Socially conscious actress Nandita Das makes her feature directorial debut with this sincere study of the ongoing conflict between Hindus and Muslims in India. The setting is the state of Gujarat in the year 2002: 3000 Muslims have perished in communal riots, and two lone men are charged with the task of digging mass graves for the unfortunate victims of violence. Hanif and Muneera have just returned to their home to find it completely ransacked, but the vandalism doesn't enrage the couple nearly as much as the fact that they were bitterly betrayed by the neighbors they had thought to be friends. Meanwhile, as Hanif begins plotting his revenge, middle-class Hindus Sanjay and Arati find themselves facing an unfamiliar set of moral challenges when tranquil Muslim musician Khan Saheb (Naseeruddin Shah) attempts to keep the peace while living in a Hindu neighborhood. As the tensions between Khan and his neighbors heats up, intermarried Hindu-Muslim couple Anu and Sameer are forced to finally acknowledge the tensions that they have struggled to sweep under the rug for so many years. Over the course of the next twenty-four hours, the lives of each of these people will intersect as everyone attempts to pick up the pieces of a broken society and a young boy named Mohsin departs from his refugee camp in search of a brighter future elsewhere.
