He cries openly and feelingly for his lost and redeemed dignity, he makes love to his girlfriend with the same tender look in his eyes as when he cuts a cake with his sister. He grits his teeth when his sister is insulted for her parasitical life as a rich man's mistress. He rejoices when she is liberated. He's a Mahesh Bhatt hero.

Shahana, the truest new-millennium inheritor of Shabana Azmi's histrionic kingdom, goes through the role of squalid dependency and emotional liberation with a velocity of expressions that expand the screen space into a universe of articulated angst.

Of course, the dialogues help. Shahana's sequence where she tells a cheesy guy she wants to be something better than meat in the market is proof enough of her capabilities.

It's interesting to see Anjana Sukhani turn a routine role of the spoilt but eventually sobered-down heiress into an area of interesting possibilities. The girl is spirited and plays her part with a determined relish.

The film's other protagonist Humayun Saeed hams his way through most of the material. He isn't to be blamed all the time. Some of his sequences lack the insightful intensity of what the writers offer the other principal characters. And to see this villain weeping in repentance at the end kind of takes away from the sting and bite of the tangy dish on contemporary compulsions that the Bhatts have prepared for posterity.

Mention must be made of the actor who plays Aakash's best friend Sukesh. The boy gets the point.

It isn't as though 'Jashnn' has something new to say. If you've been observing the cinema of Mahesh Bhatt you'd know they secrete dark recesses of resonant emotions serving more as mirrors for the mores of our times rather than just vehicles to get audiences into titillated submission.

The women in Mahesh Bhatt creations are extraordinarily striking creatures. And there are two such women in 'Jashnn'. One is a tortured mistress of the night. The other is a wealthy woman who lives with her struggling boyfriend and refuses to abort her illegitimate baby.

A scar is borne. The womb is a wonderfully warm place to tell screen stories about people who manoeuvre out of materialistic morass in redemptive rhythms.

Co-directors Raksha Mistry and Hasnain Hyderabadwala have here created a parable of pain written across the theme of a musician's journey from rejection to victory.