Roja, a story of love and terrorism set in the Kashmir valley, was a winner from the word go.

From the opening sequence set in a misty forest in Kashmir that segues into a song featuring innumerable quick cuts in a Tamil village, Roja promises pan-Indianism, and delivers it in spades.

Carefree village belle Roja (played by Madhu) is married to city-bred Rishi ( Arvind Swami), and by the time she has accepted his love, her life is thrown astray when Rishi is kidnapped by terrorists in Kashmir.

With no knowledge of Hindi or of politics, Roja stays on in Kashmir, pleading with the army and the government to negotiate terms for her husband's release, while Rishi has to come to terms with his kidnappers, the soft-spoken, educated Liaqat (Pankaj Kapur).

All of this is told with a bare minimum of melodrama, dollops of patriotism, and a storytelling ability that touched moviegoers all over India. Roja was dubbed into Hindi almost simultaneously, and became a national superhit, bridging the North-South divide that haunted Indian filmmaking until then.