The Lunchbox....(Part 1)

I saw a movie yesterday...after the mental torture of "Chennai Express"...this movie felt like a breath of fresh air. The Lunchbox..as uncomplicated as the name seems to be...holds a beautiful story about a strange relationship...it kind of proves that you don't need to meet a person to actually fall in love. There are lots of others aspects from which you can grow to like a person. The story is placed in the backdrop of Mumbai, it's cramped houses and busy local trains.These local trains carry perhaps their most important and valued passengers...The Dabbawallas. These dabbawallas may seem insignificant to the common eye...but they hold the happiness of perhaps 1000's of people who get the food delivered by these dabbawallas. The most intriguing is the fact that these dabbawallas deliver lunchboxes to perhaps hundreds of government offices and even regular offices and they almost NEVER deliver it to wrong people. Anyway, this story includes a normal housewife living in the midst of Mumbai who sends a lunchbox to her husband everyday. She has a passion for cooking and listening to the radio. She usually spends her time cooking for her husband and taking care of her daughter....when she cooks she likes to ask and consult a lady who lives right above her. She is an old lady who is her guide and philosopher through the whole film(though we never get to actually SEE who she is)..she is just portrayed as a very influential and strongly-opinionated voice who sheds light on the dilemmas that the housewife is facing and sometimes sends her ingredients to help with her cooking. Overall her role in the movie is quite essential and adds quite a quirky aspect to the whole scenario. Now, on the other hand the dabba sent by the housewife actually reaches the wrong address.The dabba reaches a very subdued and a person of little words. This is a man who is what you call a classic 'government worker'. This man has given almost 35 years to his office and the rising point of his day is when he gets to go home and have his nightly smoke. But when the wrong dabba comes to him, he opens it to find that the food is quite different from what he gets otherwise. He finds that this food is delicious and wholesome and thus finishes the whole dabba. When the housewife gets the dabba back she is very happy to see that it's almost licked clean. what she doesn't know is that the dabba didn't even reach her husband but went to the other man instead. She asked her husband how the food was..he said that it was okay. But she was surprised to hear that he didn't have any further comments about her food. Anyway when she got back the dabba next day...it was again..empty. She had made paneer do pyaza (I suppose). So she asked her husband again..that's when he said not to make aloo gobhi everyday. That was the moment when she realized that her food was going to someone else. So she wrote him a letter saying that the food was for her husband...and was apparently reaching the wrong address(not before consulting the old lady above though). This not reached the man on the other side to which he wrote very rudely "the food is very salty".

I realize that this is turning into a HUGE post..so forgive me. I shall continue in Part 2.