Mumbai ka king kaun? Twenty years later, you can still hear Bhiku Mhatre roar. That’s the power of Ram Gopal Varma’s Satya, India’s ultimate underworld movie yet, that released on July 3, 1998.

Coming in the year of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, the contrast was more telling. Both Satya and Kuch Kuch… spawned many movies in their two genres, had their own fans and were hijacked by film historians. 

But Satya seems to have aged better. The gangster’s shocked squeals when his face is slashed by a deadpan Satya, played to brooding perfection by J.D. Chakravarthy, still terrifies. Maybe more than the actual shootings — there are many — in the grimy metropolis of trigger-happy, unapologetic men who are both pawns and executioners.

Satya works as there’s no attempt to apologise, explain or justify why gangs thrive, why men become hitmen. It works as it uncompromisingly tells the story of gangsters before they become police statistics or corpses. So rootless hitman Satya falls for his chawl neighbour struggling singer Vidya, played by an incandescent Urmila Matondkar in cotton saris and a bindi. So gang leader Bhiku — Manoj Bajpayee’s career-best yet — can have crackling chemistry with a no-nonsense Mrs Bhiku, Shefali Shah in fine fettle. Saurabh Shukla’s Kallu Mama is not a prop, he and the other boys add heft to the characters of Bhiku and Satya. 

Gangsters swear, drink, laugh, fight rivals, strike deals with politicians, get into lafdas, kill, get killed. The blood and sweat are real. So’s the lingo that smells of crude, grimy streets of Mumbai after the blasts. Even Gulzar-Vishal Bhardwaj’s haunting, almost poetic, Geela geela pani, can’t wash out the gore, a risk with a lesser director.

Which brings us to Varma - RGV — who’s become, like Dev Anand, a caricature of his greatness. There are RGV haters and baiters now. 

Watch Satya again to mourn what he was.