Rajma Chawal

After testing the waters with some very diverse material over the past few years — such as comedy specials by Aditi Mittal and Vir Das, popular miniseries such as Sacred Games and the romantic comedy Love by Square Foot — Netflix India are set to release further original and acquired content.

Next up, in late November, the streaming giant will add to its ever-growing slate by releasing Leena Yadav’s Rajma Chawal. The film celebrated its world premiere at the London Film Festival last month and tells the tale of Raj Mathur (Rishi Kapoor), who, after the death of his wife, moves back to his childhood home in Old Delhi with his son Kabir (Anirudh Tanwar).

Kabir resents his father for having moved away from New Delhi. He’s finding it hard to adjust to the quirks and customs of the old city and unable to find inspiration for his singing and songwriting. Whenever Raj tries to strike up a conversation with him, he gets agitated and it all goes south. Kabir doesn’t get along with the rest of the family either; how dare they tell him, the city boy through and through, what the proper way of eating rajma chawal — ie rice with red beans curry — is?

Raj thinks Kabir will warm up soon and decides to do the only logical thing — he sends him a Facebook friend request. But when his digital advances are coldly rejected, he creates a fake profile with a random girl’s picture. Kabir is smitten with “Tara” (Amyra Dastur), telling her his dreams and fears and not knowing he’s being catfished by Daddy Dearest. When the real Tara shows up, along with her boyfriend (Aparshakti Khurana), things get complicated.

There’s a lot of fun to be had with Rajma Chawal, especially during the portions where father and son are texting each other. Rishi Kapoor pitches in a performance that is at once endearing — imagine King Lear trying to win Cordelia’s love through social media. He gets some great lines too, like “In how many working days will he receive my friend request?” The talented Leena Yadav, who got her international directorial breakthrough with Parched last year, a film very different from Rajma Chawal in terms of tone and treatment, has delivered a very sweet movie about the old and the new and how each generation has its own way of dealing with love and loss.

Three Indian films that premiered at last month’s London Film Festival — Rajma Chawal, Namdev Bhau and Tumbbad — say a lot about their directors

Namdev Bhau

If Rishi Kapoor wants to close the communication gap with his distant son in Rajma Chawal, Namdev Bhau, the titular hero in director Dar Gai’s road movie, never wants to speak to another soul again. The 65-year-old driver is fed up with the sounds and voices around him. The shor (din) of the Mumbai traffic, his clients’ demands, his wife at home — Namdev Bhau simply has had enough of it all and wants some peace and quiet. He leaves the metropolis and makes his way to the Himalayas.

Here’s the thing: we’re all Namdev Bhau on some level. It’s not a stretch to sympathise with him at all. When his quest for silence is constantly being disrupted by an alternating set of irritating characters, be it a jabbering young woman at the inn he’s staying at one night, or a young boy who refuses to leave him for the rest of the journey (because he is also on a journey of his own), you can really feel Namdev Bhau’s pain. Even though he’s mostly mute, his piercing eyes do all the talking and convey all his inner torment.

Dar Gai was born in Ukraine and is now based in India. This is her second feature film and getting a non-professional actor to essay the title role is a masterstroke. Namdev Gurav doesn’t have to do much. He often just looks appropriately confused, blankly staring ahead, be it in frustration or anguish. But despite this wonderful main character, the script never becomes worthy of him. You can only show so many scenic panorama shots, everything that the director wants to say is said within the first quarter of an hour.

The metaphysical level of this work is evident: “Look here, this is an Indian film not as loud or irritating as other Indian films, it’s not a silly comedy or mindless action flick. Namdev Bhau is in search of silence as much as you, dear viewer, are in search of better cinema.” But that’s not really a film, that’s an MA thesis. And sadly, Namdev Bhau in Search of Silence does often feel like an intellectually promising but very boring student film, where the concept got lost somewhere along the way.

Tumbbad

The word “visionary” gets thrown around too often in film journalism but what the filmmakers of Tumbbad have achieved is truly visionary. They have built a world that feels so terrifyingly real and at the same time beautifully fantastic. There’s no other film quite like this one, in terms of its originality and intelligence.

The story is mainly set in pre-Partition India, from 1918 to 1947. But first, there’s an animated prologue; the Goddess of Prosperity has given birth to millions of gods, but her first-born is her favourite, Hastar. He’s a demon god and wants to control all the goddess’ gold and grain. He does get hold of all the gold, but when he wants to capture the grain, all the other gods attack him. The Goddess of Prosperity saves him just in time by taking him back into her womb.

In 1918, in the titular village of Tumbbad, a young Brahmin boy is after an ancient treasure. There’s nothing else he wants more and he’ll go to desperate lengths to acquire it. Greed is a deadly sin and it is indeed a deadly endeavour to challenge the demon god Hastar, as it turns out that he’s after his gold. Only the boy’s great grandmother, an old, zombie witch refusing to die, knows its secret location.

Over the next three decades, after having successfully tricked the witch into revealing the whereabouts of the riches, the boy grows into a shrewd businessman. There’s no stopping him or this soul-crushing secret obsession, which will haunt his family forever.

Director Rahi Anil Barve — along with co-director Adesh Prasad, creative director Anand Gandhi and exceptional screen presence Sohum Shah — has created an unforgettable fable for our times. So much can be read into the narrative, how Tumbbad is a critique of modern capitalism, of mankind’s treatment of nature and the environment, of men’s treatment of women. But it can also be enjoyed for its spectacle alone. The cinematography (by Pankaj Kumar) is astounding and the final scene is cinema at its most electrifying.

Published in Dawn, ICON, November 11th, 2018