GUIDE

 This essay i am citing from Philip Lutgendorf. GUIDE is considered as one of the best Hindi film of all times and it's my personal favorite too. Citing this essay, i am also providing the preview to my favorite webpage on Indian cinema.

                        GUIDE (1965), Hindi, color, 170 minutes.
                                    Directed by Vijay Anand. Music by S. D. Burman.
The Anand brothers ambitious adaptation of R. K. Narayan's novel is a lush allegory comprising paradoxically-paired themes of, on the one hand, nation-building, modernization, and social reform, and, on the other, world-renunciation and spiritual self-realization -- all enduring preoccupations of contemporary Indian culture. 

Dev Anand stars as the effervescent Raju, a fast-talking, self-promoting tourist guide in the Rajasthani city of Udaipur, who in time becomes the successful promoter of his dancing-girl mistress, and ultimately (through his accidental transformation into a "mahatma" worshiped by illiterate villagers) of himself -- or rather (in deference to the filmmakers' neo-Vedantic ideology) of the unitary, absolute Self.