Rajma Chawal

The Algorithm of Affection

In the digital age, we have built bridges across oceans but burned the ones in our own living rooms. Leena Yadav’s *Rajma Chawal* (2018) arrives not merely as a comedy about a generational divide, but as a melancholic inquiry into the silence that fills a home after a matriarch dies. It is a film that asks a terrifying question: when a father and son have nothing left to say to one another, can a lie become the only truth they share? While the premise—a father "catfishing" his son on Facebook—threatens to veer into the farcical or the predatory, Yadav steers it toward a tender, albeit uneven, exploration of grief and the desperate, clumsy things we do for love.



Yadav, previously known for the searing *Parched*, shifts her gaze here to the chaotic, labyrinthine alleys of Chandni Chowk in Old Delhi. The visual language of the film is a deliberate clash of textures. The cinematography captures the cramped, ancient architecture of the city—representing the father, Raj Mathur (played with heartbreaking warmth by the late Rishi Kapoor)—against the glowing, sterile blue light of smartphones that captivate his son, Kabir (Anirudh Tanwar). The setting is not just a backdrop; it is an antagonist. For Kabir, the move to this "uncool" part of town is a prison sentence; for Raj, it is a return to a community that still understands the analog language of touch and food.

The heart of the film beats in the chest of Rishi Kapoor. In one of his final roles, Kapoor sheds the vanity of the leading man to inhabit the sagging shoulders of a widower who is terrified of becoming irrelevant to his own child. He plays Raj not as a villainous deceiver, but as a man drowning in silence. The controversial central plot device—where Raj pretends to be a young woman named "Tara" on social media to engage his son—is undeniably problematic if viewed through a strictly ethical lens. However, the film treats it as a tragic measure of desperation. The scenes where Raj eagerly waits for a notification, his face illuminated by the screen, are less about deception and more about the starving need for connection. He is a man digitizing his soul because his physical presence has become repugnant to his son.



However, the narrative structure struggles to support the weight of its emotional ambition. While the veteran actors (including a delightful supporting cast led by Sheeba Chaddha and Nirmal Rishi) provide a rich tapestry of Old Delhi life, the younger characters feel thinner, sketched out rather than lived in. The film sometimes mistakes the mechanics of social media for the psychology of the user, leading to moments that feel slightly out of touch with how digital natives actually interact. Yet, the film recovers in its quieter moments—the sharing of a meal, the unspoken apology in a glance—where the title dish becomes a metaphor for comfort that transcends the digital facade.

Ultimately, *Rajma Chawal* is a flawed but deeply human testament to the lengths parents will go to bridge the gap. It suggests that in a world obsessed with "likes" and "shares," the most difficult status update is simply admitting that you are lonely. It is a fitting, bittersweet elegy for the analog father trying to survive in a digital son's world.