In a sprawling house in Lucknow in 1962, news of the war with China comes through on the radio, a gentle breeze blows, it rains every now a...
In a sprawling house in Lucknow in 1962, news of the war with China comes through on the radio, a gentle breeze blows, it rains every now and then, and a nine-year-old girl implores the live-in butler to transport her to other worlds.
Shankar, tell me a story, Anjana pleads ever so often. He obliges, drawing on tall tales and folklore and firing the imagination of the curious and friendly child.
Irfana Majumdar’s Shankar’s Fairies is actually about the ineffable – times long past that remain in the recesses of the mind and heart in the form of snatches and glimpses, never complete but always vivid. The movie is both a chronicle of a young girl’s awakening to social truths and a portrait of Nehruvian India, a time of grace and propriety but also rigid stratification and ignored injustices.
Anjana is the daughter of the Senior Superintendent of Police and a beneficiary of the trappings of his office. The cavernous government-allotted house comes with a retinue of domestic workers.
As the police officer’s long-serving batman, Shankar runs the show, from packing Anjana’s lunch boxes to preparing the latest European dessert. Always on call and not always happy with his workload, Shankar often thinks of his own daughter back...
