The Lunchbox and the Weight of a Question

Budapest is a city that carries its history on its sleeves. You meet interesting people in such places, the kind who travel not just for leisure, but to make sense of something. I, on the other hand, do usually interact less and mind myself more, owing to a socially scarce upbringing.

Two weeks ago, on the famous Danube bend, I met Jey. A professor at a renowned university on the West Coast of the US, elderly, unhurried, accompanied by his beautiful wife. He asked me if I watch movies from Bollywood.

Budapest, Hungary. Circa 2026 AD. Photo by Author; AI-enhanced.

I smiled a little out of habit. This question isn’t new to me. I have had street hawkers in Dubai yell DDLJ at me, taxi drivers in Malaysia tease me with Tujhe Dekha to ye jaana sanam, all in good fun. The references are always the same. I had my script ready to answer the question.

Jey, however, had not read that script. Once I said yes, he followed up with:

“Is The Lunchbox considered the greatest film ever made in Bollywood?”

I could not answer for a full minute.

The Film That Doesn’t Announce Itself

I distinctly remember this movie wasn’t one I saw or even considered at the time of release. I was a college-going teenager then who had better things to watch in his time.

I did eventually see this movie years later on a Sunday afternoon in silence.

The Lunchbox (2013) is a kind of cinema which anyways doesn’t fight for your attention. It arrives the way a dabbawala’s delivery does — quietly, precisely, into the ordinary middle of your day.

Jey’s question unlocked something I hadn’t consciously filed away. The overcrowded local train. The rain against Ila’s kitchen window. The white topis of the dabbawalas weaving through the city. The lonely balcony where Saajan reads each letter twice.

And the letters themselves — patient, tentative, achingly human.

The synopsis flashback did hit me like a freight train.

What Irrfan Did

There are actors who play characters, and then there are actors who simply agree to be witnessed.

Irrfan Khan was the second kind. As Saajan Fernandes, he does very little in the conventional sense. He sits. He eats. He reads a letter on a park bench with the stillness of a man who has made peace with silence but not yet with loneliness.

Still from The Lunchbox, directed by Ritesh Batra. Produced by Guneet Monga, Anurag Kashyap and Arun Rangachari. Screenshot by author; AI-enhanced.

When I told Jey that Irrfan had passed away in 2020, he went quiet. He hadn’t known. That silence between two strangers in Budapest, for a man neither of us had ever met, said everything about the kind of impact an artist can leave with a single performance.

Few Over Decibels

When I finally answered Jey, I initially attempted a brief detour through the landscape of Indian cinema — commercial Bollywood versus indie, economics versus intimacy. I started, then stopped.

A caricature of golden age of cinema; AI-generated.

He didn’t need the taxonomy. He had watched the film and asked me an honest question.

I simply said, “Yes, by some.”

Sometimes the truth isn’t good enough. Sometimes people deserve more. Sometimes people deserve their faith to be rewarded.

A Cinebug’s Reckoning

Here is what I didn’t say to Jey, but have been thinking about since.

I have loved cinema my whole life — the kind of love where you remember what year a film released and who scored it. And I had never once placed The Lunchbox in the same sentence as greatness. Not because I didn’t feel it. I did, the first time I watched it, and every time since. But in the noise of box office debates and pan-India releases, a film that whispers gets drowned out by films that shout.

It took a US professor in Budapest to hold a mirror up to what I had already known in depth, but had forgotten to bring to the surface.

In the movie, Ila’s last letter suggests that sometimes, a wrong train can take you to the right station.

I think I found my train (of thoughts). Grateful to Jey for asking the question that put me on it.