By:
Subhash
K.
Jha,
IndiaFM
Thursday,
September
06,
2007
Not
every
potential
terrorist
belongs
to
one
particular
community.
Yes,
sounds
like
a
brutally
vulgar
adage
in
this
day
and
age
of
murderous
rage.
The
man
who
violates
your
privacy
and
right
to
expression,
or
the
woman
who
uses
the
educational
institution
to
propagate
prostitution,
are
the
true
terrorists
of
our
society.
Look
around
you.
Terror
stares
and
stalks
you
in
so
many
garbs,
in
and
out
of
the
burqa.
You
cannot
escape
it
in
one
form
or
another.
Terrorism
is
a
religion
of
its
own.
In
Dhoka,
writer
Mahesh
Bhatt
brings
the
savagely
rampant
cult
of
terrorism
into
the
precincts
of
the
middleclass
household.
The
portrait
of
a
derelict
soul
looking
for
his
lost
domestic
utopia
in
the
rubble
of
a
nasty
bomb
explosion,
is
stark
real
dark
and
poignant.
You
can't
miss
the
urgent
and
brutal
honesty
of
Mahesh
Bhatt's
writing
skills.
He
weaves
a
pastiche
of
angst
and
heartbreak
from
the
raw
material
of
headlines.
The
end-result
is
thought-provoking
emotional
and,
most
important
of
all,
original.
In
a
week
where
we
are
subjected
to
two
remakes
of
1970s'
films
Dhoka
with
its
renewable
but
non-derivative
topicality
washes
away
the
sins
of
excessive
inspiration
that
plagues
present-day
cinema
in
Hindi.
Pooja
Bhatt
directs
the
stark
story
with
a
keen
sense
of
historicity
overlapping
lives
that
would
like
to
go
about
the
unfinished
business
of
their
day-to-day
activities,
if
only
destiny
didn't
have
other
plans.
Presume
for
a
minute
that
the
woman
who
shares
your
bed
and
sleeps
in
your
head
has
a
secret
identity.
One
such
inescapably
poignant
situation
was
created
for
Harisson
Ford
Sidney
Pollack's
Random
Hearts
where
his
dead
turns
out
to
have
a
secret
life.
Could
the
man
or
woman
you
trust
with
your
life
be
planting
bombs
in
her
head?
As
Hyderabad
burns
you
wonder
what
thought
processes
go
behind
minds
that
plan
the
carnage
of
the
innocence.
More
than
anything
else
Dhoka
is
a
pungent
and
powerful
product
of
our
troubled
times,
told
with
a
spirited
and
sustained
energy
that
allows
sound
technicians
to
do
their
jobs
with
quiet
authority.
At
the
center
of
the
excruciating
jigsaw
of
trust
and
betrayal
is
the
debutant
Muzamil
Ibrahim.
Playing
the
tormented
widower
he
exudes
an
aura
of
confident
tragedy
that
belies
his
rawness
as
an
actor.
The
brawn
never
comes
in
the
way
of
sensitive
expressions
of
a
cop
whose
loyalty
and
integrity
are
weighed
against
his
personal
loss
.The
newcomer
carries
the
emotional
scenes
well
on
his
sturdy
shoulders.
And
if
you're
tired
of
seeing
Anupam
Kher
doing
comedy,
here's
the
actor
getting
back
to
his
roots,
putting
in
a
powerhouse
performance
as
a
bereaved
after
battling
ostracization
from
a
society
that
never
accepted
him
in
the
first
place.
Suffused
with
a
sense
of
imminent
catastrophe
and
an
aura
of
implosive
tension
applied
to
the
explosive
theme,
Dhoka
is
a
film
that
persuades
you
not-so-gently
to
think
about
the
quality
of
lives
that
we
live
and
a
social
order
that
thinks
terrorism
happens
only
to
'them'.
Really,
one
hasn't
a
more
jolting
reality-check
in
a
while.