Every other week, someone on some social media platform chooses to put up stills from the film Amar Akbar Anthony. It hit screens in 1977, made its makers and stars millionaires, and continued to attract attention for much of the decade that followed. Most of the people putting up these stills weren't born when it aired. I suppose they do it as an act of wonder, to show that this India once existed too, a mythical place where a Hindu filmmaker and a Muslim dialogue writer could create a plot involving Hindu, Muslim, and Christian brothers, and turned it into a blockbuster.

I thought of the movie too, this week, for the unlikeliest of reasons. It was triggered by images of a market in Bombay on the eve of a popular festival. There were thousands of people on the street, most without masks, rubbing shoulders and breathing the same air with nonchalance as if they existed in a pandemic-free bubble.