Is writing an art or a business? This question lies at the heart of Anant Mahadevan’s film The Storyteller, a masterful adaptation of Satyajit Ray’s short story Golpo Boliye Tarini Khuro, streaming on Disney+ Hotstar.

Starring Paresh Rawal as a Bengali man who loves to tell stories and Adil Hussain as a businessman who tries to profit from it, The Storyteller delves into the clash between originality and plagiarism that is more rife now than when Ray wrote this story.

At the centre of The Storyteller is Tarini Bandyopadhyay (Paresh Rawal), an eccentric socialist who has worked at 75 jobs, hopping from one workplace to another every six months. He is the quintessential Bengali of the 1990s Kolkata, one who rants about capitalism, bargains hard with the fish seller and tucks in a phuchka or two.

Tarini Khuro’s favourite pastime is telling stories to whoever will lend him an ear but he is too scared of people’s judgement to pen them down. After he retires from work, Tarini comes across a strange job listing by Ratan Garodia (Adil Hussain), a wealthy businessman from Ahmedabad, looking for a storyteller who can lull him to sleep by narrating original bedtime stories, as he suffers from insomnia.

When Garodia publishes Tarini’s stories as his own in a local newspaper to impress his former love interest Saraswati (Revathy), Tarini realises that the true power of a storyteller lies in claiming ownership of his tales and not just in narrating them. Confronting his fears, Tarini picks up the pen that his late wife (played by Anindita Bose) had gifted him.

But even in dark times, Tarirni’s wit never leaves him. ‘He makes cotton, I spin the yarn,’ Tarini quips when he meets Saraswati for the first time, hinting at the difference between original creation and imitation. While Tarini is a reminder of the importance of preserving one’s original work, Garodia’s actions highlight the dark side of artistic exploitation.

Rawal strikes a fine balance between humour, melancholy and strength as a 60-something middle class man stunned by this deception. And Rawal’s Bengali accent is on point.

The Storyteller offers a cinematic tribute to Ray through its focus on simple yet poignant interactions — such as the quiet moments between Tarini and the enigmatic Suzie Fibert (Tannishtha Chatterjee) at a library in Ahmedabad — reflecting the depth in our mundane lives. With linear storytelling, The Storyteller also includes animated visuals for Tarini’s imagination while he narrates his stories.