"The Lunchbox" - two lonely Indian souls meet over a packed hot lunch.

Some critics have called the 2013 film “The Lunchbox” a romantic comedy, but I am not sure that there was much normal romance.. nor was it intentionally comic. Nonetheless I loved the film, which was directed by Ritesh Batra.

This very restrained, understated story was set in Mumbai, surely the most noisy, crowded and unrestrained city on the planet. I imagine that Greater Mumbai (pop 21 mill) was chosen ironically, given that both leading characters were desperate for ANY genuine, human interaction.

Saajan Fernandez (played by Irrfan Khan) was a lonely widower about to retire from the accountancy job he had done for all his adult life. His job was important, but it must have been boring and endlessly repetitive. Ila (played by Nimrat Kaur) was a young wife and mother who wanted to excite her husband again. The elderly neighbour, who lived in a flat upstairs, was full of information on how young Ila might improve both her recipes and her sex life.

Having set the scene, the film moved to a very Indian part of life. There are 5000 dabbawalas-lunchbox couriers in Mumbai each day, men who pick up hot lunches packed in thermos containers and carry them from the worker’s home to the worker’s office. One of these Mumbai dabbawalas made a mistake! Instead of Ila’s beautiful lunch going to her own husband’s desk, it was accidentally delivered to the lonely widower Saajan’s desk.

Saajan (above) and Ila (below) with their letters and food containers

When the lunch containers were deliv­er­ed back to Ila totally empty, she was very happy, thinking her husb­and must have really enjoyed her cooking. When she questioned the husband, he was distracted and did not want to talk to her at all, let alone chat about hot lunch and thermos containers. Realising the mistake of the delivery, Ila popped a note in the thermos flask to the unknown recipient of her lunch, thanking him for enjoying her food. Saajan replied and so an exchange of the messages sent back and forth improbably started.

Not the most earth shattering mystery ever to be solved in human history! Had Ila’s husband not been ignoring his own family to chase a perfumed bimbo, and had Saajan not been facing a miserable lifestyle of lonely retirement, the film might have ended there.

Meanwhile other characters emerged in Saajan’s and Ila’s lives. A new young employee, Shaikh (played by Nawazuddin Siddiqui) was going to take over Saajan’s job, so there was the question of training and preparing for the changeover. Shaikh was bouncy and irrepress­ible, but not very bright. Saajan and Shaikh did eventually develop a kind of friendship for themselves, to the extent that Saajan agreed to be his best man in the wedding, since Shaikh had no family of his own. In Ila’s case, she was virtually the sole parent to her daughter AND was looking after her mother and terminally ill father as well.

I don’t want to reveal the crunch part of the film, except to say that Ila finally decided to search for Saajan by asking the address where the dabbawalas sent her food. She went to Saajan's office to meet him, but was too late; he had already retired. The film goer is left with the question “but what of their futures?”

The best review of this film said the film dealt with the splendour of two people falling in love without having met, through an epistolary relationship; a sort of 84 Charing Cross Road, with extra pappadums. A literary device, if you will. I wish I had thought of 84 Charing Cross Road while I was sitting in the cinema watching The Lunchbox; it is one of my favourite modern novels.