Chirodini Tumi Je Amar 2

Starring: Arjun Chakrabarty, Urmila Mohanta, Kharaj Mukherjee
Directed by Soumik Chatterjee
Rating: ***

Don’t judge a book by its cover. Don’t judge a movie by its name. The title, which in English means ‘You Are Mine, Eternally’ (name of a pop­ular ’80s film number), gives one the impr­ession that this is a seq­uel to a commercial teen flick. It is not.

CTJA2 is a deeply moving film inspired by stories of India’s marginalised masses whose individual dreams and des­ires, loves and lives, die violent deaths in a society inevitably ruled by the powerful.

Bhola, a bright schoolboy from a poverty-­stricken Bengal village, comes home one day to find his father, a bony old man, doubled up in pain and his mother weeping inconsolably. He learns that a local political goon had beaten them up and threatened them with dire consequences if they did not hand over their land for money they owed him for a loan. Bhola abandons studies and leaves for Calcutta in search of work. Ill-trea­ted by his bosses at a spice-manufacturing shop, who conceal from him the news of his parents’ death, he finds work at a roadside fast food joint. Here he falls in love with a girl who works as a domestic help. The glimmer of hope that lights up his life, however, is soon ext­i­nguished when he finds himself accused of a heinous crime in which the girl is a victim. The plot resembles a crime thril­ler. And yet it never once loses touch with the essential theme: the utter, hopeless injustice that mercilessly binds the lives of our country’s downtrodden.