More importantly, they also see nothing which comes out of Bollywood. When it’s a point of pride that you do not watch any Hindi movies, how do you know what’s good, what’s not, and what’s more, what’s hot?

For all those who love dissing Bollywood, as well as for those who love Bollywood, here’s the good news: this is the year of new, edgy voices in Hindi cinema. The tightly-closed circuits of formulae and fortunes are being invaded by young filmmakers determined to break the mould. And their films, regardless of box office performance, are demanding that they be held up as standard-bearers for the new age Hindi indie cinema, whose parameters are very different from the parallelism that the 1970s was rife with: these filmmakers in 2007 are happy to tell their stories, with realism as their touchstone, within the mainstream framework, with, if they can get them, mainstream stars.

This has been the year of Parzania, Rahul Dholakia’s searing tale of the victims of Godhra, Black Friday, Anurag Kashyap’s marvellous re-creation of the 1993 Mumbai blasts, Bheja Fry, Sagar Bellary’s quirky take on the wisdom of idiots, Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd, Reema Kagti’s delightful rom com, featuring marriage and true love. And a few others, equally striking.

When was the last time a Hindi movie hero missed the last local home, and fell into a night of darkly comic adventures? First-timer Sanjay Khanduri gets one of Bollywood’s rise-and-shining actors Abhay Deol to play the everyman hero with just the right mix of bragadaccio and vulnerability, who is blissfully unaware that his cheerful companion is a whore, and tries to handle goons with the only weapon he has: running as fast as he can, in the opposite direction.

... contd.