Chandni Chowk to Chaos

When Binod Pradhan's camera zooms in on the topography of Dilli and takes you through the twists and turns in the narrow gallis of Chandni Chowk (masterfully recreated in Rajasthan, thanks to Samir Chand's award worthy set design), you almost end up feeling the aroma of hot jalebis and samosas titillating your taste buds!

The feeling gets even more accentuated as Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra introduces us to his characters one after the other- the ever graceful Waheeda Rehman playing the dadi- ma; the simpleton Gobar played skilfully by Atul Kulkarni; the jalebi wala Mamdu immortalized by Deepak Dobriyal; the friendly Ali chacha with his betel box (Rishi Kapoor on his way to become the most revered character actors of this decade!); the innocent, loud and naive Vimala chachi (Supriya Pathak on the silver screen after a long hiatus); the fiery, low caste scavenger Jalebi (Divya Dutta improving with each film); the corrupt Inspector (Vijay Raaz, his best outing since Monsoon Wedding and Raghu Romeo); the brothers at war who never leave a chance to take a dig at each other (veteran Om Puri and the hugely talented Pavan Malhotra), the flirtatious photographer (Cyrus Sahukar, confident!) and the quiet and self conscious Rama Bua (debutante Aditi Rao Hyder, quite a stunner!)

One does empathise with Abhishek Bachchan's NY returned Roshan (his US accent is jarring!) when he lands right in the middle of this ensemble of characters and takes his time along with the audience to understand and react to each and every one of them. Roshan goes through a range of emotions- bewilderment at how the Dilli traffic stops when a cow is giving birth right in the middle of the road, surprise when the fiery Bittoo (Sonam Kapoor) announces that she will have to sacrifice her ambition and say yes to the groom her father finds for her, confusion when people around him isolate Jalebi because she is from a lower caste and compassion when Mamdu's mithai shop is destroyed as part of the communal riot in his neighbourhood.

All of these sequences drive home the point- quite well, thanks to A R Rahman's scintillating score to Prasoon Joshi's profound poetry. However, Mehra's narrative moves southward during the second half when the Kala Bandar issue becomes a Hindu- Muslim issue causing tensions in the otherwise friendly neighbourhood. From then on, the movie gets preachy to the extent of being boring and you fail to empathise with Roshan when he gets into trouble for no apparent reason! The less said for Roshan's pleasure trip to heaven and his tete- a- tete with his Dadaji (Amitabh Bachchan in an absolutely unnecessary cameo), the better! By the time the end credits roll, you feel you have had enough of it which is sad considering how well Mehra began his ode to his favorite city!!!