Cast: Naseeruddin Shah, Vijay Raaz, Arjun Mathur, Tanishtha Chatterjee, Violante Placido

Director: Raja Menon

`Khaya na peeya, gilas toda barah anna’. A food-stall owner flings this old saying at a poor man who’s sitting on a bench, oblivious of the taunts coming from a car full of rich louts. So enraged does he get when the goading doesn’t stop, that he fells one of his tormentors with a crack on the head.

That blow is one for the side of the dispossessed as shown in Raja Menon’s new film. Naseer has been declared dead by his brother back in his village, in order to grab his share of the land. He is a `driver’, who lives with the jibes of the society memsahib who treats him worse than a dog. Vijay is a `watchman’, constantly at the mercy of heartless flat-owners who refuse to give him a loan he needs desperately for the treatment of his son. And Arjun Mathur is a `waiter’, who thinks that the `firangi’ girl ( Violante) who comes to his coffee shop, and is friendly with him, is his salvation.

The trio strike upon a plan, which they hope will change their lives, and bring them out of the chawl they live in, and the grinding poverty that drowns them every waking moment. Menon’s centering of fringe characters is a welcome thing, and some of the acting, especially by Naseer and Arjun, fits in. Vijay Raaz exaggerates, though, and in places the execution gets contrived.