“The three ‘R’s:
Routemasters, Reading, Rioting. Intoning
this mantra, K., a bookish young boy, learns to duck the fare but not
the issues in this darkly comic coming-of-age tale which largely unfolds in a
city (London) and an era (the 1970s) where everything, from the culture, to the
people, to the buildings themselves, seems to be in open revolt. Punk – good.
Partition – bad. Polyester –
ugly. That’s the other mantra K. carries
around with him. This is the story that
joins those dots.
It’s
the Silver Jubilee of 1977 and, along with the pomp, it’s punk that’s in full swing. South of the river, the polyester clad
natives are in uproar, the new sights and sounds an affront to their
dignity. They don’t like the kids with
streaks in their hair, and they most certainly don’t like the ones with colour
in their cheeks. K. is one of those
kids, marooned with his family in a sea of hostility. But they’re no strangers to adversity,
outsiders long before punk. His parents,
both refugees, view that as a small price to pay for starting over after the
mayhem of Indian Partition. But when
bricks start to fly, and threats are made, the long buried demons of the past
resurface. And as summer wears on,
things will reach a head in a grim local dance of law and disorder. If England was dreaming, it’s wide awake
now. Festooned with streamers and safety
pins, while in its shadows something primal has begun to stir. London in extremis. Just below the surface, and sometimes not
even that far, Another kind of Concrete.”