Futile as it is to compare two films on the same theme, you cannot but liken the lingering mood of nostalgia, regret, anger and incredulity in "Kaya Taran" with the recent "Amu" on the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

This rude awakening, if one may call it that, by reclaiming a vicious chapter in India's recent history is a sign of cinema's growing maturity and a healthy move away from the morass of enervating escapism into which visual entertainment seems to have irredeemably fallen.

At a time when Sanjay Leela Bhansali has taken Indian cinema leaps and bounds ahead of its prescribed territory in "Black", here's a small, modest slice-of-life cinema which tries to blend a newspaper immediacy with a cinematic delicacy. And it succeeds to an extent that at least makes us thankful for the survival of outré cinema.

Sure journalist-turned-filmmaker Sashi Kumar tends to overdo the didacticism and other dialects of his vocation that he carries over to the visual art. The early sequence where a journalist looks into the camera to recapitulate the savage carnage in the Trilokpuri area of Delhi during the riots is purely gauche. Such headline bashing is a little too self-righteous in tone to communicate itself to audiences in a cinematic context.

Also the effort to connect the 1984 anti-Sikh riots with the post-Godhra Hindu-Muslim riots in Gujarat and hence move on to discuss the Christian conversion controversy is to unnecessarily telescope the history of minorityism into one range of vision.

Religious persecution and cultural predominance in any context is equally savage. They cannot and must not be lumped together for the sake of convenient creativity. Genocide isn't a jingle. Fortunately, "Kaya Taran" forsakes hysteria and runs in a direction where the characters are people rather than socio-political prototypes.

< Once Kumar's narrative moves into a quiet nunnery in Meerut, the plot moves into a more fluent and less self-indulgent gear. The cloistered cleaned-out world of the nuns is feelingly carved into the body of the plot, creating a sense of divine empowerment within a world that has suddenly decided to go morally berserk.

Limited budgets don't allow Kumar to convey the cruelty of the mobs in any detail. What he does is to focus on those pure helpless faces in the convent communicating a quiet moral authority that you know will somehow triumph over those trying times.

The most effective moments in the brief and heartfelt narrative begins once the nuns provide asylum to a traumatised Sikh woman and her little son who soon becomes the little darling in the convent.

There's a bit of cinematic suspense teased into the plot when the little boy from 1984 and the journalist-hero, who visits to convent in 2002, turn out to be the same. Rather than harp on the coincidence, Sashi Kumar uses the theme of continuity and renewal to give his narrative a gripping thrust into history's ironical twists and turns, so that we aren't looking at the plot's precocious invention but at the forces that motivate the characters to become puppets of history.

Some passages in the narration, especially a self-consciously choreographed dance after the little Sikh boy's enforced head-shaving and his escape from rioters in a coffin, tilt towards an imbalanced and indelicate juxtaposition of history and cinematic licence.

Still, you cannot question the filmmaker's integral regard for the persecution of the weaker sections. The cynical prattle in the publishing-house canteen and the journo-hero Preet's coming to terms with the savagery of his past are themes that empower Sashi Kumar's transition from journalism to movie making.

Unlike Shonali Bose, who relied on a whole of creative fodder and processes for effectiveness in "Amu", Sashi Kumar is pretty much on his own, deriving a sense of distanced drama from words rather than staged action.

The performances are even-toned at best. Angad Bedi as the journalist protagonist needed to be more forceful in his impact.

As for Seema Biswas, from the gun in "Bandit Queen" to the nun in "Kaya Taran", she conveys a strange range through her oeuvre. Wish the other characters wouldn't have referred to her character Sister Agatha as 'Sister Agaatha'.

Biswas has a lot to be proud of. She's part of a film that records a tragically brutal chapter in Indian history and allows the actors to forget their individual egos and blend into the topical fabric.

Here's a film that must be watched, not only because it conveys a strong message but also because it manages to put across that message with unaffected warmth.