India, July 11 -- In the Bengali film Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest, 1970), directed by Satyajit Ray, four young men from Calcutta drive down to Palamau (then in Bihar, now Jharkhand) for an impromptu holiday. Adapted from Sunil Gangopadhyay's novel with the same title, the film opens with one of the characters, Sanjoy (Subhendu Chatterjee), reading from a 19th-century Bengali travelogue, Palamou, by Sanjib Chandra Chatterjee, the brother of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, author of India's national song Vande Mataram. "Bengalis are accustomed to seeing plains, so the slightest suggestion of hillocks fills them with alacrity," reads Sanjoy as the landscape outside the car windows changes.

Described by American filmmaker Wes...