The way to a man's heart...

The Lunch Box (Hindi, English; 2013)

Every now and then, you have a short and sweet gem from the Indian subcontinent, and this is it. They introduced the dabbawalla system to the world and infused love into it when delivery is wrongly sent.
Just to get the basics right, the dabbawallah system was started in 1890 to feed lunch the office workers in Mumbai. Over the years, it has gained its popularity and is responsible for feeding 200,000 mouths daily using about 5,000 workers. Its business model is envied even by the biggest of the business minds and is said to have an error of 1 in 6 million! Since its inception, the workers had not missed even a day of supply despite the roughest of the monsoon weather, barring the day when the workers decided to march in support Anna Hazare's fast against corruption.

The layout is simple. A near retirement Government office worker, Saajan Fernandez, a widower, get his usual lunch in a tiffin. By mistake, the lunch box from Ila goes to his table. His gustatory receptors are left spellbound, and he decides to thank via a short note.

Mumbai Dabbawallas!

Realising that it is not her husband, who is cold towards her, who is not tasting her sumptuous preparations, the bored housewife Ila reciprocates. Hence starts an exciting affair...

The love blossoms in a dignified manner. Ila, whose effort of winning her husband's heart seems to hit a brick wall. She does her dutiful chores like cooking, cleaning and manning her schooling child but the husband is cold. She later finds out that he has an affair.

Saanjan leads a mundane life checking accounts in his office and goes back to an empty house loaded with memories of his wife. The correspondence reignites Saajan's ordinary life and leaves him feeling good.
This note sharing invokes a kind of feeling akin to teenagers experiencing their first love, frequently looking out for tiffin man to come with the container and its letter. It reminded me of Fred Savage in the 80s sitcom 'The Wonder Years'.

It also takes the viewers through the busy streets of Mumbai to come close and personal with Mumbaites and Dabbawallas.

There is an interesting character in Saajan's assistant. The relationship stimulates each other's routine.


The best scene in the film, in my opinion, is when they decide to meet up. Saajan felt that he needed to shave his beard. At the washroom, his olfactory senses started playing tricks on him. He smelt his dead grandfather's scent.

When he saw himself in the mirror, he realised that he was not a spring chicken anymore. He chickened out and decided to let Ila be stood up. Meanwhile, he was peeking from a corner, seeing her fidgety. In the letter the following day, he advised her not to waste her time on him as she was young and had a dream to fulfil. Irrfan Khan gave a good performance with a simple depiction of a small man in a big world with modest ambitions.

The story is intentionally left hanging at the end to give it the arty feel!

(P.S. The story may not be your cup of tea to the beholders of morality. The idea of a mother a preteen engaging in an extramarital affair based on a few notes received in the tiffin carrier and when wronged by the husband may not go well with you. Stay away. May ring a reminder to those with that cheeky intent inside and still live in a dream to find perfect love and still believe in Santa Claus.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

A twister

The Narrow Margin (1952)
One always assumes that a B-Noir film would be so laughable with its laughable cheesy dialogue, skimpy plot, bad acting and editing. Wrong on all accounts, this low budget film with unknown actors actually did quite well. It maintained its fast pace and element of suspense. In fact, it was nominated in 1953 for Best Screenplay. In 1990, a remake was done starring Gene Hackman and Anne Archer.
Almost the whole film took place on a moving train. Two cops are assigned to transport a dead mob leader's wife from Chicago to Los Angeles. She is supposed to be carrying a list of names of gang members and was due to testify. A loud mouth obnoxious lady is taken from a cheap apartment in a top secret mission. As the identity of the witness is unknown to anyone, the coppers and the crooks, everyone is double guessing her identity.
Even before they make it to the train, one of the cops in is mortally wounded. The panic starts in the mind of the remaining cop, Sgt Brown, as he rushes to get his witness to the train and to Los Angeles in one piece.
Other mob members are also hot on their trail to kill Mrs Neall (the witness) and lay their hands on the list. So, starts a cat-and-mouse with Sgt Brown protecting Mrs Neall and the mob members trying to bribe the Sergeant. The cop stood his ground. He befriends a blonde on the train. Actually, it turned out that the 'Mrs Neall' that the police was protecting was a decoy. She was a cop herself. The real witness was the blonde!
A good fast paced film that lived up to the expectation of being a B-Noir without appearing too B-graded!

