Last night at 2 a.m., while being completely exhausted, overwhelmed and saturated with everything happening around us these days, I watched Ajeeb Dastaans (Translation: Weird/Unusual Stories) almost in a blind daze while willing my tired, still weak and still recovering body to sleep. Till I reached ‘Ankahi’ (Translation: Unspoken), and woke right up. This goes out to Manav Kaul (and the Ankahi Team, but mainly Manav). What a performance, what a character, what a story and what a heartbreak! He’s done and said more with his eyes and gentle, tinkling laughter than people could with words. When Kabir, his character, struggled to say those three elusive words, his audience fell in love with him. When Kabir’s heart broke silently, his audience cried quite audibly. Every time I feel like he’s given a stellar performance, he goes right ahead and tops that with an even more spectacular one. I’m glad Ankahi was the last segment in this assortment movie because after Kabir, nothing else would have been able to capture either the attention or the heart.
Do, do, do watch it. Even if you don’t speak or understand Hindi. You won’t need to know it, trust me, because this short movie can speak to each and every single one of us. It is available on Netflix India. Basically it is a compilation of four short movies, each having a twist in the end.
I did not like the other segments/stories in the movie that much. The second last, Geeli Pucchi (Translation : Wet Kiss), being a laudable commentary on caste based social division and homosexuality but it seemed a little too obvious and predictable to me. Like it was trying to hard. Nevertheless, the performance given by both the lead actresses was endearing.
If you want to watch only the part that I’ve recommended, you can watch the movie from 1:47:28 time stamp.
Moonlighting Scrivener 