The reason why Rang De Basanti has found such deep resonance with its audience is that it cuts through this haze of angst and ennui that's been hanging over us - and strikes dead centre. It addresses the question you've been meaning to ask: "How did we stray this far?" And it questions the powerlessness you offer in response. Like Madhavan, the air force pilot in the film says, "Ya to bardasht karo, ya zimedaari lo."
Director, Rakeysh Mehra, takes you to a place where two timelines intersect. There's a proud yesterday, where men no more than 20, walked tall and "Mai rang de basanti chola" was not just the song of a bard - it was a call to arms. Then there's today. A wasteland of disposable values. No, the faces haven't changed. Almost everything else has. Mehra executes this journey with rare passion - and it strikes like a fist in the heart.
Ironically, it takes a young British documentary filmmaker, Sue (Alice Patten), to bring it home. Sue is fired up enough by those tales of valour to come down to India, to make a documentary on the national heroes.
But what she wings into, is a new, changed, India. This here is a cynical 'Who cares a fig', SMS generation, with a total amnesia about its past. Vacuous faces with no real idea where they came from. Then she meets this band of renegades. Aslam (Kunal Kapoor) who's clawed his way out of the dingy airless existence of a family still locked up in hatred; Karan (Siddharth), who tries to heal the emotional adhesions inflicted by a rich, corrupt, wheeler-dealer father by lavishing his 'baap ka paisa' on needy friends; Atul Kulkarni, whose version of rashtriya swabhimaan excludes anything that's not painted over in saffron. There's the clean-shaven Nihang Sikh, DJ (if there can ever be such a thing!) the King of the Campus (Aamir Khan), who's afraid of stepping out into the real world. And there's Sukhi (Sharman Joshi), who's afraid. Of life itself.