General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Traffic Signal (2007 film)

Traffic Signal is a 2007 Hindi-language drama film directed by Madhur Bhandarkar, portraying the informal economy of beggars, vendors, eunuchs, and small-time criminals who live and work around a traffic signal in Mumbai. Produced by Percept Picture Company, it was released on 2 February 2007 with a listed runtime of 129 minutes.¹ The film is the third entry in what Bhandarkar describes as a trilogy with Page 3 (2005) and Corporate (2006), each examining a different stratum of Indian society.² It won Bhandarkar the National Film Award for Best Direction at the 54th National Film Awards.³

Key fact	Detail
Release	2 February 2007, Hindi drama, 129 min¹
Director and writers	Madhur Bhandarkar; story, screenplay, and dialogue by Bhandarkar and Sachin Yardi¹
Lead cast	Kunal Khemu as Silsila, Neetu Chandra as Rani, Upendra Limaye as Manya, Ranvir Shorey as Dominic D'Souza, Sudhir Mishra as Afzal Bhai¹
Trilogy position	Third film after Page 3 and Corporate, covering a third stratum of society²
Major award	National Film Award for Best Direction, 54th National Film Awards³
Box office	Verdict "Average"; adjusted nett gross 172,721,320 rupees, ranking 21st among 2007 Hindi releases⁴
Budget and earnings	About 40 million rupees (4 crore rupees) budget, about 100 million (10 crore) earned, per Bhandarkar⁵

Spoilers

Premise and origin

The film is set among the poor beggars, vendors, and the "manager" who work at a traffic signal on a Mumbai street.⁶ Its characters include an orphan named Silsila, a little scavenger boy, a Gujarati girl selling clothes, a drug addict, a prostitute named Noorie, and the local hafta collector, the collector being the figure who gathers weekly protection payments from the signal's workers. Trouble begins when Silsila is caught in a chain of events that threatens the signal itself, the source of everyone's income.⁷ A flourishing "industry" exists at the signals, run by gangsters and politicians, and the story examines the relationship of need and dependency between politicians, the mafia, and the street dwellers.⁸^•⁹

Bhandarkar said the idea came to him during his barefoot Tuesday walks from Khar to the Siddhivinayak temple, a practice he had kept up for nine years. Watching beggars and eunuchs at the signals along the way, he found it intriguing that a red light meant employment for them, and he began researching while writing the story.¹⁰ He described the film as showing two views of the world, those looking out from the comfort of their cars and those looking in.¹⁰

Casting and production

Bhandarkar deliberately avoided a big-name lead. He said that while writing the script he decided a star would bring an existing image to the character, so he cast Kunal Khemu, whom he had seen in Kalyug, as Silsila, a street boy who collects money from the people at the signal and acts as their leader.²^•¹⁰ Neetu Chandra, previously seen in Priyadarshan's Garam Masala, plays Rani, a Gujarati kanthiyawadi who comes to Mumbai to sell embroidery on the streets, with a subtle romance developing between her and Silsila.¹⁰

Konkona Sen Sharma plays Noorie, a prostitute romantically involved with Ranvir Shorey's character, an educated drug addict who cons passers-by. Bhandarkar said Sen Sharma initially had reservations about the role, disliking the character's language and get-up, and that he had to convince her to take it.¹⁰ The film also cast the filmmaker Sudhir Mishra as the don Afzal Bhai; Bhandarkar said Mishra was apprehensive at first and claimed he could not act.² To heighten realism, Bhandarkar used ten real beggars and eunuchs in the cast.¹¹

The crew included Mahesh Limaye as director of photography, Devendra Murdeshwar as editor, Umesh Jadhav as choreographer, and Shamir Tandon as composer with lyrics by Sameer.⁶

Music

Shamir Tandon, who had scored Bhandarkar's Page 3 and Corporate, composed the soundtrack. Songs include "Yeh Zindagi Hai" and "Kya Zindagi Hai" sung by Kunal Ganjawala, and "Aai Ga", a Lavani-flavored street dance number sung by Vaishali Sawant.¹⁰ A Rediff review of the album was unfavorable, calling the compilation lame while noting bonus non-film tracks by Jagjit Singh, Kailash Kher, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Ustad Sultan Khan, and Chitra as a consolation.¹²

Release and box office

The film premiered in Mumbai on 1 February 2007 and released the next day. Early industry tracking placed it third among the week's releases by average per-print collections, at 151,967 rupees, with its business strongest in Mumbai, Maharashtra, parts of central provinces, and the south.¹³ Box Office India ultimately rated it "Average", with an adjusted nett gross of 172,721,320 rupees, placing it 21st among 2007 releases.⁴ Bhandarkar later framed the result against the film's cost: "'Traffic Signal' was only a 4 crore film but it earned about 10 crores at the box office."⁵

Awards

At the 54th National Film Awards, covering films of 2006, Bhandarkar received the National Film Award for Best Direction for Traffic Signal, with a Swarna Kamal and a cash prize of 250,000 rupees. The citation praised him for weaving in the lives, livelihoods, and concerns of street dwellers in a metro. Bhandarkar said the win was unexpected and gave him a hat-trick of National Awards after Chandni Bar (2001) and Page 3 (2005).³^•⁵

Reception

Critical response was divided. Khalid Mohamed in Hindustan Times gave three stars and called it Bhandarkar's best work yet in terms of cinematic rigor and social concern, praising the plausibility of the street characters and Khemu's performance.¹⁴ Taran Adarsh of Bollywood Hungama rated it 3 out of 5, calling the slice-of-life approach the film's USP while noting it rests on a thin plot and ends abruptly.⁸ The Times of India was more negative, arguing the first half introduces stock characters without a story and that the vignettes of Mumbai street life are not enough to hold the film together.¹⁵ A Rediff review likewise found the episodic concept short of material for a feature, though it praised the cast's performances.¹⁶ David Chute, writing in L.A. Weekly, called it "a skillfully woven multicharacter drama" and "a methodical depiction of a stratified alternative society".¹⁷

The film has since been used as a reference point in academic writing on Mumbai's urban politics. Scholars have noted that its narrative is framed by the relationship between "official" Mumbai and infrastructure such as flyovers, in which a builder plots to remove the signal economy that the film depicts.¹⁸ It remains available on free ad-supported streaming services in the United States, including Tubi and Plex.¹⁹

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026