Rafeeq Ellias

Like Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbour, on a smaller but equally poignant scale, 3000 members of India's tiny Chinese community were incarcerated in an old POW camp for up to 4 years in the aftermath of the India-China war of 1962. Even children, expectant mothers and the elderly were not spared. Most people don't know about this tragic episode. There is no acknowledgment or apology either from the government to date. And yet, among those who suffered, the love for India and things Indian remain alongside the pain and hurt. It's a story that reminds us that history has a way of repeating itself. Again and again.

Rashid Irani once owned a traditional Irani restaurant, the kind that were invariably at the city's busiest crossroads and are now fast disappearing. But over the decades, Rashid's heart beat firmly at twenty four frames per second as he traversed many worlds, re-living Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Werner Herzog, Abbas Kiarostami and more; along with books on cinema and poetry. This is a film about him, his cafe, his neighbourhood and a world of erasure, accelerating in the time of covid. A dedicated bachelor who 'lived life vicariously through movies', RIP, Rashid Irani.

In a city caught between aspiration and decay, three bars move along their separate orbits. Each a small kingdom of delusion with its own social universe, fragile mythologies, and everyday theatre of performance and pretense. But as their stories begin to bleed into one another, a darkly humorous, unexpectedly tender, and occasionally harsh mosaic emerges, revealing the soft fictions that shape our world.