Producer: Tutu Sharma
Director: Anurag Kashyap
Starring: Kay Kay, Tejaswani Kolhapure, Aditya Srivastava, Joy Fernandez & Joy L. Maurya
Music: Vishal Bhardwaj
Lyrics: Abbas Tyrewala

Bollywood's first sex, drugs, rock-n-roll movie: 'Paanch' A streak of red paint or perhaps electrocuting naked wire lashes viciously on the screen, creating a grisly "5" - or "Paanch" in Hindi.

That's how debutant director Anurag Kashyap introduces his film by the same name, which is about five wannabe rock stars.

With the grimy tale of whisky, stinking sweat, the foul odour of incessant pot-smoking and bouts of mad music, animal sex and violence, Bollywood shows its claws.

This is no famous five adventure, but an intriguing story of megalomania, cowardice, hypocrisy and double-crossing-even-to-death guile.

"I've lived with such people," Kashyap told IANS at the global premiere of film at the Cinemaya Film Festival in Delhi late on Sunday night.

"I've seen how they live, what their outlook towards life is, what they do, how they survive," said Kashyap, who struggled for years as a theatre artiste before breaking into mainstream Hindi cinema, writing the super successful script of "Satya".

Apparently they survive on large doses of drugs that jar the nerves and senses, and by ladling a barrage of abuses on a world they think fails to understand them.

"Van Gogh, Michelangelo and Kafka were unrecognised geniuses in their lives. As I am now," the protagonist Luke has written in blood on his bedroom wall. "Recognise me."

This is a film of sweaty underarm hair and ear-splitting vocals, of Jim Morrison like guitar strumming and crazy, foaming lyrics.

Luke, played with vibrant brilliance by upcoming actor Kay Kay, heads the band called "Parasites". He slits the throats of dolls in leisure and sings a cocaine-crazed number "Bow before me, I am god" on stage.

He gathers around him a group of three unemployed, suitably parasitic and fawning men and one scheming, ultra-seductive, highly ambitious woman.

There's Pondy -- played by Prithvi Theatre veteran Vijay L. Maurya -- who is a college dropout, a coward and the biggest sucker who just wants to have sex with the woman, Shiuli.

Shiuli -- played by Tejaswini Kolhapure -- born in the gutters, uses sex and oomph to bed different men every night, for money that she knows would bring her a better and more successful life.

Joy, enacted by the paunchy Joy Fernandez, is the dumb, lazy duffer, who is completely loyal to Luke.

And finally there's Aditya Srivastava, also seen in "Satya", as Murgi, the calmest of them all.

The action begins when the five hatch a plan to kidnap a friend of the band, Nikhil, to get some money out of his hotelier father. But in the angst and irritation of crime, Luke kills Nikhil.

And then, murder after murder happens, blood streaming down the floor like the slick, dirty waters that Kashyap uses like an insignia of the Mumbai streets.

Who's going to win? Who's going to lose? And who of the five will remain?

That's what "Paanch" is all about, a fist of five smashing into urban consciousness and the silver screen.