Anurag Kashyap, take a bow. Not just before the festival crowds and critics, but in front of the Mumbaikars and the Indians who've finally been granted the right to relevant social cinema by the powers that be.

Black Friday begins with the interrogation of one Gul Mohammed, who in a bid to save his imprisoned brother, spills the beans on a bomb conspiracy targeting the Bombay Stock Exchange, Mantralaya, Shiv Sena Bhavan and other strategic locations. His confession is dismissed as drivel by the police. Three days later, the face of Bombay is changed forever.

The destruction begins with the bombing of the BSE. The build-up to the explosion is palpable, and the screams that follow are drowned out in a high-pitched ringing. The effect of the silence is gripping, and you watch, with a mix of wonder and horror as the narrative unfolds chapterwise.

The investigations begin almost immediately, with Inspector Rakesh Maria (Kay Kay Menon) at the helm. A Maruti van, abandoned near the Worli Passport Office (one of the blast sites), lead the police to the house of the Memons, who are nowhere to be found. However, Tiger Memon's manager Asgar Muqadam is picked up, and under interrogation, reveals all that he knows. The information leads to more arrests and confessions, with interrogation methods ranging from intimidation, to torture and worse. The police begin tapping their informers, even as the quarry is scattered around the world, awaiting a word from their revered bhai - Tiger Memon (Pawan Malhotra).

However, with...

Tiger Memon becoming increasingly inaccessible in his Dubai hideout, and with the police hot on their trail, the perpetrators begin to crack under pressure. Badshah Khan (Aditya Srivastav), the man who planted the car bomb near Shiv Sena Bhavan, is one of them. He's captured in less than two months after the blasts, and later recounts the planning and efforts that went into executing the serial blasts. He talks about Dawood, Tiger Memon, the ISI training camps, the bribing of customs and police, the smuggling of RDX into the country - there's nothing you haven't heard before. And yet, the truth, manufactured on celluloid, is overwhelming.

The film is gritty, merging real footage of the blasts and newsreports into the screenplay. The background score by Indian Ocean is haunting and engaging at the same time. The non-linear narrative is replete with flash-backs and flash-forwards, beginning and ending at the BSE explosions, and delving into the psyche of both the terrorist and the policeman. Kay Kay is brilliant as Rakesh Maria, the man in charge of India's largest criminal investigation. Aditya Srivastav, a familiar face from TV, grabs attention as well. But Pawan Malhotra steals the show with his chilling portrayal of Tiger Memon.

Even minor characters leave a mark. The instance of one Raj Kumar Khurana comes to mind. He was a Bandra restaurateur who shot his family dead, before killing himself. The police had allegedly threatened to rape his wife and daughter in front of him, if he didn't confess to...

the whereabouts of his 'friend' Piloo Khan, a wanted smuggler. There are many more gruesome instances from the period (obviously, not all are shown in the movie) that obliterate the concept of morality altogether.

The censorship is a bit of a dampener, with some of the expletives beeped out. Also, in the opening blast sequence, there's a guy drinking from an Aquafina bottle, while another dude walks by wearing a Beckham (23) jersey. In 1993. Carelessness.

Minor irritants apart, Black Friday is a must-watch movie. It doesn't preach, and it doesn't offer solutions. Intelligently crafted, and patiently fought for, it takes you on a fascinating journey into dark alleyways of human society. Call me a pessimist, but 14 years later, the darkness persists.