When I mentioned to my friend Zamir my plan to watch a movie every day this year, he promptly reminded me of our long-held promise to watch the acclaimed 2013 Indian film The Lunchbox together. A few messages back and forth later and suddenly he is on a train, heading across town with a container of his mum’s fantastic biriyani in hand, and since we hadn’t actually seen each other in person in at least four years, this was both a shock and a delight, and makes me already grateful to have made this particular resolution.
After several hours of catching up, we finally settled down to watch this simple yet complex, sweet yet poignant, depressing yet uplifting gem of a film. Irrfan Khan plays the reclusive, widowed curmudgeon Saajan, who is about to take early retirement from his office job and doesn’t seem happy about it. Or anything, really. But then one day he receives the wrong lunch, this one lovingly prepared by the beautiful and unhappily married Ily (Nimrat Kaur) instead of the restaurant he usually receives it from. This begins a correspondence both intimate and anonymous, as these two forthright but uncertain souls – so different in so many ways – find common ground, and, above anything, hope in each other.
Comedic elements in the film are supplied mostly by Saajan’s eager new apprentice, Shaikh (a very engaging Nawazuddin Siddiqui) and Ily’s voice-only upstairs neighbour Auntie, who dispenses marital advice, cooking tips and spices while caring for her bedridden husband. There is a lot of local flavour, as the lunch delivery service – the dabbawalla system – is celebrated in all its chaotic complexity, with legions of lunches being collected from homes all over the huge and sprawling metropolis that is Mumbai and taken by bicycle, cart and train into the city’s packed offices. At one point in the film, Ily tells her delivery man that her lunch is going to the wrong place, and he refuses to believe such a mistake can possibly have happened. People from Harvard, he says, came and observed its flawlessness, after all. I did some research, and yes, not only is this system held as the gold standard by most authorities, it is theorized that the reason this film was not chosen by the Film Federation of India as the nation’s official submission to the Academy Awards that year was because it dared to call into question the infallibility of the dabbawallas.
Both Kahn and Kaur are fantastic here, each of them expressing their loneliness with few words—its mostly in their eyes, their sighs, their silence. The change in them, as their penpal-based acquaintanceship/romance develops, is subtle but visceral, and the while of course, no film of this nature is going to wrap things up for us in a neat, pretty bow, when it ended I had a smile on my face, and Zamir and I spent a very happy half hour essentially writing verbal fanfic, as we speculated on what would happen next.
In all, a lovely film, a lovely experience, and lovely company with whom to enjoy it.
And lovely biriyani, too.
A+
Written by: Ritesh Batra
Directed by: Ritesh Batra
Starring: Irrfan Khan, Nimrat Kaur, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Bharti Achrekar, Nakul Vaid
WHERE I WATCHED IT: Starz.
I stopped reading this one as soon as the hateful Earl of Northcliffe called sex with his teenage virgin bride a “ploughing” not very many chapters in. I should have stopped earlier, when the horrible men of his horrible family start detailing their tribe of illegitimate children, not all of whom were birthed by entirely willing maidens.
No, thank you.
About a quarter of the way into this book, I knew exactly where it was going. Our heroine has amnesia, and there is much mystery as to where she came from, who she is, why she was running away and who is the little boy she had with her, but who does not seem to be hers? When I tell you that she does not regain her memory until the novel’s overblown conclusion, hundreds of pages later, and that in the meantime she is proposed to multiple times by no less than three men, becomes engaged (halfway through the book!), is told that she is already married, survives multiple attempts on her life, and relies on the kindness of so many strangers she should be dead many times over even without the assassin on her trail, you will scarce credit it, nor should you.
Back to my old friend Poirot, and each time continues to be a revelation. Oh, this one — an elderly lady writes to Poirot because of a nameless fear, and when he investigates, she is dead — isn’t necessarily as original as the last few have been, and the killer is a little more obvious than previously, but the method, motive and, most importantly, Poirot’s suave unmasking of the culprit never fail to amaze.
Originally published as two separate books, The Making of the Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst, this gorgeous antique hardcover from 1901 was an unexpected and delightful find for me, since Frances Hodgson-Burnett was one of the idols of my childhood — The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, Little Lord Fauntleroy — but for some reason it had never occurred to me, as an adult, to check what other books she might have written. It turns out, Burnett has an impressive catalogue, which eventually I will take a wander through (one of them, I bought at the same time as this, historical romance A Lady of Quality, which I will be delving into shortly), but first there is this rather cheery romance about the penurious, but well-born (of course) Emily Fox-Seton, who wins the hand and cold heart of a widowed marquis with her simple kind nature.
Another alternate Marvelverse, this one sees some of our favourite X-Men — Wolverine, Cyclops, Rogue, Angel, Storm, Iceman, Colossus and Beast among them — recruited as students at the prestigious Worthington Academy, which is under the control of the enigmatic Professor Magnus. (Yes. He’s Magneto.)
Another Dodo Press “forgotten classic” reissue, and I… think I liked it? This 1922 novel full of pastoral England and WWI and an emerging, evolving amorality is not quite a family saga, not quite a romance, and not quite an insightful window into its time and place, but it is a little bit of all those things, and that made it pretty compelling, if not entirely satisfactory.
I’m assuming that Liu Cixin approved the alteration of his surname-given name ordering when this book saw an English edition in 2014, but it still makes me shake my head, because: why? Surely people can figure out that in some cultures, countries and language groups, the family name comes first?
I have bought a few Dodo Press books over the years, and I very much admire that publishing house’s determination to bring perhaps forgotten novels forward to the 21st century, and to a whole new audience. I am so, so grateful that Lady Betty Across the Water was one of their chosen texts to preserve, because I completely loved this tale of a beautiful young Duke’s daughter who is introduced to wealthy New York society in the early 1900s.