Do Bigha Zamin (1953)

Realist drama about a small landowner, Shambhu (Sahni) which opens with a song celebrating the rains that put an end to two seasons of drought, Hariyala sawan dhol bajata aaya. Shambhu and his son Kanhaiya (R Kumar) have to go and work in Calcutta to repay their debt to the merciless local zamindar (Sapru) in order to retain their ancestral two acres of land. The sentimentally portrayed peasants bid farewell to the departing Shambhu and his son with the song Bhai re, ganga aur jamuna ki dharti kahe pukar ke. In Calcutta, Shambhu becomes a rickshaw-puller, facing numerous hardships that lead to his near-fatal accident, the death of his wife (N. Roy) who joins him in the city and, inevitably, the loss of his land to speculators who build a factory on it.