This perceptive essay on Satyajit Ray, India's most well-know film-maker internationally, analysis the auteur's oeuvre, focusing on his early cinema which broke the rules of film-making prevalent in the country at the time. At the same time, it also focuses on how Ray took on a moral stand on issues and how that might have limited his growth as an artist. In the process it reveals the director in a light not addressed by any other film critic before.