A Death in the Gunj, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in 2016 is the directorial debut for actress Konkona Sen Sharma. I had the fortune of receiving a ticket for the show as a birthday gift from a dear friend.

Needless to say, like her acting talent, Sen Sharma did a brilliant job in directing this movie. The story was set in McCluskieganj, a town in Jharkhand State in India in 1979. As the name suggests, there is a death in the story, but despite the tragedy, I felt connected to it.

This movie for me was a walk down nostalgia road, as it brought back all the memories of the place where I grew up, Dhanbad, nestled in the countryside in the same state, with a similar landscape. Everything, from the layout of the house where the entire story unfolds, to the pebbled driveway, the front yard and the Ambassador car — except ours was white — with a West Bengal license plate, reminded me of home.

Every detail, like the red steps in the front of the house, the cushion cover, the veranda, the talk about the importance of potatoes cooked with the mutton and not added later — had me re-living my early years in India all over again. I almost felt like I recognized the faces of the tribal people as being the ones from my youth.

As shown in the movie, we grew-up without television, listened to the cassette player and radio, and spent a lot of time outside in nature playing in the dirt, often with various insects and plants. Some people played games like kabaddi, a contact sport with tackling and tagging from opposing teams, and scary planchette, a dark art to call passing spirits. Growing up, we always played kabaddi but luckily, never the latter game. Both of these games resulted in unpleasant outcomes in the movie. We often heard of twisted stories from others, especially, in the dead of night when a bunch of us were at a get-together — pretty similar to the various ones shown in the movie.

I was not the only one who connected with A Death in the Gunj. A friend of mine, from Eastern Europe, stepped out of the theatre after seeing the film and his first reaction was, “Wow! Like my childhood, just different locations.”

The story revolved around the young 23-year-old protagonist, Shutu and the emotional and mental struggles he was going through after the recent loss of his father. Shutu, the nerdy genius became overly-sensitive when others were not empathizing or being supportive of him. He was picked on, bullied and taken for granted. Nobody realized the extent of his struggles.

The director in her Q&A session said, “Maybe if Shutu lived in present times, he would have come out of this struggle and perhaps been able to cope with his turmoil.”

by P. Lall, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

This story was written in 2016 shortly after the premiere of the film A Death in the Gunj in Toronto.