Inn Galiyon Mein

It is easy to forget the what we have lost because of Hindi cinema’s tilt towards the right. Initially a mouthpiece for secular values in a post-Partition India, the film industry soon became an emblem for the Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb (culture). It was the place where a Muslim man would become a newly-independent India’s first superstar, where dialogues in Urdu, Khariboli and Hindi would invent a new concoction of Hindustani, which would trickle down into everyday parlance. It’s only in the movies where the three biggest stars of their time would get separated at birth into homes of different religions, only to reunite and take down the villain in the climax. Sure, some part of it was an echo of popular sentiment, and carried a whiff of opportunism. But the tragedy of our new-age Hindi cinema is how it’s eviscerated even performative niceness in favour of unbridled, authentic hate.

Sometimes, the timing of a film’s release makes it special. A few years back, Inn Galiyon Main would have been dubbed dated for repeating the obvious. Today, its theme is here and now. Mostly, social values inform a film, but sometimes, a social churn leads to a creative outpouring. At a time when festivals and cricket matches have become a stick to browbeat a community, Inn Galiyon Main celebrates Holi and Eid at a space where Hanuman and Rahman Gali coalesce in Lucknow. An ode to the syncretic culture that has almost been reduced to a slur in hate-filled narratives on social media, the film exposes the divisive politics fuelled by cheap data with a poetic parable.