Gurdeep felt the ground vanish.

Gurdeep Singh had dreamed of seeing his name in lights since he was a boy selling chana jor garam outside the old Neelam Cinema in Jalandhar. Twenty years later, that dream became Mitti da Punjab —a heart-wrenching film about a farmer’s daughter who becomes a hockey player. He had mortgaged his wife’s gold, sold his father’s tractor, and borrowed from every relative who still answered his calls.

The young man pays and leaves. And Gurdeep sits in the dark taxi, watching the rain wash the neon sign that once read: “Mitti da Punjab – Now Showing.”