The Lunchbox endears with poignant silences and intricately defined characters
The first half of The Beatles’ Abbey Road ends with the coda of I Want You (She’s So Heavy), a three-minute repetition of an increasingly ominous riff, growing louder and more intense with every iteration. And then, silence. The abrupt ending gets me every time. It’s the breaking of a spell, a sudden feeling of emptiness that only serves to reinforce the thrall this album holds you in.
Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox ends in a similar fashion, with much the same results (for me, at least). It cuts to black in the middle of its version of the airport dash, that trusty trope of romantic films where the hero must track down his love and tell her his true feelings before she leaves forever (in this case, for Bhutan). There is a second’s pause, as the auditorium lights up, before the closing credits. It’s enough time for you to realise that the ride’s over and you must get off. To feel betrayed by the director’s refusal to give you the big, emotional ending you think you deserve. To acknowledge that you wish you didn’t have to leave, that at that moment you want nothing more than to spend the rest of your life listening to the story of these three fascinating characters. (At any rate, it’s better than what those poor kids have been forced to endure for eight years in How I Met Your Mother.)
The premise of love blossoming between strangers entirely through a series of letters isn’t particularly new. Neither does the film deviate much from the traditional romance story arc, in spirit at least. But in this typical framework, Batra creates three intricately defined protagonists with great sensitivity, aided by excellent performances by Irrfan Khan, Nimrat Kaur and Nawazuddin Siddiqui. He establishes them as authentic, multidimensional people. “You want to take them home, sit them down at your table, and savour them, one mouthful at a time,” writes Shubhra Gupta in her review. Though the average viewer might not be moved to such desires of cannibalism, it is these characters that make The Lunchbox a truly marvellous film.
Saajan Fernandes (Khan) is an introvert, a widower on the verge of retirement who has withdrawn from the world. He is lonely, but not melancholic, as a lesser writer would have portrayed him. He understands the importance of human contact, but does not long for it. He is brought out of his shell by his love affair with Ila (Kaur), conducted through notes passed in his daily lunchbox after the famous dabbawallas of Mumbai make a rare mix-up (even they make one mistake in every six million or so deliveries). Ila is dissatisfied with her marriage, ignored by a husband who is having an affair of his own. But she is no Charulata clutching her bedpost, but a woman who lives with her insecurities on a daily basis while remaining a caring wife and mother. It is only in their letters that Saajan and Ila can be frank about their hopes, dreams, fears and insecurities, which makes their love believable. A shoulder to cry on, after all, is a very powerful thing.
Since the film mandates that Saajan cannot physically meet Ila, the changes in his personality are shown through his relationship with Shaikh (Siddiqui), an earnest, self-made man who is to be Saajan’s replacement once he retires. Shaikh’s persistent nature is initially anathema to the reserved Saajan, who avoids talking to him as much as possible. But as the letters continue, his reserve weakens and he gradually comes to accept Shaikh as more than just an irritating presence, eventually as a friend.
Batra is adept at using silences and tiny moments to make his point, even if at times it seems he is infusing too much poetry into the film. The connection between Saajan and Ila, for instance, is demonstrated on multiple occasions through the same song playing around both of them, something that feels too gimicky. But it’s a sign only of a director trying too hard to make a great film, and I’d much rather Bollywood erred on the side of ambition than caution.
‘I can tell from his imagery, Modi isn’t human’
Is Narendra Modi offensive to your particular idea of India?
Modi is a man who has no inner life. Nehru, our first prime minister, had an abundant inner life. Sometimes that made him hesitant in dealing with a country like India, but he was lucky to have a man like Patel by his side. We have had no rule of that kind since. Even Vajpayee tried to be like Nehru. But Modi is the complete opposite. I’m sure that the 1984 Sikh riots have troubled the minds of some Congress people. I will never forgive them for the riots, but I know they pricked the conscience of some within the Congress. The 2002 riots in Gujarat have not pricked Modi’s conscience at all. It shows in his statements where he used that ‘dog getting crushed by a car’ reference. As a writer, I can tell by this imagery that this man isn’t human. He is trying to catch the media’s attention and the media is giving in. Even I, by talking about this, am giving him attention. I don’t give much value to administrative capabilities. Modi saying that he is a good administrator is like me saying I breathe normally every day. He can’t make a virtue out of that, or out of being honest and incorruptible, though I doubt if he is. One is supposed to be honest and capable to lead the people.
