It is a good augury indeed that 2006 has begun exactly the way the previous year had done. The heartening success of Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s Rang De Basanti, as inimitable a film in the Bollywood context as Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Black was, has proved yet again that it is possible for meaningful cinema to flourish in a climate that is still predominantly lowbrow.

Even as Rang De Basanti draws the crowds to the multiplexes, films like the mothballed Mere Jeevan Saathi and the derivative Aksar find themselves floundering at the box office. If that doesn’t reflect the mood of the audience, what does?

It is this very audience that last year rejected a vulgarity-laced monstrosity like Neal N’ Nikki even as it wholeheartedly embraced films like Page 3, Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi and Iqbal. Give the people a film that is relevant to the times without being a slave to lowest common denominator tastes - Rang De Basanti is just that – and they will vote for it with their feet.

The biggest achievement of Rang De Basanti is that takes the 'Gen X' film genre away from its vacuous moorings and gives it the much-needed sheen of relevance and respectability. Mehra’s quirky drama – it seamlessly blends the spirit of the freedom struggle with the fire that is sparked off in the hearts of a bunch of contemporary youngsters by a single event – captures the frustrations of a generation that seems to have lost its way in the face of the absence of constructive political and social leadership. The chord that it has struck with audiences across the country is attributable to the significance of its message.

The last really meaningful youth angst flick was Farhan Akhtar’s Dil Chahta Hai, but then that eminently watchable 2001 film confined itself to a particular urban milieu, thereby losing out on the opportunity to make a universal impact. Rang De Basanti, with its sweep and wide perspective, does not make that mistake. It articulates the anger of today’s youth not though a mere personal motive-inspired act of violence as a means to correcting a wrong, but through an eruption of authentic collective emotions as if from the depths of long dormant volcano.

The resonance of the vengeance that the “freedom fighters” – the four male protagonists of Rang De Basanti are each likened to one revolutionary – wreak on an irresponsible and insensitive defence minister after a pilot dies in a MiG-21 crash goes beyond the conventional confines of the way that the narrative device is usually used in a Hindi film.

But, then, nothing in Rang De Basanti, thanks to its steadfastly offbeat script, treads the beaten track. When have we seen a Hindi film that is so refreshingly free from all the ingredients that are usually believed to make the difference between commercial failure and success? No image-driven box office stars, no boy meets girl claptrap, no titillating item numbers, no elaborate musical set pieces, the colours of Rang De Basanti are uniquely its own.

Well, if you must quibble, you may wonder how Aamir Khan and Atul Kulkarni can pass off as university students. But here, too, the film gives you an interesting twist – DJ, the character played by Aamir, has actually been out of the university for five long years but has chosen to stay on in the comfort zone of a world he knows for he is, and this remains unarticulated, scared to face the real world. But when the real world impinges upon his, he is forced to act.

A young British girl, in India to make a film on Bhagat Singh and his comrades, introduces him to the aura of Chandrashekhar Azad, and he rediscovers the part of him that can drive him to actions he did not ever think he was capable of performing. In that sense, Rang De Basanti, although it is essentially a story of a few boys and girls who find the courage to do something about the collapsing system around them, is a universal story: a coming of age drama that redefines the popular Hindi cinema.

Add Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra to your list of mavericks that have the fire and the ability to elevate commercial Mumbai cinema to the next level. Last year it was black. This year, basanti is the colour of hope in Bollywood.

- Saibal Chatterjee, February 9