Termite Review: Shaunak Sen’s Fiction Foray Is An Elegy-In-Waiting For Shifting Male Friendships

Once again, the alleys of Delhi hum their ache, regrets and yearnings in Shaunak Sen’s debut fiction outing, Termite. It’s a short film as if Sen is testing the ground before hoisting his flag on it. Like his Oscar-nominated 2022 breakout doc, All That Breathes, the fiction short is also alive and porous to an ecological world, the fellow non-inhuman inhabitants we share our lives with, marginality and the deep curl of thoughts and fears you swat away in recesses.

Premiering in Toronto International Film Festival's Short Cuts competition, Termite circles Ajith (Valavane Koumarane) and Saud (Faisal Malik), who are roommates in old Delhi. One is Tamil, the other a Muslim. Both have the status of outsiders in the capital. For all the comfort they find in each other, the city’s hostility never ceases to be a constant reminder. Through it all, Ben Bernhard’s camera keeps reverting to insects that form the fulcrum of Ajith’s unswerving gaze as a termite inspector. It widens those tiny movements as principal in their realm, as vital to the larger world that knits us all. The very first thing that opens the film is Ajith scanning a termite infestation. It harks back to the unforgettable opening shot of Sen’s acclaimed documentary, a pan across small animals scrabbling through junk for food. This re-centering of the Anthropocene drives Termite as well.

As much of an expunger he is, Ajith has a paternalistic relationship to these insects. Gently, he directs them into certain organisation, re-alignments so they can file away before being scourged. He marvels at Termite has a dolorous heave that’s faint, striped with memories and obsolescence. Ajith and Saud almost seem to blend into the walls. The small, tight space is, to Ajith, a sanctuary from the prejudice, bigotry and hate just a stone’s throw away. He’s not confrontational. Saud is the one leaping to defend him, picking a fight with as much tenacity as the threat lobbed. He’s the frontier behind which Ajith stands.

Quieter, Ajith writes letters to his uncle, pouring the lingering trauma, anguish and anxiety welling deep within. He watches out for his cat. Both him and the cat receive slights, a lack of kindness. Central to the many fears is that of a friendship petering out. Neither does Sen indicate if Ajith actually confides in Saud about his abiding dread. A stray thread of voiceover, through the letters, disburses Ajith’s life and feelings in fragments. A tad too bluntly, it also establishes the underlying social hierarches, the caste violence that shadowed him, the horror and grief of losing a parent, a childhood. Ajith sees the only escape in his present rooftop room. Along with his roommate, he can silently commiserate upon the patterns of daily disappointments, chances for romantic connection that appear to have vaporized. Bernhard’s camera leans on a yellow ochre-heavy palette to evoke the contained areas within which the friends move.

Downstairs, the hubbub of evening carom games enlivens the mood. But when all is wrapped, it’s upstairs the two friends inevitably retreat. It’s a surrender to familiar habits, listlessness, a creeping realisation of life whizzing past. Sen draws a sinuous link between the loneliness of a father and that of his child, who perceives the echo much later. Inheritance can also take on emotional, psychological dimensions. In Ajith’s letters are embedded a wrestling with a looming emotional distance between parents/partners, the drifting apart, the kernel of loneliness that becomes so overwhelming one is compelled to walk right into the abyss. Ajith mentions the city and its Hindi swell turning too overbearing at times. He’s often battered with linguistic slurs, which Saud effectively combats. All of a sudden, a stranger (Vipin Sharma), appears with an offer that comes as a jolt. Nadeem arrives with a marriage proposition for Saud, who’s predictably startled.

Nadeem is so desperate to get his divorced daughter married off he even brings a virginity test report. The stranger seems to almost emerge from some ether, at least how Ajith envisions him. Saud is thrilled about the prospects unlike a more cynical Ajith. But perhaps, the latter too grows to nurse hopes from the match meant for his roommate. The film catches the subtle emotional texture of this disruptive moment. It’s where it feels more sure-footed, a melancholic drape that swings into something more bittersweet, as a possible rupture hangs close. It’s Ajith’s perspective that envelops. Is Ajith prepared for the shift in his friendship and life? Sen alludes to a decay in friendships that tend to happen to men once they enter a certain age bracket. Life and its vicissitudes deal a blow to a relationship you might have once thought of as enduring. Termite is especially striking in its silhouettes, its many-shaped encounters veering between mundane, strange, magical and desolate.

However, what could have sharpened the film a notch more is a rooted rendition of the friendship, not just a verbal retread of Ajith’s own worry over it waning. It leaves you wanting to trace the earlier fissures. You see them shooting the breeze, sitting with a cup of tea as the day rolls into night, but Saud doesn’t quite jump out as vivid or immediate. You never quite hear from Saud himself beyond the marriage association. This muffles the poignant impact Termite could have achieved. So, you turn instead to the insects, where the film eventually hits its stride. In a soft register, Sen builds up to a truly haunting image that sublimates Ajith’s equation with the termites. It’s a humbling admission, a confrontation, all wound into one.