During a particularly lean period, a Delhi man (Rajesh Tailang) who earns his living repairing clothes and jewelry on the street sends his adolescent son away to a distant factory. They need the extra income, and there is an understanding he will return by Diwali. He does not, and so begins the parents' nightmare. The ambivalent factory head says he ran away. One of his friends, however, believes foul play may be involved since he left his belongings behind. The son's vanishing shines a harsh light on certain parental inadequacies on the part of the father, previously prone to complacency and distraction. He is not sure whether his absent child is 12 or 13. He has no photograph of him, either. He begins a desperate search, wheeling and dealing to earn the cash required to travel around India by bus or train while also contending with a painful truth: he released his only son into the exploitative and volatile world of child labor, and now he may never find him. This is a strong film by Canadian writer/director Richie Mehta: involving as a mystery, persuasive as a social document, and devastating as a family drama. It expands and enriches as it goes, leading to one of the year's most memorable and profoundly sad conclusions. The on-location, on-the-fly photography is electrifying: a colorful, nervous, whirlwind, and highly detailed visual portrait of marginalized urban life in the world's second most populous country.

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