Narayan Gangaram Surve, who passed away in 2010, was one of India's leading poets. He was a foundling, raised by a mill-worker until the age of ten and then left to fend for himself. Working as a waiter, helper in textiles mills, a peon in a Municipal school, he finally retired as a primary school teacher. A Marxist by conviction, he forged a new idiom of the spoken word in Marathi poetry. His poems mix dialects of Marathi, Hindi, Urdu, and English to catch the pulse of the life of the underprivileged. The film shows Kishor Kadam, playing Narayan Surve, but meeting the real poet through his journey. The poems are 'interpreted', without words, through non-linear montage of visuals and sound effects.
Arun Khopkar obtained his Diploma in Film Direction from FTII in 1974. He has directed two feature and several non-feature films. His films on arts and artists have won over fifteen national and international awards. He was awarded the Golden Lotus, the highest National Award three times for his short films. His book on the film director Guru Dutt won the National Award for the best book on cinema. He is a film scholar and has contributed papers on film aesthetics to international journals. He is an internationally recognised authority on Eisenstein. He has taught film theory and practice at various institutions like Moscow School for Advanced Cinematography, Jawaharlal Nehru University, FTII, National School of Drama, etc. He was a Homi Bhabha Fellow. He is widely travelled and knows French, German, Russian, Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, English, Italian and Japanese.