Life in a... Metro

About the film

Life in a... Metro is a 2007 Indian Hindi-language drama film co-produced, co-written, and directed by Anurag Basu. Partly inspired by Billy Wilder's romantic comedy film The Apartment (1960), it features an ensemble cast of Dharmendra, Nafisa Ali, Shilpa Shetty, Kay Kay Menon, Shiney Ahuja, Irrfan Khan, Konkona Sen Sharma, Kangana Ranaut, and Sharman Joshi in lead roles. The music is composed by Pritam with lyrics written by Sayeed Quadri, Sandeep Shrivastava, and Amitabh Verma. It narrates the lives of nine people living in Mumbai and deals with topics such as extramarital affairs, sanctity of marriage, commitment phobia, and love.

Made on a budget of ₹95 million, Life in a... Metro was released on 11 May 2007 and was a surprise commercial success at the box office, grossing over ₹245 million worldwide. It received widespread critical acclaim upon release, with high praise for its novel concept, story, screenplay, dialogues, soundtrack and performances of the ensemble cast.

Plot

Rahul, who is eager to move up the ranks in his call center job, lends his apartment to people connected to his boss, Ranjit, for bringing their girlfriends and affair interests in turn for recommendation. He silently loves Neha, his colleague, who has risen up in the ranks easily due to her relationship with Ranjit.

Meanwhile, Ranjit is very unhappy with his marriage with his wife Shikha with whom he has an eight-year-old daughter. Shikha, who often meets her aunt, Shivani in her Bharatanatyam classes, reads out a letter from the US from Amol, whom Shivani loved forty years ago, but he left her to pursue his dreams in the US. Amol conveys through the letter that he is probably coming to India for the last time and wishes to meet Shivani and spend his last days with her. Shivani agrees.

Shikha's sister, Shruti, is 27 and very eager to get married and meets many prospective grooms. Among them is Monty, who Shruti finds very weird and old. Shruti is Neha's roommate and Neha knows that Shruti is Ranjit's sister-in-law. One day, Shikha meets Akash, an unsuccessful theatre artist and a divorcee at a bus stop. He practices drama with his friends in the floor above Shivani's Bharatanatyam classes. They start off as friends, but slowly start getting close and visit places non-romantically.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack was released on 17 March 2007. Life In A... Metro's music was composed by Pritam with lyrics by Sayeed Quadri, Amitabh Verma and Sandeep Srivastava. Bob Dylan's "I Want You" plays in the background when Shruti and Rishi are at a vending machine and Shruti mistakes Rishi to be gesturing and speaking with her. The song does not appear on the soundtrack. According to the Indian trade website Box Office India, with around 11,00,000 units sold, this film's soundtrack album was the year's twelfth highest-selling.

The song "Alvida" was composed by Pritam back in the 1990s when he was a struggling artist.

Pritam formed the band Metro with Suhail Kaul and the Bangladeshi singer Fahruk Mahfuz Anam (James) that performed the songs in the film.

Sequel

Its sequel titled Metro... In Dino was announced in 2022 with Basu and Pritam returning as director and music composer. The sequel released in 2025, starred Anupam Kher, Neena Gupta, Konkona Sen Sharma, Pankaj Tripathi, Aditya Roy Kapur, Sara Ali Khan, Ali Fazal and Fatima Sana Shaikh in lead roles.

Key details