This is not just a post-globalisation scenario but a post-liberalisation one. By shifting the setting of his film from Calcutta, India’s cultural capital, to wealthy Punjab, Kashyap makes an unequivocal comment on the overwhelming dominance of money in our time. In Delhi’s underbelly everything is available for a price; what unites people from various corners of the world is a common search for sensation. Dev, in his T-shirt, jeans and sling bag — the uniform today across the world worn by student and terrorist alike — is, with his hip flask, a natural inhabitant of this dystopic universe, as is Lene, the part-Indian prostitute selling sex in many languages and disguises. The two are meant to find each other. Dev is no angst-ridden fop drinking away the burden of the ages but an ordinary spoilt kid with the potential for luck and redemption. This is an India ordinary, brutal and pragmatic. On the other hand, to know that our boy can grow up — there is some comfort in that.  

Shah is a Mumbai-based writer

express@expressindia.com