The Hindi film industry has not done much by way of producing memorables in the past few years. The crisis seems particularly acute in the past five years with very few breakout films. People watching the trade closely have spoken out about how box office takings are stitched up and seats bought by producers to inflate collections. Still, numbers reveal a dismal picture (pun intended) for Hindi, while films in other Indian languages have fared much better. Despite viewers repeatedly revealing that they want genre diversity and not just one type of spectacle, contemporary Hindi cinema, like stale food, has consistently not delivered. Neither moneywise, nor with craft.Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.Main Vapas Aaunga stands out for its sheer ambition, quality and a forthright attempt to see partition and communal hatred in 1947 through the eyes of 2026. Naseeruddin Shah is a giant. But his co-stars provide very ample shoulders for the movie to stand on, and take off. The editing by Arti Bajaj is lyrical. Lyrics and music? Suitable and taken to another level; ‘Ishq Mastana’ – gidda, folk and jive in one song – rooted in Kabir’s ‘Haman Hai Ishq Mastana’ could make you giddy. The film is a love story. Not unrequited love, but incomplete, interrupted by bigger events over which Ishar aka Keenu, a Sikh (Naseeruddin and Vedang Raina) and Afsana aka Jiya, a Muslim (Sharvari) have no control over.But all this is about cinema and technique and such-like, reviewed very competently in The Hollywood Reporter India, The Wire, Mint and more. The point is what this film contributes to the understanding of India in 2026.India has always lived with prejudices and biases, with the post-1947 state officially standing for the erasing of barriers. But at a time when a state-run drive is on to forge separateness and divide people, MVA is swimming against the tide. We are in those times when love between individuals of two communities in India can send you to jail, force you to pay a fine and often lead to a loss of life; where selling a house to “someone from another religion” needs clearance from the government, and when carrying food of a certain kind can cost you your life.To construct a backdrop where this project – of separateness, communal strife, majoritarian suspicion of other communities and hate – is portrayed as an act of madness is revolutionary. Brave progressive movements that stayed above the fray, like the Progressive Writers Association (PWA), get a very visible nod. So do akhbar waale, people of the ‘printing press’. A PWA jalsa is the backdrop of where we meet Keenu and Jiya. The film’s most important intervention is to present separateness – now being promoted by state policy in India – as a crime.MVA’s dialogues are poetic and evocative, but also scathing at times. Repeatedly probed about 1947, when communal frenzy was playing out, Keenu’s younger brother (played by Vinod Nagpal) says he won’t share what happened. The present (ably portrayed by Diljit Dosanjh) “will only filter it through the lens of hate” and perpetuate that alone. They will not understand the love, he says. MVA is about confronting the past to understand why ‘Never Again’ must be the only takeaway, instead of using a wound to separate a diverse people trying to live as a composite nation.The isolation of the refugee in the world, refugees of all kinds – Gaza, Sudan, Bosnia, Ukraine and the Holocaust – are directly invoked in the last song. Diljit standing amidst destruction and ruin, with only a few bags of belongings they have been able to salvage, makes no attempt at subtlety as it universalises the pain of the Grewal family.Anchal Malhotra and Kishwar Ahluwalia’s work on partition is openly acknowledged in the film. But there is more the film pays silent tribute to. As reviewer Rahul Desai points out, the film Ikkis, released earlier this year, about an army man travelling to Pakistan to seek closure of his son’s killing in the 1971 war, appears as a twin to MVA. Both films try and complete the circle that the line drawn in a hurry to create the two countries set in motion. There are many more literary influences you can trace. In Ret Samadhi, ,Ma, Geetanjali Shree’s most bold central character in Ret Samadhi – who goes back to Pakistan to seek her lover and finish her story on her terms – looms large over what Naseer is trying to do. Some of Manto’s characters, especially in Toba Tek Singh –who were committed to holding their ground only to be seen as insane – came straight to mind watching Naseer play the occasionally lucid, dementia-ridden 95-year-old, constantly trying to go back to Sargodha.Big spoiler alert: In the beginning and in the end, one of the chand baalis (round earrings) in Jiya’s ear has gone missing and is the leitmotif. A missing earring which characterises her and Keenu’s meetings, of course has amorous connotations. But it also stands for a part of our soul that goes missing in the wake of hate-swept events, the incompleteness that descends in the lives of the Grewal family which is forced to uproot itself and relocate to ‘Hindustan’, away from ‘naya mulk’.Some viewers have complained that the film is unable to provide ‘closure’. But it doesn’t do that as it is true to its times. Warning bells have been sounded, the backdrop of the horror that was once unleashed with dark and divisive politics has been made clear. The closure plot remains to be written. Maybe there will be Main Vapas Aa Gaya – of the better times, written in better times?This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.