Desolation is a distant cousin to suburban seclusion. And "Karthik Calling Karthik" is an interesting if flawed fable of the damned.

The central character is Karthik (Farhan Akhtar), so timid he could merge into the woodwork of his office if only the decor was not so much glass.

Karthik is bullied by his boss (Ram Kumar), sniggered at by his smarter fellow workers and inattentively overlooked by the gorgeousness in the office whom Karthik stares at sideways and writes lots of unsent e-mails to. She's the matchless beauty.

This is the world of 'Rocket Singh' without the turban and the serenity. While Shimit Amin's "Rocket Singh - Salesman Of The Year" was about an office-goer who craved for acceptance, Karthik just wants to be less unhappy in his space. It's not too much to ask for. But who's heeding? Except a voice on cell phone, which sounds suspiciously like Karthik's to his own ear.

The upsurge of Karthik's boring world detains the claustrophobia of suburban existence without disremembering to add humour to the proceedings. The moments between Karthik and the Shonali (Deepika) have that touch of energetic realism taken from lives we've known, experienced and somewhere tried to refuse. But, the dialogues between the pair try too hard to be 'cool'.

The relationship that Karthik builds up with Shonali is far outdistanced in intensity level by the one that he develops with the Chinese handset. And after a while the 'extended monologues' begin to lose their credibility.

But keep hold of. Debutant director Vijay Lalwani, self-confident and apparently completely aware of where he's taking his tale, gives us a second-half, which is gut-wrenching in its representation of the human being as an island.

To break out the dictatorial and tyrannical voice on the phone, Karthik purchased a ticket to an unknown city which to our visual delights, turns out to be Kochi.

Karthik rents a modest near-dingy room and starts his life again as a battered man looking for supreme anonymity without telephone lines to break his voluntary deathly stillness of existence.

But, the surprise on Karthik's psychological condition shocks no one except Karthik himself, and least of all his shrink Shefali Shah.

The movie is a gripping jigsaw puzzle, nibbling together a mind, which plays games with itself. The champion is fate. The speed is consciously sluggish suggesting the deep-seated connection of vigor-less subsistence with the gratification, which cities provide you in exchange for a comfy flat in a techno-suffused environment.

Farhan, the life and breath of the proceedings, epitomizes urban anonymity in his body language, dialogue and cautious efforts to reach a world, which has no forbearance with the over-sensitive.

Farhan's is certainly a super-confident recital as a man missing self-assurance. The movie itself doesn't lack assurance. But the dearth of what one may call an active exterior could well be mistaken by some audiences as ingrained inertia, a dissatisfaction that the movie's character suffers from.

Do not mistake the man for the plot. (With Input from Agencies)