What has been the reaction to your comment? How would you reply to it?
I grew up critical of Nehru and Indira. I was against the Emergency. I was criticised for that but never abused like I have been now. This is the nature of fascism. The man has the might of the corporate world behind him, and most of the media. And all these admirers get worried about one remark made by literary man. After all, that’s what I am, a writer. I don’t even write in English. It shows that literature still has power. When an authoritarian personality comes to power, those who are silent now, will be even more silent. So, I don’t want to live in a world where Modi is Prime Minister.
What are the chances of Modi coming to power?
I am worried about his chances of coming to power, though I don’t think he will. But I am very disappointed in the way the Congress has done nothing about this, despite being a strong party with many great personalities. But I have to tell you, before the Karnataka elections, some literary personalities and I held a press conference to ask people to vote for Congress. We wanted that long BJP rule to end in the state. I personally know and admire Siddaramaiah, the current Karnataka chief minister. I may be disappointed with them, but am happy that the Congress is in power in Karnataka.
Do you think the country can move past the 2002 riots?
I don’t think so. I also don’t think the BJP will get enough seats in the 2014 elections. And if the Congress fails, there are other parties and personalities in the country. There is the man in Bihar, who has been managing such a backward state. In fact, for me, even Deve Gowda was not that bad. Modi, however, is very cheap in the way he publicises himself. I am suspicious of a man always so sure of himself. Unlike Gandhi or Nehru, who could handle the pluralism of this country, he has no inner conflict, no hesitation.
You’ve often called him a fascist. Could you elaborate on that?
An important characteristic of fascism is that it creates rumours. Such as the ones the Sangh Parivar has circulated in my case. There is a Kannada newspaper called Kannada Prabah, which has published these rumours and the ugly things people say about me. Things such as I should die. This is what happened in Hitler’s time. It’s what my PhD was on.
Mastertakes
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Ella Datta on Art
Ganesh Pyne, who died earlier this year, was always haunted by the sense of loss and negation brought about by death. He expressed this inexorable reality of life through many beautiful visual metaphors. One of my favourites has been a tempera, The Black Moon. It shows a beautiful deer with its head turned under a deep-toned blue night sky lit by a black velvety moon. The creature, aware of its own mortality, stands quivering, savouring that precarious moment between life and death. With its evocations of romanticism as well as the finality of life, this is one of the most outstanding images of our times.
Datta is an Art Critic and Writer
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Aniruddha Sengupta on Books
Kurt Vonnegut exhilarates me with the way he serves up what you might already know, but in a form that dramatically changes your experience and understanding of it. In Breakfast of Champions, he also bends the rules as far as defining who the author is and who the character, an avenue I too would love to wander down one day.
Sengupta is a Goa-based Author
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Allan Ao on Music
Nine Inch Nails recently released their much anticipated album, Hesitation Marks, after a five-year hiatus. The songs can be best described as minimalist and skeletal — clicks, pops, rhythmic complexities and ambient textures replace the usual high adrenaline rage that one has come to associate with the band. There’s this ‘hesitant’ control which creates a sinister and simmering tension that never erupts. And that is exactly why it’s playing on loop on my music player.
Ao is a member of the Kolkata-based band Fossils
[/box]Tenzing Sonam on Film
Brazilian cinema has periodically thrown up unexpected gems. The latest is Kleber Mendonça Filho’s first feature, Neighbouring Sounds. This brilliant film sucks you in right from its unexpected opening sequence and doesn’t spit you out until the final credits. It takes you on a dizzying journey through Brazil’s colonial past, its ongoing class relations, and its headlong rush into a soulless future, heralded by spanking new apartment buildings that simultaneously shut out the real world and imprison its privileged residents.
