As the holy month of Ramzan coalesces with the festival of Holi, a small unknown film comes along to remind us that there is nothing really to choose between ‘Rahman’ and ‘Hanuman,’ that they are in fact two sides of the coin.
Of course, getting there is far more difficult than just pontificating on the oneness of mankind. Director Avinash Das, whose spunky fearless Anarkali Of Arrah was the surprise of its year, springs a charming heartwarming surprise again. This time, he rinses his rumination in mellow molecules of harmony.
This is a small film with long legs. Pithy and pungent, it takes us into two adjacent lanes in Lucknow where Hindus and Muslims coexist… until a politician, Ajay Tiwari (Sushant Singh, brilliantly wily), descends with his vote-bank politics.
What ensues is heartily amusing and profoundly grievous. Nothing that Das and his writer Punarvasu tell us here is startling or revealing. We all know how communal amity is tampered with by politicians. We all know that the average Hindu/Muslim has nothing against one another.
But—and here is where the film gets its mojo—why do we allow ourselves to be influenced by the politics of malice? Why is social media seen as an instrument of instigation? The route taken by Avinash Das is not an easy one. The narrative of harmony is not very fashionable these days. In showing a cluster of people from the two communities trying to live in harmony, the film takes the unpopular view and emerges trumps.
The film has a wispy glow in its eco-system. It whistles its way through complex communal questions, not out of naivete, but the opposite: sometimes it just seems correct to let positivity prevail. This is one of those occasions. Buoyed by a mood of optimism, Inn Galiyon Mein gives us no choice but to bask in its charm and warmth.
The characters on both “sides” are played by actors who know their jobs without letting us know that they know. In his first major sensible role in ages, Javed Jaffrey plays a tea seller and a kabab maker(the kabab plays a crucial part in the drama). Jaffrey sprouts poetic wisdom as though born for it. The rest of the cast, especially Ishtiyak Khan (playing a mentally disturbed sutradhaar) and Sushant Singh (as a disruptive politician), are first-rate.
Vivaan Shah and Avantika Dassani play the young lovers oblivious of the toxicity being spread around them. They blend into the blizzard of anxiety without bending too far back for effectiveness. This is the Romeo and Juliet of downtown Lucknow, determined to look at love beyond religion. Immersed in the sounds of harmony, Inn Galiyon Mein has some lovely folksy songs to pamper its core message: we don’t need an “us” and “them” narrative. Not if cinema can have its sway.
“After Sunil Dutt-Nargis, Shah Rukh-Gauri, it is going to be Hariya-Shabbo,” prophesies one vegetable seller to another. Touche!