No child's play!

Chucky wants to play!

There was a time when little children were persona no grata. They were just running around with not much to do but to grow and take over the adult roles. Their duties were none, no structured education was planned. They were eternally grateful to the elders who provided for them, taught them skills and ethics. At an age, they entered teenage, they entered the work force and continued the cycle of life.
With the worse of economic times, with war and loss of parents, they were left to fend for themselves. They matured fast to survive.
Then came a time when they had to be prepared for adulthood. They had to be 'initiated' to be ushered. Education became a pre-requisite. Structured lessons were laid out. Some of the lessons they learnt were never used anytime except during examinations. They still needed to be 'prepared' for the world. Things that they learnt were thought to be useful at some time in their life or career. Some even found their passion and continued with the things they were exposed in school.
Then the desire to expose all them to all form of knowledge arose. It was hoped that the hidden talents would hopefully be exposed and the kids would make a killing later in life or even made it their life.
Then the pressure (no more desire) to ensure that all knowledge known to mankind is parted to growing brains. Parents felt guilty or inadequate for not providing for all these avenues. Some even felt that they had failed miserably as parents for not opening their minds in activities which invoke stimuli from the right to the left parts of the brain and anywhere in between.
If a generation ago, Benjamin Spock's child care was the second-best bestseller in US after the Bible. Now child care manuals can fill a whole library, covering obscure topics like gluten free diet, TV free childrearing etc. etc.
It is understandable if parents feel inadequate and overwhelmed of entering parenthood. It looks like they want to do well with no place for error. Path is set and everyone has to toe the line.

No More!

It is no child's play. The exercise of child rearing which started as an economic commodity to replace the ageing workforce has evolved. It has become an economically draining experience but an emotionally satisfying one, provided you do not post partum depression or become a lunatic trying to prepare them into adulthood.
What started as life as a child with no childhood to talk about has slowly evolved to a period of childhood that never seem to end. That is, if you define adulthood as taking responsibilities of your actions.
Just like how someone told his 18 year old son the other day, "Congratulations, son. You are now 18 years old. You can go to jail now if you caught by the police!"

To be or not to be uncle!

Agatuk (Stranger; Bengali, 1991)
Director: Satyajit Ray

Satyajit Ray, like Hitchcock, must be one of those who never made a bad movie. This is evident in his swan song, which morphed a simple story of a stranger coming into a household into a philosophical discourse on religion, man and civilisation. And attention-grabbing one, at that!

It is a display of simple storytelling with an array of traditional music and tribal dances minus the skilful special effects gadgetry and unrelated pointless visualisation of the human anatomy.
The story mocks the modern society, which is perceived to be suspicious of others and is selfish itself.

Anila and Sudhindra Bose are a middle-class couple with a preteen son, Satyaki. One day, Anila receives a letter from a long lost uncle who left the country some 35 years earlier. He announces his stop-over in Calcutta before leaving off to Australia. Being a gracious guest, he stated in his letter that his host was not obliged to receive him but hoped that they would in keeping with Indian tradition.

This created a suspicion in the mind of the husband. Anila was elated to receive him as he had left when she was only 2 years old.

The uncle, Manomohan Mitra, finally arrives. He turned out to be quite a cheerful and a knowledgeable chap who had spent time in many parts of the world, affluent and backwards, in cities and with tribes.

