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Indian Express

‘Masaan' at 10: It opened a window for indie cinema. Today, we are witnessing its quiet vanishing

Written by Anurag Minus Verma Masaan, the cult classic, just turned 10. It took me down memory lane. Back in 2011, I randomly messaged Neeraj Ghaywan on Twitter, saying I wanted to work in the film industry but was confused about how to get a shoe in. I had never been to Mumbai and had no idea what kind of struggle lay ahead. Neeraj, then assisting Anurag Kashyap on Gangs of Wasseypur, gave me his number and asked me to call. I still remember that conversation. He told me he had quit a well-paying job, was working 15-hour days as an assistant director, barely earning anything. 'I joined this industry a bit too late. You're in your early 20s, so it's the best time to come here,' he said. Four years later, Masaan premiered at Cannes. Neeraj cried during the standing ovation. And I remembered that voice on the phone: Uncertain, worn out, yet still chasing cinema as if all the answers to life's quiet miseries lay hidden in moving images, flickering in the dark, hypnotising strangers in silence. I messaged him a few days ago to ask if he had any specific memory from those days. He said: 'There was a time during those early days in Banaras when I had cramps even in my soles. I could barely walk. It felt surreal, like someone might tap me on the shoulder and say it was all a prank. But it wasn't. Despite the exhaustion and low pay, I never had second thoughts. I was having the time of my life.' To understand how Masaan was made 10 years ago, and how someone like Neeraj could be so afflicted with the desire to make films that he gave up everything for it, one must consider the kind of cinema that surrounded him. At the time, Indian cinema was going through a quiet rebellion. Films like Udaan (2010), Court (2014), Fandry (2013), The Lunchbox (2013), Ankhon Dekhi (2013), Miss Lovely (2012) and Sulemani Keeda (2013) emerged in that era. The idea of the independent film had begun to feel less imported. Its charm was so persuasive that even Ekta Kapoor, the architect of Indian television's saas-bahu New Wave, financed Love Sex aur Dhokha (2010). Metaphorically speaking, it was as if the big mall of Bollywood had started allowing a few local vendors to set up carts inside. Masaan, during that time, stood out by walking a line most films stumble on. It had the quiet ambition to merge world cinema sensibility with the storytelling pace of accessible commercial cinema. At the time, that was unusual. It wasn't loud in its portrayal of caste, the way some films flaunt their virtue. Nor was it so subtle, like much of arthouse cinema, that the idea melted into metaphor and escaped notice altogether. Masaan treated caste as a sadness that sits at the centre of love stories in India. Unlike the films and television shows that came later and kickstarted the 'small town' wave, Masaan didn't romanticise or exoticise the hinterland. There were no peppy background tracks layered with Spanish guitar to sell the charm of small towns or villages. The town in Masaan breathed, burned, and its people waited for something better, with no promise it would come. In that sense, Masaan offered a template for what Mumbai cinema could have become: Rooted in Indian reality, shaped with artistic clarity, yet still emotionally accessible to the public. The recent film All We Imagine as Light by Payal Kapadia too tries to walk that delicate line between arthouse and commercial cinema, between politics and love, managing a theatrical release and being embraced by many. Like Masaan, it proves that this bridge can be built, just not very often. A decade later, the space for such films feels even more fragile. The idea of the indie film itself seems to be fading, not with a final collapse, but with a quiet vanishing. What could have been a strong foray into stories with emotional depth and artistic clarity never quite passed the baton. Instead, the torch dimmed somewhere in the distance, and nobody seemed to care. I spoke to Varun Grover, Masaan's writer, too, for the occasion, who explained the cultural shift over the last decade: 'Today, if I took the Masaan script to anyone, I doubt it would be made. No studio or production house would step up like they did in 2015. Back then, the algorithm didn't control everything. In fact, people encouraged anti-algorithm films. Now, OTT platforms are even tougher. Executives only care about what the data says. YouTube might be the last standing platform for original voices, but even that is shrinking rapidly. Outside of that, I don't think there's much left. It's a pessimistic thing to say, but even in 2015, people were already pessimistic. They just didn't know how much more despair was coming. Maybe in 2035, I'll look back and say 2025 wasn't so bad. By then, maybe creators won't exist. Robots will create, watch, and distribute content. We'll just sit on the sidelines, doing our podcast, talking to each other and that's it.' The writer is an author, podcaster and multimedia artist