City of Joy. Ennio Morricone

Hazari Pal (Om Puri) lives in a small village in Bihar, India, with all his family. As the Pal are unable to repay the loan they had taken years ago from a moneylender, their land and property are auctioned, and they are rendered homeless. Hazari and his family re-locate to Calcutta with hopes of starting life anew, save some money and go back to Bihar. But things do not go as planned, as they lose their entire savings to a con-man, Gangooly (Shyamal Sengupta), who took their money as rent by pretending to be a landlord. Then Hazari gets to meet a American, Dr. Max Lowe (Patrick Swayze), and together they strike up a friendship along with a local social worker, Joan Bethel (Pauline Collins).

It is a score that contains several lovely recurring themes, which are presented amid a whole host of traditional instrumental textures from the Indian subcontinent, including such familiar sounds as a sitar, tabla drums, a tambura, and a bansuri flute, along with a standard symphony orchestra and vocalists. It was recorded in both Italy and London and opens with the superb title theme, an upbeat and rousing piece for orchestra and a staccato, barking chorus with a buoyant recurring melody backed by the unusual-sounding piccolo trumpet. This theme mostly represents Swayze’s character Max Lowe, and his genuinely good-hearted and altruistic nature, caring for the poor of Calcutta.