Sonam is Co-founder of the Dharamshala International Film festival
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Vivita Relan on Food
Carnatic Cafe in Delhi looks like a trussed-up canteen: an impeccably clean and efficient space, with restrain in decor and branding that belies its superlative cuisine. My carnivorous longings are quelled quite capably despite the all-vegetarian menu. I go back for their Mahabaleshwar 18th Cross dosa; it’s deliciously zingy with spicy overtones. The rava idlis are moreish clouds of texture and flavour. When I’m feeling particularly evil, I order the ghee dosa, spread so delicate and crispy that I am deluded into believing I’m eating merely flavoured air.
Relan is Co-owner of the Potbelly Rooftop Cafe and The Mad Teapot, New Delhi
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Mastertakes
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Anunaya Chaubey on Art
One of the most controversial works of art, English artist Damien Hirst’s 1991 installation, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, is at once a bewildering and moving piece of art. The work presents a 14-foot tiger shark suspended in a vitrine full of blue formaldehyde and makes us confront the disturbing yet poetic enigma of death and life. The work established Hirst as the most revolutionary and one of the wealthiest artists towards the end of the 20th century, a reputation that he continues to maintain even today.
Chaubey is a practising artist and lecturer of English, as well as deputy dean of the young India fellowship
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Jai Arjun Singh on Books
I first encountered Robin Wood’s Hitchcock’s Films Revisited as a teenager, and the book showed me new ways of “reading” movies. Wood emphasised the importance of looking at cinema as a medium with its own language. His best qualities include open-mindedness and a remarkable honesty about how his personal life and changing ideologies affected his movie-watching.
Singh is a Delhi-based film and book critic
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Kaushik Barua on Music
If you believe the expression “it’s all been done before” carries relevance in the Indian indie scene today you clearly have yet to encounter the Delhi-based electro/experimental act Tankbund. Bright and heavy ambient loops fittingly crashing with old-school patches of pop and rock, this cohesive bunch carry a genre-defying ocean of sound that is profoundly magnified by the stellar production values and melodies.
Barua is a Delhi-based music writer
[/box]Nitin Bhardwaj on Film
One film that created an unprecedented impact on my heart, mind and soul would be Vikramaditya Motwane’s directorial venture, Udaan. Motwane’s dexterous storytelling captures both the patriarchal challenge and the consequent adolescent rebellion with sheer grace. It does not compromise with its integrity and is consistent. The proficient performances by the entire cast leave an indelible impression on your psyche. Nothing breaks the mirage of being teleported to the other side of the celluloid screen, which makes it an ineffable cinematic experience.
Bhardwaj is a writer and director based in Delhi
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Umang Sonthalia on Food
Of the three years I lived in Kolkata, if there is any place that screams of its grandeur it has to be Peter Cat. The dim lights, nice use of wood and carpeted flooring is a huge contrast to the busy street outside. The menu is smart, simply designed and offers a variety of dishes including chelo kebabs, which are my personal favourite. I would also recommend to my vegetarian friends the tandoori broccoli accompanied with a mug of beer. This heritage restaurant, conveniently located in the heart of the city, is a must visit for every foodie. The impeccable service only adds to the experience.
Sonthalia is the owner of Icy Spicy in Port Blair
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[Film Review] John Day is about how the pursuit of vengeance loses you your soul
Unlike Grand Masti, John Day is anything but brain dead. And while it is by no means an original film, it chooses a better source to copy from — Enrique Uburzu’s 2002 Spanish film, Box 507.
The idea of revenge is a constant presence in the film, so much so that you almost expect an embodiment of it to show up, much like the urtext of the genre, John Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy. Like that play, John Day is about the moral justification of an eye for an eye, about how the pursuit of vengeance loses you your soul. The two protagonists, played by Naseeruddin Shah and Randeep Hooda, are two people who begin on opposite ends of the good-bad spectrum and wander, through the film, to the other end. Shah plays a bank manager who seeks revenge for the death of his daughter and assault on his wife, while Hooda plays a violent ex-cop who finds redemption in his love for his alcoholic girlfriend.
All this would make for gripping cinema if it were done better. While there are some visceral acts of violence and genuinely great moments of character development, the film soon degenerates into a series of interrogation scenes, losing whatever momentum it generates. The two leads turn in decent, if not entirely believable, performances, but the film gets too caught up in the balancing act between a conventional thriller and a reflective tragedy to make any sort of coherent point.