The seemingly simple man with big ideas again cast doubt on his credibility. A great man with no wealth to show off? And not married after all these years? Is he loafer who would stick with them like a leech? The suspense was killing them. Sudhindra politely peeks into his passport to verify his true identity. It corresponds, but then Mitra himself created an element of doubt. Mitra questioned him how he could believe the passport when it was so easy to fake a passport with modern technology.

A friend, Ranjan, a comedian by profession, tries to tease out more information on his intentions. It develops into an intelligent banter. A city is said to have progressed with its tall skyscrapers and modern infrastructure, but then there are the rickshaw pullers in Calcutta and the homeless in New York. So, where is the progress? Ranjan suggested that perhaps Bengalis are engaged in too much of chit-chatting (Adda). To this, Mitra replied that the Greeks, who believed that a healthy body makes a healthy mind, had gymnasiums where discussions of highest intellect happened there. It later produced great thinkers like Socrates and Plato. So, Adda was not bad, provided it was used for positive reasons.

Then Anila remembered that Mitra's inheritance was not given to him during her grandfather's demise as Mitra was not contactable. Was he there to make trouble and kick a fuss? These were the dilemmas spinning around the couples' minds. Only the son, the simple-minded boy and his friends think he is genuine.

At Alto Mira

Sudhindra engages a lawyer friend, Sengupta, to ascertain whether the stranger in his house is genuine. Another exciting discourse develops. Mitra, after being exposed to the splendour of ancient civilisation, via the picture of cave wall painting of bison of the cave of Alto Mira, decided to see the world. With his princely gift, he worked, saved money, got a degree in Anthropology, stayed with Native American tribes and learnt many secrets of life. The supposed civilisation in a city is an illusion. The sight of people injecting poisons into their veins or destroying a whole nation with a press of a button is anything but civil. The ancient civilisation also had technology in learning to farm, build, weave, music, culture and others. They also discuss cannibalism and promiscuity. Mitra holds wedlock as something very sacred. This, I feel, is the best dialogue of the movie.
At the end of the movie, Mitra actually gets his due inheritance but gives it to the Boses before leaving for Australia virtually embarrassing them.

Man has evolved to become self-centred, egoistic, suspicious of each other and have lost the common courtesy to help each other. The seed of doubt sows suspicion, and soon every action seems to strengthen our suspicion as our mind wants to see it. The so-called 'civilised' urban society considered them 'advanced' at the epitome of human capabilities and achievements. They look down upon the indigenous or tribal people. Their lack of technological know-how is frowned upon. They forget that the higher man climbs the stepladder of industrialisation, the more they become consumers rather than innovators. 

They emphasise their priorities on worldly wealth-related values rather than the old noble values that our forefather so adamantly tried to impress. Humane intra-species and inter-species courtesy is lost. Suspicion creeps in. We forget that we were actually one species which were quite innovative and managed to survive in the wilderness all these years.
Imagine a day some 500 years ago... We are cooped away in the confines of our nearest hills and forests, beyond that spelt danger. Sea was unpredictable. After 12 hours of natural light, it was pitch black wilderness. We used our ingenuity to learn things from the stars, the moon, the sun and their positions at different times to give us a sense of time, season and space to help our crops, food and survival. The native tribes still use the knowledge from nature to this day. Who says they are backward? Their priorities may be different, but they are here on the same journey with us...

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

All kiasu? Nobody wants to be the sucker!

The Golden Ball, a British game show is said to be able to show the conniving nature of humanity. In the last round of the show, the remaining two contestants face a face-off to win the jackpot money (lots of it). They are given two golden balls with either split or steal written on it. If both contestants choose split, the prize money would be split between them. If both choose steal, both go back with nothing. If one chose steal and the other chose split, the one who chose split will end up as the stupid fellow goes back empty-handed whilst the steal goes with the lion's share of the loot.
So the rush is for the contestant not to be the stupid fellow who is slouched in the chair disappointed! In the previous shows, even the girl-next-door goody two shoes looking blue eyed dumb looking blondes had taken their opponents for a ride and mean looking tattooed and moustachioed dudes had failed.
This guy, Nick had a final round face off with Ibrahim below. Nick's strategy was that he was adamant that he was to go for steal and see we played with emotions and managed to make everybody happy.

