From the DVD cellar: Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi (A Thousand Desires Like These) follows three Indians from their days as college buddies in the ’60s through Indira Gandhi’s Emergency in the ’70s. Like a story in the terribly stylish collection Patna Roughcut, it’s a love triangle about a standard Joe in love with an intelligent, political beauty, who in turn loves the charismatic founder of a movement. It’s not a political film so much as a period love story set in a time Bollywood rarely shows sans sequins and disco. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

Hazaaron is a tremendous film. It features Shiney Ahuja in his pre-lobotomy (Gangster) days, Kay Kay Menon before his subtlety excision (Corporate), and debutante actress Chitrangada Singh. It’s not perfect, but it’s beautiful. I’m a sucker for films which follow characters over decades. It reminds me of Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers, which is set in Paris during the 1968 student riots, but minus the messy, taboo-breaking sex. Like Dil Se and Dr. Zhivago, it’s romance during revolution; it’s also a long-unrequited love, and the romantic food chain of people ever-infatuated with those edgier and more passionate. I’m also told the climax recalls the plot of Pyaasa (Thirsty).

Ahuja shines as a political fixer. Singh is beautiful but inexperienced and hits some glaring false notes. Menon plays the highly sibilant stereotype of a student socialist.

Like Vikram Chandra’s Red Earth and Pouring Rain, director Sudhir Mishra used a literary reference as his title:

Frontline, Amit Varma, Jupe and Guru Subramanian also loved the movie. But one inept reviewer spelled out the entire ending without even the courtesy of a spoiler alert.

Mishra is working on a new film about the Bombay ‘burbs entitled, either Bandra Bandstand or Carter Road.