The guards did not kill Anmol Sarna. I know because I was there
So it goes like this. I am a reporter. If it’s a crime story, I arrive at the scene of the alleged crime after the fact. Based on survivor and eyewitness testimonies as also my snooping below the radar, I try to stitch up a credible account. Often, such a report ends up, shall we say, disagreeing substantively with the police’s version. That’s the job.
On the night of 13 September, I had a once-in-a-reporter’s-lifetime episode. I witnessed a crime. Or rather, an alleged crime. I was one of the three people who were the first to come face-to-face with a young man on the run less than two hours before he died.
And of the three, I’m the only one left free to tell the truth as the police have arrested my two co-witnesses for his death after detaining them illegally for three days. This, despite the fact that I repeatedly told various police officers that night the sequence of what had happened. I recounted the chronology to the dead man’s family, too, the next morning.
Based on my firsthand involvement in this sad story, I can vouch that my two co-witnesses did not “murder” Anmol Sarna, the man we confronted that night near my apartment, who later died of head wounds at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences.
A 20-year-old non-resident Indian (NRI) from the US living in New Delhi since January, Sarna was struck with a “blunt object” on his head and beaten badly, doctors who tended him said. But I positively saw no head wounds when the police took him.
Here is my account of what happened.
Around 11.15 pm on 13 September, I heard a man screaming behind my ground-floor flat in South Park Apartments, a housing complex in South Delhi’s Kalkaji area. At first, I put it down to a likely house quarrel. But in a while, it grew more urgent and closer.
Constructed by the Delhi Development Authority in 1989, these are a total of 156 duplex apartments in eight separate blocks of four floors each. The blocks are laid out as parallel strips, two to every arm of the perimeter of a squarish estate. A park sits in the middle of the complex. The strips of parallel blocks face away from each other separated by service lanes. The inner blocks face the park. The outer look outwards. The blocks don’t connect at the corners. There is a gate on the perimeter’s every arm.
The man was screaming his lungs out with a rat-a-tat caterwaul of two words: “Chikki Madhav”. I would later find out that these were names of two of his friends he had been reportedly partying with that night in a second-floor flat in the block behind mine. At times, he swore heavily in choicest Hindi aiming it at no one in particular.
I phoned the security guard at a gate on the intercom. He asked me to call another gate. Mishra, a gaunt sexagenarian with grey hair who I have come to know well in my five-month stay there, answered my call. Someone here is making trouble, I told him. Come quickly. Shortly, Mishra and a security guard named Surendra Bali, a 40-something balding five-feet-nothing, turned up. Both had night sticks.
I stepped out my door. By now, the troublemaker had gone up a staircase in the block behind mine. Mishra and Bali hurried up. I followed. In a flash, the screamer, Anmol Sarna, jumped before me on the halfway landing. He was bare-chested and bare feet, and wore only knee-length beige shorts. He was tall, perhaps 6 feet, and hefty. He glistened in profuse sweat. There was no blood or any visible wound on him.
He and I stood a foot apart for a second. And then he swung his right arm at me. I ducked. His open palm landed on my forehead. He pushed me aside and ran down the stairs, and then into the service lane between the two blocks, flailing his arms high in the air, screaming, “Chikki Madhav, Chikki Madhav, Chikki Madhav, Chikki Madhav…”
Mishra, Bali and I ran after him. Some 100 metres later, he came out the service lane and stopped, turned, and glared at us. We stopped too, panting. This time, Sarna swung his left hand and smacked Mishra’s cheek. I screamed in Hindi: “Stop him!” But the two guards were already hitting him with their sticks. Instead of running away, Sarna closed his hands together. His elbows touched his chest. His clenched fists covered his face. Sarna was incoherent again. I could see he was absolutely tripping mentally.
I ran to fetch other guards. I tried calling one of the police officers from the names painted on a board. His phone was switched off. A third guard and I ran back to the spot. No more than two minutes had passed. About five other people had collected. The guards were aside. Sarna was lying on the ground on his back, babbling incoherently. There was blood on his chest, arms and shoulders. But none above the neck.
