Maybe it’s appropriate that, for a story-maker who has fashioned a career out of elegantly updating the concept of nostalgia, his first film – bereft of decoration, scale and reputation – remains his most memorable. Khamoshi is the pure, blank-slated infant that grew into a popular, lush Emperor. It had a Goa that Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa ended in, not the one Guzaarish accessorized. It had sunny scenes propelled not by colour-corrected imagery but by empathetic characters. It had melodious songs – as opposed to humbling symphonies – that agreed with the dramatic contradictions of its atmosphere. It had everything that Bhansali came from, and a little of what Bhansali built upon. There were scattered elements (and stars) of Vidhu Vinod Chopra – who he had assisted for years – and his cinematic solemnity, as well as seeds of his own obsession with the healing powers of music and grief. Most importantly, it had Nana Patekar, the founding father of the indie-pop space currently occupied by the likes of Irrfan Khan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Pankaj Tripathi and Kay Kay Menon. As the catholic deaf-mute father of the “heroine” (an ethereal Manisha Koirala), a heartbreaking Patekar single-handedly raised Bhansali’s fairly sentimental template – perhaps lighting the spark and inspiring the director to spread his brush on bigger, if not necessarily firmer, canvas.