Rangan is a proud, well-read young graduate who has moved to Delhi, where he shares a cramped room with other jobless friends and lives on pride, poetry and very little food. He refuses to compromise his principles, quoting the poet Bharathiyar as he scrapes by, and falls in love with Devi, a young woman struggling in her own way. The film is a sharp look at the unemployment and frustration of educated youth in 1970s India, and one of K. Balachander's most admired films. The title means "the colour of poverty is red". Kamal Haasan's performance is one of his most celebrated early roles, and it was among his notable pairings with Sridevi. M. S. Viswanathan's songs include "Sippi Irukkuthu". Balachander also made it in Telugu as Akali Rajyam and remade it in Hindi as Zara Si Zindagi (1983), again with Kamal Haasan.
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