How does a bomb explode? They want to see. All three of them are small-time crooks and want a first-hand experience of how exactly a bomb goes off. They don’t even know whether the explosives they have stolen from the local train is a grenade or RDX, whether it needs to be set fire to or to be simply switched on. They go to a desolate area and just hurl the bomb at a distance and a small child comes running and picks it up. As the bomb goes tick-tock, the three men try to snatch it from the kid but he won’t give up his new-found toy that easily.

And you start breathing heavily, again. Again because Shor in the City is packed with moments like this. Moments that nibble at your nails. Moments that make your mouth go dry.

Krishna D.K. and Raj Nidimoru, who made their debut with the zippy but loopy 99 about the betting racket in the country, write and direct this meticulously crafted ensemble film about lives colliding and crashing in Mumbai. The note — “Every incident was inspired from a newspaper story” — comes only at the end.

If the four stories of Babel were set in motion by two kids innocuously playing with a rifle, Shor actually uses firearms to bring together three separate sets of characters towards the end of the narrative.

There are, of course, Jerome K. Jerome’s three men with a bomb, always on the lookout for a quick deal, till one of them, Tilak (Tusshar Kapoor), actually starts reading the books he pirates. It’s a philosophical intervention and in true Jules Pulp Fiction Winnfield fashion, he decides to give up the dirty work. And simply sit at home with just-married wife (Radhika Apte) and read Paulo Coelho and Robin Sharma, with an English-to-Hindi dictionary by the side. “Ghar jaake life ke baarein mein vichaar karna hai!”

Then there’s Abhay (Sendhil Ramamurthy), who returns to Mumbai from abroad and wants to start afresh with a small business. He even gets himself a ‘model’ girlfriend (Preeti Desai) but three neighbourhood gundas create havoc, demanding money in the name of protection.

And there’s Sawan (Sundeep Kishan) a young cricketer who needs Rs 10 lakh to bribe the cricket selector for a place in the Mumbai under-22 side. That selection may get him picked in a 20-20 (read IPL) side, which will translate to a lot of money and marriage to his next-door girlfriend, who is being married off real soon.

All these strands uncoil within a span of 11 days, from Ganesh Chaturthi to visarjan, and end on a decleansed upbeat note. The closing scenes lift the film from its bleak tones and give the glimmer of hope which I Am, the other ensemble film releasing this week, chooses not to.

Shor’s shot brilliantly by Tushar Kanti Ray, who also photographed the other glorious Mumbai movie, Dhobi Ghat. But the magic of this film is in the detailed sound design by Jordi Cirbian, who effortlessly shuttles between the many noises in the air and the sounds inside the head.

The performances are uniformly good. Emotions don’t arrive too easy on the face of Tusshar Kapoor, but just like he showed in Khakee, given a character with integrity and innocence, he shines bright. Sendhil, the man from Heroes, is terrific in a role that requires him to be vulnerable yet persuasive. But watch out for the pocket-sized dynamo Pitobash, the new Rajpal Yadav on the block, who makes every scene crackle.

There is a line in the film which goes: “There’s so much noise in this city, you can’t even hear yourself.” But Tilak, Abhay and Sawan manage to put their Mumbai on mute and tune in to their souls. They get to hear the music within and maybe you would too, if you sit through the noise.