The frenetic pace accelerates leaping from crescendo to crescendo till Shah performs an unexpected act. So far it has been quietly suggested that he belongs to some unnamed terror cell. While one of the cops keeps hold of a terrorist, Shah blows up the other three. The movie changes direction at this moment.

The portrait of the terrorists is pop sociology and page three narratives. It argues that terrorism has two sources: the violence of the streets and the alienation of the professional, both finding their Mecca in the propaganda from Pakistan. The portrait is too quick, too facile, too obvious about this transformation of the proletarian from the city and the professional techie, both desperate to teach the majority a lesson.

In the final moments, one realises that Shah is no disgruntled terrorist. He is a stranger species, the unhappy common man tired of his own passivity and tireder still of the inefficiency of those in power. The common man is tired of not being able to go to work and come back home without his wife thinking it might be his last act. Terror the rituals of everydayness that sustain the city. Terror, by creating suspicions around some forms of identity like dress, denies access to one’s own being. A Muslim can’t breathe as a Muslim because neighbouring eyes see only a terrorist. Terrorism creates an alienation which never leaves you alone.

Shah is the common man tired of the tiredness of a terror-stricken city. He has taken power into his own hands. The hacker tracks him down and then attempts to hide his location. The commissioner guesses this and goes out to meet the man as he plans his exit from the empty building. Shah runs back to pick the large bag of vegetables, the shopping, he promised his wife. The protagonists cross. As Shah stands in his bush shirt you suddenly expect him to blossom into Laxman’s “common man”. They shake hands and move on. The Commissioner realises who his opponent is but lets him disappear namelessly, like terror, into the anonymity and everydayness of the city. The audience sits sipping the Commissioner’s approval, not quite sure whether they or Modi have grasped the message of Wednesday, realising it has the rest of the week to work it out.

... contd.