Every once and a while, I come across a film which catches something inside of me and stays with me for a while. There seems to be no specific rhyme or reason to indicate which film will do this. Rather it just comes out of nowhere, like falling in love.
The film The Lunchbox turned out to be one of those films. I had seen a few posters and listened to an NPR segment on the film. in which they talked about the dabbawallah hot lunch delivery system of India that the drama centers around. This famous system facilitates the accurate and precise daily delivery of hot lunches from people’s homes or a chosen restaurant to that person at work with very little margin of error. So successful and precise is the system that it has been studied by several business schools. Even Prince Charles was forced to fit into the dabbawallah system instead of the system fitting into his Royal Highness’ when he was traveling there. I was fascinated.
I also chose this film instead of anything else in my neighborhood art house theatre for two reasons: 1) it was not an action/suspense/thriller film (like everything else playing at that time), and 2) it was an Indian film, and ever since I saw City of Joy when I was eleven years-old on a date with my aunt I have had a soft spot for films that take place in India or deal with Indian culture. I made a great choice.
The story begins with the dabbawallah lunch system. It is through a rare mix up that the two main characters of the film connect. Saajan is a lonely widowed government employee on the tail end of his career when due to a mix up he ends up with the tiffin (lunch box) intended for Rajiv, a young ignored housewife, Ila’s, husband. Ila quickly realizes the mistake when she asks her husband Rajiv in a roundabout way about the “special lunch” she created for him and he comments about a food which wasn’t present in the meal she lovingly created. Instead of informing the dabbawallahs of their mistake, Ila decides to send the lunch box again, because Saajan had finished the whole lunch (something her husband never did). This action leads these two lonely people into an epistolary correspondence via the lunch box. In their letters, they each find connection they were previously missing.
I was struck by the fact that these two people, before they connected with each other, were people who were unheard and barely seen. They were insignificant. Ila and Saajan, because of circumstances and choice, had ended up being in a space where they were isolated and cut off from connection and community.
Feeling insignificant and isolated are common experiences that many of us have. I myself have been overwhelmed during the times when I’ve felt insignificant and cut off from community and unable (or unwilling) to share myself and my voice with others. Those spaces can be the beginnings of many things–despair, hope, creativity, or destruction just to name a few. Throughout the course of the story, this film touches on some of those various responses in these two characters.
The film is a brief dropping into a small bit of these two people’s lives. Maybe that is the power of the film for me–it was a beautiful, interesting, and charming story about a relationship in which the two people involved find a kindred soul and connection in each other through a mix-up that results in their letter writing.