From this moment, no one touched Sarna. For the next half hour or so, he continued screaming “Chikki Madhav” interspersed with swear words. The crowd swelled to about 15 people, including a few women. People were trying to call the police. No one seemed to know him. Twice he jumped to his feet and sprinted to a gate. I followed him the first time. He clasped the iron grills of that gate and swung his head at it, screaming. I watched from about 10 feet. He fell on his back, raised his legs in the air, and kept yelling.
Meanwhile, a security guard remembered that this man was a visitor at flat No. 95. Presently, its householder was brought down. When I confronted him, he said he did not know this man, who, he said, was a friend of his son’s friend. He admitted that Sarna had possibly taken drugs. He appeared worried and kept calling the police.
At this point, Sarna suddenly ran back from the gate to where the guards had first beaten him. After some more of the same routine, he again ran up to the gate. By now, he was visibly tiring. He began to walk back slowly, not screaming but growling incoherently, leaning on a car or two. Halfway, he stopped and lay down, propping his head against the wall of a flat.
Enter the Police Control Room (PCR) van. Two policemen walked up to Sarna and exchanged a few words. One gave him a hand. He stood up. Sobering now, he checked his shorts. He walked unaided to the back of the PCR van and sat at the back. None of us still knew his name. This was the last I saw him. From about four feet. His hands seemed to be convulsing. But he had no blood or wound on his head or face.
Four hours later, security guard Mishra woke me up. The police wanted to see me. A sub-inspector in a police jeep told me Sarna was dead. This was shocking. He was nowhere near death the last I saw him. Had he had a severe head wound, blood would have flown like tap water. But there was no blood trail, only blood on a few cars and at the spot where he was first beaten.
I saw the sub-inspector drive away with four guards, who they would keep in illegal detention for three days before charging two for his death. Over three hours, I repeated this account to — in ascending order of seniority — a constable, a head constable, a sub-inspector, Kalkaji Police Station House Officer Brijinder Singh, and Assistant Commissioner of Police Usha Rangnani. They even came inside my house.
Around 7 am, Sarna’s father and sisters came over. I offered my condolences and faithfully narrated the above account. That’s about as much as I could do.
Yet, the guards languish in jail.
[Film Review] Grand Masti should at least have attempted to steal better jokes
The easiest, most obvious critique of Grand Masti is that it does not respect women. Not only does it presume that the standards of women everywhere have fallen to the extent that they find the vacant grins of Riteish Deshmukh, Viveik Oberoi and Aftab Shivdasani utterly irresistible, but every woman in the world of the film exists only to please the men. Most are given no more depth than a tight closeup of their cleavage. The ones lucky enough to get a line or two of dialogue have little else to say than making the most obvious double entendres ever written (like the woman who invites Shivdasani’s character to inspect her two milk factories). At the end of the film, the women realise they really should give their husbands more sex. The men learn that since their wives are now willing to give them more sex and that their attempts at adultery have had such disastrous results, they should stay faithful to their wives. And they live happily ever after.
But to waste one’s breath in accusing this unnecessary sequel to 2004’s Masti of misogyny is to miss the point. It is, after all, a run-of-the-mill adult comedy, a lazy attempt at recreating American Pie for Indian audiences. The only brief writers Milap Zaveri and Tushar Hiranandani seem to have been given is to stuff as many dirty jokes as they can inside 130 minutes while saving enough time to tell some semblance of a story. (Fleshed out characters mean something entirely different to them.) That story, while engaging in parts — very small parts — loses steam very early and refuses to even try to get back on track or make any sense whatsoever. And while there’s nothing wrong with dirty jokes, the film should at least attempt original ones rather than ripping off every old chestnut there is.
Even if it must rip off its jokes, Grand Masti could at least have attempted to steal better ones or pick better sources. Instead, it goes to the fount of that great classic Kya Super Cool Hain Hum, for instance, to name three of its characters Rose, Mary and Marlow. It steals the cliffhanger ending of No Entry (but presumably, the budget could not incorporate an actual cliff). It makes all the usual puns — ‘important’/‘impotent’, you get the drift — in the usual, obvious way.
Grand Masti is another wince (and occasional snigger) inducing comedy that doesn’t require even a modicum of intelligence. It needs to realise, like every other film of its genre, that the brain is the biggest erogenous zone of all.
