A woman, asleep on a train, wakes up suddenly to find she is the lone passenger. Terrified, she tries to pull the chain but it is broken. The train pulls into a station. She gets off, but it is eerily deserted. As the train leaves, it is suddenly full of people, leaning out, waving, laughing. Desperately, she chases after the train. Abruptly, she wakes up. It was a nightmare.

This is how the film Rajnigandha (Tuberoses) begins: inside the mind of its protagonist Deepa, played by one of Hindi cinema's most unusual heroines, Vidya Sinha, who died last week.