the remarks made by Abbas himself on the issue of the relation between a work of fiction and the film based on it. In the introduction to his novel Bobby, which was made into a film with the same title, Abbas writes:

Since the cinema is a director’s medium, it is his creative vision and his decision that must be supreme and final. I venture to hope that in the original literary form it may interest some readers, not as the story of the film but as the story on which the film was based. The intelligent readers may also get an insight into the creative process by which a competent film-maker transforms a story into a film, translates the author’s word pictures into cinematic images, how and whereand why deviations are made, for instance, to accommodate songs and dances.(6)

Abbas began his career in cinema as a story writer. In the film reviews “the inconsequential and shoddy film stories” were the main targets of his attack. One of the producers challenged him by saying that it was easy to criticize but not so to write a good story for a film. He took up the challenge and wrote a story called Naya Sansaar which he sold to the producer S. Mukerjee of Bombay Talkies in 1940.It won the Bengal Film Journalist’s award for the best story and screenplay, celebrated several silver jubilees and started a cycle of films with the word “ Naya”or “Nayi” in their titles. The film Naya Sansaar was based on the struggle