2007: The year of Shah Rukh Khan, and small big films Bheja Fry and Black Friday

The other is Shimit Amin’s Chak De India!, in which SRK’s failed hockey player-cum-reluctant-coach sets out to reclaim his personhood, snatched away by bigots, by knocking into shape a rag-team of no-hopers and making them into a match-winning team. The fact that it was an all-women team was a plus point, cementing SRK’s reputation as a champion-and-respecter of women, and flashing forward presciently to a whole decade later, when his religion would become a flash point for trolls. Being Kabir Khan is one of SRK’s most affecting performances, and it is still India’s best sports film. And the best of 2007.

Shah Rukh Khan till date is known for his portrayal in Chak De! India.

Why did Aamir Khan take over the direction of Taare Zameen Par, midway into the film’s making? That was a burning question which took up a lot of tabloid space that year, but the result was a film which did a great deal for children who learnt differently. The young boy, played by Darsheel Safary, is not badly behaved; he has dyslexia, and his mind works differently. Aamir, playing an empathetic teacher, also takes a back-seat, and lets the kids do their thing. The film brought dyslexia into public discourse, and built on spaces, which opened after Black, to have conversations around special needs.

It was also the year that Anurag Kashyap finally broke censorship shackles and managed to get his Black Friday out in theatres, Based on the till-then untold story behind the Bombay blasts, it had to be fought long and hard in courts, but once it was out, no one could deny the power of the film and its performances – with Nawazuddin in a blink-and-miss role — and it remains India’s best docu-feature. It also broke the jinx Kashyap had been facing, and launched his career as a director; censorship and its evils, though, have continued to dog the filmmaker, and he has continued to speak against it.

Black Friday is a 2004 film, which finally got released in 2007. (Photo: Anurag Kashyap/Instagram, Hotstar.com)

The Namesake, Mira Nair’s lovely adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel of the same name, gave Irrfan and Tabu, once again together after Maqbool, roles of a lifetime. It is one of those films you can keep watching in a loop, but with Irrfan not in this world any more, we are left with a lasting ache at the untimely passing of this incomparable artist.

Rajat Kapoor’s Bheja Fry, produced by Sunil Doshi, became a marker of the small film which did so well that it earned more than the most successful film in that year. The Rajat brand of quirk was the USP of this film, with his familiars, Vinay Pathak and Ranvir Shorey, riffing off of each other, creating laughter which also made you think.

Reema Kagti’s Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd, also fun and quirky, marked her arrival into Bollywood, giving us a zany romance with a unique superhero angle, and Kay Kay — yes, him — dancing like a dervish: ‘sajna main vari vari jaaoon re’ is still such a hoot.

Kay Kay Menon on his dance sequence in Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd. (Photo: IMDb)

Abhay Deol had three films that year. With Honeymoon, Ek Chalis Ki Last Local and Manorama Six Feet Under, he became the certified big star of the small film. It’s one of those inexplicable things that you wonder about – if these films had had a good run, rather than stayed niche, would it have made a serious dent in the mainstream? That last is a bit of a stretch, but it’s a question that has continued to niggle– whatever happened to this Deol, who was from a legacy film family, yet wanted to break free from the formula, tried with a bunch of brilliant films, and then.

Sriram Raghavan’s rollicking caper Johnny Gaddaar, with a bunch of crooks zooming around trying to best each other in true James Hadley Chase fashion mixed grunge, grime and glitter: if you want a thriller with brains, this one is it.

And then of course, there was Imtiaz Ali’s Jab We Met, which became the film that set the refresh button for the Bollywood love story’s leap into the new millennium: Kareena Kapoor’s main apni favourite hoon Geet and Shahid Kapoor’s quiet, intense lover was a vibe, and the music was foot-tapping. You can still watch it, and smile.