“The Lunchbox” and Indian Food

Nimrat Kaur as Ila in “The Lunchbox” (Sony).

Recently, my boyfriend and I went to an independent movie theater in downtown Philadelphia to watch the Ritesh Batra film The Lunchbox. I enjoyed the movie a lot, but it reminded me of my complicated relationship with Indian food. 

In the film, Ila (played by Nimrat Kaur) discovers that the lunchbox she meticulously prepares for her husband every day has been delivered by the  daabawalla  (the famous food delivery service in Mumbai) to the wrong person in the wrong office. The recipient of the wrong lunchbox, an office worker named Saajan (played by Irrfan Khan), finds a note that Ila wrote to her husband inside of the box and writes back. The two begin a correspondence that starts out as friendly, but they then begin to reveal intimate details about their lives as Ila places notes inside of the mistaken lunchbox and Saajan responds to them.

Ila reveals to Saajan that she’s trying to rekindle her marriage through her cooking. She puts care into each meal she cooks for her husband, but she is met with indifference and one-word conversations with him. Saajan tells Ila that he is a widower who struggles with loneliness, but he finds comfort in her cooking. As the movie progresses, Ila reveals to Saajan that she discovered that her husband was having an affair, and the movie takes a serious turn as they both consider leaving their current lives to be with each other. When Saajan doesn’t respond after Ila suggests that they run away together, Ila sends him an empty lunchbox the next day, and the move goes on to follow their resolution.

I haven’t seen very many films where the food was central to plot. I recognized some of the dishes in the movie, such as the ones made with paneer (fresh cheese curd), but I felt guilty that I couldn’t name the rest of the dishes that Ila prepared for the lunchbox every day. My Indian-American friend in high school raved about her mother’s cooking and how she’d miss eating Indian food every day when she’d go to college. I was raised eating some Indian food, but my Indian dad and white mom never cooked it very often. After my parents got divorced, the only Indian food that I had was in restaurants with my dad. To me, it was all food with names I couldn’t pronounce or translate, and I felt guilty. Granted, food served in Indian restaurants varied slightly with the South Indian food that my family cooked, but I still regret not learning my aunt’s fish curry recipe or the ingredients in my dad’s tandoori chicken marinade. There’s still time to learn and connect with my heritage through food, but until I have enough time, I’ll have to try to find an Indian restaurant that actually serves masala dosa.