Dus Kahaniyan

Ten short films, by a bunch of directors: Dus Kahaniyan is like an anthology of short stories, one or two very good, one or two just-about-all-right, one or two which leave you cold, and one or two, which are plain bad.

The best is done with depth and delicacy. Rice Plate, stars Shabana Azmi, with Naseer playing a bit part. A devout South Indian Hindu paati-amma leaves the house for the station, minus her purse. A wrangle over a lone rice plate she fights over it with Naseer, just the way a kid would grab her toffee back leads her to change her rigid anti-Muslim attitude: when Shabana is good, she can be excellent.

Nana Patekar taking a bunch of balloons to his dead wife, is ditto. As is Amrita Singh, as an older woman whose one mistake forces her daughter to take her own life: Meghna Gulzar8217;s deft direction holds out hope, with two failed feature-length films behind her.

The rest 8212; a wife learns her spouse is cheating on her in a O Henryesque twist, a banker-turned-writer8217;s relationship with a girl who is not what she seems, a middle-aged ghost who haunts trains, a dead girl in a gold bikini who looks for live victims, a couple of lovers who come to a violent end, confession night in an upper class marriage, and of course, being a Sanjay Gupta production, a tale of two warring Mumbai bhais is a mix of the good, bad, indifferent.

Take your pick.