One of the pivotal figures to emerge from the Indian parallel cinema of the 1970s, Girish Kasaravalli might well have ended up in a career in pharmacology. While training in Hyderabad, he came across an advertisement by the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) and applied. His stint at FTII provided an inkling of the success he would see. He graduated with a gold medal, and his student film Avashesh was awarded the National Film Award for the best short fiction film. And in 1977