Rap on the knuckles

'I don't expect Akhtar to be a political animal like Ranjith', says the author

A glaring omission in all the gushing reviews of Gully Boy in mainstream Indian press is the comparison of the way rap and Dharavi have been juxtaposed in Kaala. While Pa Ranjith proved yet again to be the salt of the earth in his land mafia film, Zoya Akhtar took a haphazard route to make something that was hardly rooted in Asia’s biggest slum.

I don’t expect Akhtar to be a political animal like Ranjith but she shouldn’t have plucked the lowest hanging fruit either. In the ravishingly shot Azadi song, privileged south Mumbai kids (including Kalki Koechlin) drive around Lower