Sanjay Nair

The film opens at a Rotary Club function to honor the recently retired Justice Jyotin Chatterjee. The judge has served the profession all his life with honor and spotless integrity. As he is about to retire, he recognizes there will now be a void in his life. His wife remarks to reporters that neither he nor she knows what he would do after he retires. Retired life is not easy for the aging judge. The younger generation is bolder and quicker than he was in his time.

A man leaves his house. Another applies for leave in his office. A third finishes his tea. Another gets himself shaved. All four are fresh entrants in the world of crime: kidnapping to be more precise. But the father of the kidnapped boy refuses to pay up. The son has already played this trick before and collected good ransom. The father does not believe this time it is a real thing; The kidnappers get desperate. The son has in idea. The plot thickens.

A father obliges a young boy and takes him to watch movies at New World, Singapore’s iconic entertainment venue of the 1960s and 1970s. The boy is enthralled, growing up on a gamut of film genres. He loves both the comedies and tragedies. He laughs and cries with the characters, experiencing their joys and sorrows, and even falling in love with some of them. The line between reality and flimsy film is marred even, when unwittingly he allows a merging of his life with what goes on in the film world. Oblivious to the real world at times, he is forced to face harsh reality with the unexpected death of his father. Distraught, his escape into his make-believe world also ends suddenly when he stops watching films at the New World.