I had known that Bengali film auteur Buddhadeb Dasgupta had made a hindi language movie with Nawazuddin. But the film never released commercially, and I only got to see it a few days ago online. Despite the laurels of the filmmaker, I have to agree that the movie is uneven, rough in many parts. And yet what drew me to it was the character of Anwar. He's a small-time private detective, sent by his boss in pursuit of unfaithful wives and missing husbands. As he wanders through the streets of Kolkata, and sometimes through nondescript villages of Bihar, with his rather ridiculous coat and sunglasses, his life has none of the glamour or thrill that we associate with private detectives on screen. Instead, his investigations often lead to uncomfortable truths, about a life that he struggles to understand. He is society's quintessential misfit, comfortable only in the confines of his humble flat, with his loyal dog and a bottle of rum. His boss does not want him to get 'too involved in his cases', his clients don't want inconvenient truths, his neighbours consider him a sad excuse of a human. To escape an increasingly confusing reality, he uses his imagination to take him to the security of a childhood long past, and of young love long gone by. It is in his reveries that he gains the fortitude to survive that which is real. In his final case, he comes across a man who has given up a seemingly normal life that no longer makes sense to him. In him Anwar finds hope, of finding his own true self, bereft of the expectations of society, and the absurdities that enslave us. And in this he gives us, the viewers, a chance to think about our own lives, and the terms on which we choose to live it.
