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Review

Producer Merchant returns to behind the camera for the first time since The Courtesans of Bombay with this pleasant comedy-of-manners set in a small town in northern India. A poor, under-appreciated schoolteacher is assigned to interview Nur (played by the wonderful Kapoor), a renowned Urdu poet. The teacher is greeted by a great artist near the end of his life -- obese, sickly, cantankerous and confined primarily to his home. The film revolves around a series of aborted interviews (family, friends, food and sex always seem to interrupt). One suspects that this simple story is actually a pretext for Merchant to offer lively discussions on the fading Urdu culture and language, and to have his actors read from the writings of the great Urdu poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz.