Delhi-6, written and directed by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra is one of those unfortunate films that received much flak from the critics and moviegoers alike for being a weak script, a jumble of images, sounds, sights and social messages that made sense to none, or so they said. But it does make sense. Only it all got lost among the clamour resulting from the bang that was Mehra’s previous film Rang De Basanti.

The film begins with the Mehra family in New York City, US discussing Annapurna’s medical reports with her doctor, which states that she suffers from a terminal brain tumour. On the way home, she argues with her son who refuses to concede to her wish to return to her home in Old Delhi. The son has his reasons of course, which are revealed later. But her grandson, Roshan volunteers to accompany her to India, entirely out of love for his grandmother, albeit with some uncertainty. Being born and bred in the US, he never really attempted to reconnect with his Indian roots. Perhaps, it’s because Roshan’s father, a high-caste Hindu, was kicked out of his home by Roshan’s grandfather because he married a Muslim girl from the same locality of Old Delhi where both families resided. Both fell in love and his father revolted against the society’s norms and values, just to marry the girl he loved. The resistance he had faced back home and being kicked out of his home left him tremendously embittered. Hence, his refusal to return to the home he had left so many years ago.

When Roshan arrives in Delhi, he’s unacquainted with the intricacies of life in this deeply religious, traditional interfaith community, left behind by his parents some decades ago. It’s his perspective through which the viewer sees the characters, their interactions and the events as they unfold. He doesn’t know the feelings of the young girl compelled to obey her father and protect his honour instead of realising her own dreams. He doesn’t understand how it feels to be Gobar, the butt of everyone’s derogatory jokes just because slower than them. He doesn’t understand how the camaraderie amongst these people can rapidly metamorphose into a violent feud. He can’t understand why old friends would raid their friend’s sweetshop on the basis of religious differences. The arbitrary nature of these religious, social tensions is incomprehensible to Roshan. Perhaps his personal history is responsible for his inability to understand what he calls ‘madness’; because he’s a NRI, born and bred in US to fairly liberal Indian parents, of whom one is Hindu and the other Muslim. He understands the friendship between Hindus and Muslims in the neighbourhood but cannot comprehend why they are prepared to renounce their friendships to the hatemongers, who foment discord and manipulate the people’s unwavering faith in God for achieving their own ulterior objectives.

The screenplay is influenced by the Ramayana and William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies. Mehra juxtaposes the narratives of these literary sources with the narrative of Delhi-6. The former is depicted in the film through showing scenes of the Ramlila, which contrasts the events of the main plot with those from the Ramayana. It’s as if the events of real life have begun to mirror the events in Ramayana.

The Kaala Bandar (Black Monkey) is linked to the main plot through themes of Hindu-Muslim relations, the interminable mixing of politics and religion (especially in South Asia) and its numerous consequences. It’s an enigma to the people of Delhi as the sightings of this entity are so sporadic and its identity so elusive that it becomes a legend of sorts. As its true identity is never revealed, the ensuing lack of knowledge creates a vacuum that’s filled by the politicians of religion and religious leaders. It also gives way to the most bizarre conspiracy theories that eventually escalate into a full-blown Hindu-Muslim riot in Roshan’s neighbourhood. They bring religion into a matter where it wasn’t needed, merely to assuage the people who, by this point, have begun to clamour for a clue to the identity of the elusive Kaala Bandar. But the clues given to them are liable to imperil the harmonious environment of the Chandni Chowk neighbourhood.

Golding’s Lord of the Flies depicts an entity similar to the Kaala Bandar. In the novel, it’s known as the ‘Beast’ instead. Both entities are elusive, are rumoured to be vicious and deadly and leave widespread devastation behind them. The children in Golding’s novel and the residents in the Delhi-6 neighbourhood all descend into anarchy, blinded by their egos and fury, without sparing a single thought about the harm they were doing to each other, to the people they had known their entire lives as they unthinkingly gave themselves up to the ‘Beast’ and the ‘Kaala Bandar’.

But only one person, the neighbourhood fakir, manages to identify the truth about the Kaala Bandar. His name and background is unknown to all and he’s only known as the madman who runs around with a shabby, old-fashioned mirror in hand, telling others to look into the mirror he holds up to their faces and to recognise the Divine Being that lives within them. He asks them to understand that the forces of good and evil lie within them and they must recognise this crucial fact, their true self. Nobody knows the reason behind his actions; neither does anyone know how he knows this. But he’s certainly the ultimate neighbourhood oddball, even surpassing Gobar. The latter, even though his mind works differently from the rest, continues to conform to the norms and values of Indian society. But the fakir doesn’t conform and that’s why everyone avoids him and instead laughs at his eccentricities. Only Roshan sees sense in the fakir’s mad ramblings and tries to explain it to everyone, hoping to knock some sense into them. But he unfortunately ends up in spots where the Kaala Bandar is rumoured to have been last sighted. This results in a growing animosity towards him, with insults to his mixed Hindu-Muslim parentage thrown in. Everyone who had previously welcomed him so graciously, so lovingly into their community begins regarding him suspiciously. The people of the neighbourhood only realise how right Roshan had been about everything when he gets shot by Mamdu, the owner of the ransacked sweetshop. They weep and are deeply shocked at their actions but sadly, their rage and egotism had as good as killed him.

Similarly, in Golding’s novel, it’s Simon who realises the truth about the Beast and is then lynched to death by the other boys after being mistaken for it in the dark. Then, another boy, Piggy, discovers the same truth and that Simon had known this just before he was killed. But the other boys realise this too late, just after they’ve burned the island down and the smoke attracts a ship that rescues the boys.

The character graphs of the Kaala Bandar and the Beast, as well as certain other aspects of both Delhi-6 and Lord of the Flies parallel each other. Mehra seems to be rather inspired by Golding’s novel while he wrote Delhi-6, which isn’t bad at all. In fact, it’s an intelligent sort of inspiration as Mehra didn’t use the standard ‘cut-copy-paste’ technique that the Indian mainstream cinema is so famous for. Instead, he gave his film a uniquely Indian treatment. That’s why the film is called Delhi-6; that’s why it’s set in one of the biggest Indian cities and retains its quintessential features. It’s also why the film is so deeply-rooted in the Indian culture. The issues it considers are intrinsically Indian; the norms and values it questions are inherently desi, which, if you wish to apply them to other South Asian societies, would also stand true there.

Delhi-6 teaches us lessons that are so simple and unassuming that it’s terribly easy to miss them amid the chaos that marks much of the film, especially its latter half. The climax completely justifies the erratic pace, the disorder, madness and how the characters literally descend into anarchy towards the end. Their presence in the screenplay doesn’t reflect Mehra’s shortcomings or quirks. Instead, their presence actually reflects the true nature of South Asian life. It’s one of Mehra’s finest films, just like his previous Rang De Basanti. The only difference is that if Rang De Basanti was a bang, then Delhi-6 was the whimper that followed it, but was just as effective as the former. It was only a question of us hearing the latter amidst the clamour caused by the former.