Lounge Loves: ‘Remarkably Bright Creatures’, ‘The Pact’ and more
Also featured this week, Kyoto’s famous confectioner Malebranche and watching city guides and tourist photographers on weekends
Got to Be Matcha
My favourite at Kolkata’s Flurys—no, not the rum ball—is the chocolate cube, a square-shaped pastry available in various flavours. At their flagship store on Park Street, I spotted a matcha one too. I gave it a pass, the henna-green colour did not exactly look tempting. Like the red velvet craze of the mid-2000s, this trend is likely to peter out at some point. But one thing matcha I have truly enjoyed is the Cha no Ka langue de chat from Kyoto’s famous confectioner Malebranche. The cookie comprises a thin layer of white chocolate ensconced in two Uji matcha tea biscuits. The mild sweetness of the chocolate balancing the slight bitterness of the matcha. Like all things Japanese, the packaging is pretty; opening a box is a sight to behold. If you have friends travelling to Kyoto, this is what you want them to carry back. —Nipa Charagi
Homecoming
Apurva Asrani has had a fruitful innings as film editor, from the seminal Satya to Snip!, Shahid and Made in Heaven. He’s also written the Hansal Mehta films Aligarh and Simran. He’s now written, edited and produced his first short film, The Pact, which can be seen on director Lakshmi R. Iyer’s YouTube channel. Parambrata Chattopadhyay plays Raghav, a white-collar worker who returns to sell the Pune house he grew up in. Once on the premises, he’s swamped by memories of his parents; stray discoveries and conversations make him reevaluate his strict, demanding father. Though overeager at times to explain itself, the film manages to suggest a long, complicated relationship with efficiency and emotional heft. —Uday Bhatia
Tidy Corners
On screen and in books, attention to tidiness is often depicted as a character flaw, indicating an unhealthy desire for control or a comedic obsession. Think of Monica in Friends, or Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory. In Tova Sullivan, the elderly lead of Remarkably Bright Creatures (Shelby Van Pelt, 2022), it’s beautiful to see deep cleaning depicted as just setting high standards and doing a job well. Tova, the night cleaner at Sowell Bay Aquarium who becomes friends with the aquarium’s giant Pacific octopus, has exacting standards of cleanliness, scrubbing at stubborn stains even when her boss, worried about her age, suggests she take it easy. For “neat freaks”, it’s particularly joyful to read her insistent instructions to a trainee to hook the bin liners “over the back of the bin” so that it’s less messy to remove the next day. —Shalini Umachandran
The Weekend Ludo Club
What do city guides and tourist photographers do on weekends? They play Ludo. It seems the cheery folks, who follow you around the Gateway of India in Mumbai asking “madam, photo khichwa lijiye”, happen to meet on Sunday evenings to play the classic board game. If you walk around the lanes behind the Taj Mahal Hotel in Colaba, you will find the men dressed in crisp white shirts huddled on the pavement playing Ludo, that too on their tabs. Turn around, and you will see smaller groups or even pairs, glued to the app on their smartphones. In a city that refuses to pause, it’s worth taking a moment to just admire the camaraderie. —Rituparna Roy
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