent, well read and gifted people. These and many other simple looking men and women have given some most astonishing masterpieces to the cinema world.

I am amazed with Smita Patil’s looks. Her half smile, her sense of wanting to belong, her wariness and her lack of pretence made her the most beautiful woman. The actor zapped thousands of her admirers even today with the awesome shades in her portrayals as Uma in Bhumika or Sulabha in Umbartha, her poignancy in Bazaar and the turbulence of Sonbai in Mirch Masala. Smita looks the gorgeous, sexy adivasi woman in Jait Re Jait.  In her movies, she beautifully blended her sensitive outer frailty with an inner strength to create an experience that would always be unforgettable for movie-goers. Her dusky complexion had many admirers as the country was beginning to break the stereotypical notions of beauty, and Smita Patil was the perfect example of an Indian beauty.

Can beauty be defined by age, gender, color, body shape or size? Who gets to decide? Multibillion-dollar beauty and fashion industries both shape and depend on the cult-like worship of what physical attributes the public sees as beautiful. And most men and women feel the effects of those decisions.

It is much easier and safer to be your original self. It does not cost, it does not hurt. All those humans are beautiful with the ability to laugh; there are so many funny things happening around. Life is funny and entertaining. Beautiful people are imaginative. Our human awareness, which also gives us the capacity for abstract thought, is our greatest gift, and yet so few of us ever fully use this trait. Beautiful people are spiritual; a belief and faith in something bigger than our existence is significant to living. Beautiful people are rebellious – ready to experiment with new thoughts and new approaches.

Human beings are able to perceive beauty in the way that one may perceive the perfection of the universe. If you consider perfection of universe, we are beautiful because we are a part of it, though we are also capable of creating and experiencing beauty in millions of different forms. Beautiful people don’t really fit in cultural norms; they are different and they are unique.

We cannot limit our lives. The world is an amazing yet unusually a creepy place. This world is flawed to a great extent. No institution can be trusted. Anything is possible, we all can be happy and fulfilled if we have the guts to be truly free and have the wisdom to shrink our egos and quit taking ourselves so damn seriously.