The Lunchbox

From different  contexts two characters cite the same adage: “Sometimes the wrong train gets you to the right station.” The duplication confirms the implication of the saying: A larger  harmony may overlay the apparent chaos and insularity of our lives.

The food delivery error finds the right recipient: not the neglectful, unfaithful husband Rajeev (for whom it’s intended) but the genuinely appreciative and needy widower Saajan. In the days of cellphones and email the two strangers’ connection by paper notes smuggled in the food-tins speaks of older traditions and values. Even if all the paper files and manual accounting in Saajan’s claims department are curiously archaic. 

Since losing his wife Saajan is tight, silent, unexpressive. His colleagues warn his trainee Shaikh that he won’t get anything out of Saajan. He’s removed from his colleagues and alienated from his neighbors. Ila is almost equally isolated, despite being married, with a delightful daughter and a cheery advisor in the upstairs “Auntie.” Ila can’t get any affection or notice from Rajeev and finds another’s perfume on his shirts. Because we don’t see Auntie she doesn’t register as an actual relief from Ila’s isolation. So the stranger’s notes appreciating her cooking and sharing his observations and feelings — and attending to hers — are enough to excite Ila, even to give her hope that she may find an alternative more fulfilling relationship. At both ends of the meal’s transmission the two fantasize a relationship. This meal provides multiple nourishment. It’s enough to prompt Saajan to forgo early retirement and Ila to leave her husband. 

A key motif is the faint register of an individual in a mass. This is most clear in the montage that follows Ila’s food-cans through the daily delivery, one bundle barely discerned amid the mass. Her fertile green case stands out in the drab crowd. So, too, the noisy teeming crowd — in First-Class, yet — on Saajan’s commute to/from work. In the last photo at Sheikh’s wedding his sole representative Saajan is almost framed out as the camera shifts to include the bride’s extending family.  

But the film stays open-ended. If we prefer the pre-couple’s romantic hopes we can infer that Saajan, back from his retirement spot and traveling with the food-deliverers, will get to Ila before her daughter returns from school and the three will depart together. 

But if our experience rather tends toward the tragic expectation, they won’t meet. Her alienation deepened by her mother’s relief at her lately disgusting husband’s death, and by learning Saajan has moved away, Ila may well commit suicide. The shot of her removing her jewellery replays her visualization of the news story of the mother who jumped with her child to death. As Ila thinks the letter she may or may not send Saajan (p.s., How?) her morbid emotions might drive her off before her daughter returns from school. Hence her wistful look as the girl left. This ending would recall the near-misses that fatally thwart the romance of Romeo and Juliet. 

The comic subplot of Shaikh and his beloved, who ran away from home to be with him, could support either reading. These lovers’ perseverance ends in family acceptance and success. So it could parallel the romantic union of Ila and Saaja. Equally, though, it could be cited as a dramatic counterpoint to the older lovers’ tragedy.
If we’re not given one certain ending the director is suggesting that the ending doesn’t matter.  Whether or not the lovers meet and settle in together, both have grown from the experience. Warmed by the idea of having a girlfriend, Saajan has opened out to Shaikh and to his neighbours’ children. He is already living a happier life, his emotions reawakened. And whether or not Saajan gets to her in time, Ila has worked up the courage to escape her stifling marriage. Whether it’s romance or death, the wrong train could still find the right station — if only by leaving the wrong one.