In the snippet, Ibrahim said that his father had told him not to trust anyone. The irony is that he grew up without a father. The money finally went for charity.

The clash of the classes again.

Uyarntha Manithan (உயர்ந்த மனிதன், The Man in High Esteem, Tamil; 1968)

My friend once described this Sivaji's movie as the one where he gave his performance. So I thought I would give it go for it. It turned out to be another masala with loads of melodrama, poetic justice and a little bit of humiliation and thoughts of various social classes.
Rather than looking at the story line which was quite predictable, I was keen to see the hidden messages, lessons in life, dynamics of an Indian family value in play here.
At a time when the elite were kings, Sivaji's father expects the working to be always a step lower than the bosses. The workers are not even allowed to wear footwear in their presence. Sivaji, the newer breed, does not subscribe to this idea. In fact, he falls in love and marries a village girl on the sly. His father, on discovering the truth, goes the full nine yards to quash the union. He sets her hut on fire right in front of Sivaji's view with his pregnant wife and father still inside (of course, so they think).
Back in his family home, Sivaji is blackmailed by his father pointing a pistol at his own temple, to get him married to a rich family friend's daughter, Sowkar Janaki. I guess it gives a new meaning to the phrase 'shot gun wedding'.
Feeling guilty for not being able his loved pregnant wife from the fire but at the same time, being a filial son, agrees to remarry.
19 years on, as fate has it, Sivaji is childless with his second wife. He is successful but carries the cloud of hopelessness with him. His comrade (S A Asokan), a doctor by profession, who was in partner in crime during his first marriage and was also interested in the same girl before sacrificing in the name of friendship, is a constant reminder to Sivaji of his past folly.
By twist of fate and twist of story written to satisfy the Tamil movie buffs, the son (Sivakumar) starts working in Sivaji's household as a butler. His mother had died but not before passing him a framed photograph of herself.
The story hovers on to show the unhappy marital life that Sivaji leads, Sivaji lamenting on the hardship of adulthood, Sivaji dragging on with life to maintain status quo with order and finally meeting up with his long lost son to wash away all his misdeeds.
A predictable overacting masala with beautiful music and incisive dialogue on facts of life....

A sample of overacting by Asokan who deviates from his role of villain 

Whodunnit? Agatha Christie style

Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
Director: Billy Wilder

With a whodunnit story rich with fascinating characters for what Agatha Christie is famed for, a cast of talented actors (Marlene Dietrich, Tyron Powers, Charles Laughton and John Williams) and the wit of the English, one cannot expect anything less than pure artistry from this court drama movie. It reminds us of a time when acting and dialogue superseded cinematographic wizardry in the success of a film.

The bossy but loveable Barrister, Sir Wilfrid Robarts, is just out of the hospital after a heart attack. He is accompanied around like a mother hen by his nurse (his real-life wife, Elsa Lancaster). They whip quite a chemistry on screen, their arguments are quite fun to watch. She, as a domineering by the book nurse and he, the delinquent and non-complying patient.
A Mr Vole, an ex-Army man, now trying hard to make ends meet, walks into his office, for assistance as he may be charged with murder. A wealthy widow has been murdered, and he was last seen with her. He is soon arrested.

The case becomes more complicated as he inherits a substantial earning from her will. Mr Vole's wife appears at the office. As mysterious as the situation develops, so does she. As a performing artist, she met him in Germany during the war and vouches as an alibi for her husband. Her services are refused by Sir Alfred as it would not hold water in court.

When the case starts, an interesting one that is, with all the wordplay and subtle puns, Mrs Vole appears for the prosecution instead. She then gives an entirely different description of her union with the accused. Vole is acquitted, but the twist is in how the ending turns out.