Karan Devam and Anjali Patil in a still from Meri Nimmo. Pic/Twitter

Around mid 2000s, when mainstream Hindi cinema audiences were almost neatly split between front-bencher, single-screen crowds in small towns dedicatedly following superstar Salman Khan (and the like); and the city folk, who caught Shah Rukh Khan's non-resident Indian romances at plush, urban multiplexes, I asked Shah Rukh if he thought of himself as essentially an urban phenomenon. "You're also an urban writer," Shah Rukh shot back. Which is true, given English as the medium of expression. But, he went on to add, rather tellingly that "movies themselves are basically an urban phenomena."