A drama-romance to feed your senses
Imagine a daily lunch delivery system for which teams of couriers pick up coded canisters of delicious homemade food from suburban homes and deliver them by trains and bicycles to specific employees working in high-rise office buildings.
Human relay teams have fuelled this extraordinary system for more than a century in one of India’s most congested cities, Mumbai. What do unmarried male office workers eat for lunch? Two bananas — apparently.
What could possibly go wrong in a system Harvard University studied for its scale, efficiency and hygiene?
In his debut feature film, The Lunchbox (2013), director-writer Ritesh Batra conceives a scenario for which a lunchbox prepared by a beautiful young woman, Ila (Nimrat Kaur), is delivered to the wrong office worker. Through a glitch in the system, her delicious Indian dishes land on the office desk of Saajan Fernandes (Irrfan Khan), a widower contemplating early retirement. What could be more fortuitous in a drama-romance.
Viewers will recognize actor Iffan Khan from Slumdog Millionaire (2008), The Amazing Spider-man (2012) and Life of Pi (2012).
Ila prepares her dishes on a twoburner stove in a small brightly lit kitchen, happily chatting about spices through an open window with her unseen auntie living in the upper flat. The wry auntie complains about the dull routine of caring for her failing husband. Ila’s mother confesses her disgust at years wasted in a loveless marriage.
Will this be Ila’s fate, too? In a gesture of longing, she smells her husband’s soiled shirts in lieu of the man himself, who watches television during evening meals with their young daughter.
The resourceful Ila begins a correspondence (with her husmarriage, FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre, 250 St. Paul St,. St. Catharines, 905-688-0722 Listings for May 23 to 29
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band, she thinks) to revive her tucking notes into the folds of papadum. Each time the widower Saajan opens the lunchbox intended for Ila’s husband, he warms to the openness of the writer.
The widower is pleased when a new office trainee, Shaikh (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), describes Ila’s talent: “Your wife has magic in her hands.” Saajan retreats to his defined role, replying, “My wife is dead.”
The notes between a man and woman unknown to each other are charged with feelings beyond the heat of Ila’s spicy paneer dish. Words and language form a path to the heart. When the error is discovered, the woman suggests meeting in a cafe. At home, the man listens to Radio-Bhutan, intrigued by Bhutan’s social ideal of guaranteed National Happiness.
Saajan’s office trainee Shaikh is discouraged from marrying the woman he loves by her patriarchal father. Growing up an orphan in Mumbai, the charming Shaikh bends social rules by openly chopping vegetables on a crowded train in preparation for dinner. At the office, a supervisor chides both men for the lingering smell of vegetables on clients’ insurance files. In a culture where cauliflower and eggplant form the basis of savory Indian dishes, their scent on company files betrays the seepage of tradition into India’s corporate goals.
The Lunchbox is a delightful film about the necessary risks in shedding a mundane life, afforded by a glitch in the lunchbox delivery system. Through intimate notes, strangers Ila and Saajan skirt traditional roles. She removes her wedding jewelry. He makes connections with his neighbours.
In Ila’s world, she prophetically remarks, “Somewhere I read that the wrong train can lead you to the right station.” Like the notes, language opens up cultural perceptions of a more fulfilling life beyond tradition and routine.
The Lunchbox is a departure from the escapist pleasures of the Bollywood musical film model, typically evolving around spectacular wedding scenes. International audiences and critics have acclaimed its modern narrative, fresh characters and sensitive performances, as have film festivals with cinema nominations and awards.
I highly recommend it.