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Two good, this is how to tell a story

This is an experience closest to being hypnotised! The moment director Ananth Narayan Mahadevan transports us to the Calcutta of yore, the days of cassette players, ambassador cars and landline telephones, and puts us in Tarini Bandopadhyay’s (Paresh Rawal’s) world,...
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Adil Hussain (R) is fantastic as the mild-mannered Gujarati businessman and Paresh Rawal as the eccentric creative genius.
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film: Disney+Hotstar: The Storyteller

Director: Ananth Narayan Mahadevan

Cast: Paresh Rawal, Adil Hussain, Revathy, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Jayesh More and Anindita Bose

This is an experience closest to being hypnotised! The moment director Ananth Narayan Mahadevan transports us to the Calcutta of yore, the days of cassette players, ambassador cars and landline telephones, and puts us in Tarini Bandopadhyay’s (Paresh Rawal’s) world, we give ourselves completely to the story that unfolds.

It unfolds at the city’s iconic Writer’s Buildings, where protagonist Tarini, the storyteller, bids goodbye to his employer, Amrit Publishers.

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The background voice says Tarini never sticks to one job for more than six months. But there is no trace of restlessness in Tarini, nor Kireet Khurana’s screenplay, which is based on Satyajit Ray’s Bengali short story, ‘Golpo Bolo Tarini Khuro’.

In fact, it’s quite relaxing to be a part of Tarini’s world as he hums Rabindra Sangeet, quotes Gorky, Tolstoy and Picasso, and bitches about capitalism.

Cinematographer Alphose Roy’s camera sometimes lingers on an empty room, sometimes on a creaking ceiling fan, a dusty wall clock or the shimmering fish curry, long enough to absorb and enjoy the vintage charm.

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The story progresses as Tarini reads a newspaper advertisement looking for a storyteller in Ahmedabad. He meets his employer, Ratan Garodia (Adil Hussain), a rich businessman who suffers from chronic insomnia and a complex over his lack of education. He needs Tarini to tell him bedtime stories to put him to sleep.

The shrewd businessman, who surrounds himself with books which he never opens, paintings he does not understand, doesn’t fall asleep even after listening to Tarini’s stories, but we viewers are treated to beautifully illustrated stories like the fate of a 100-year-old tree in the Aravalli forest or that of a captured spy pigeon during the Second World War.

Between storytelling sessions, we get to witness the clashes between two stark personalities and two different cultures (albeit in sweeping strokes) — one a fish-eating, Durga puja-obsessed Bengali who is scared to write his stories fearing criticism, and the other, a vegetarian, clever Gujarati, who believes this world is not for thinkers but for doers. “Your insomnia is a by-product of capitalism,” Tarini replies.

The chasm between the two, to borrow Tarini’s expression, “one sells cotton, the other spins yarns”, and also their bonding make ‘The Storyteller’ a compelling watch. Not to forget the wry humour that runs throughout. My favourite is Tarini complaining about the price of a hilsa. “It was Rs 60 yesterday,” he tells the fish seller. “You were also 25 once, so?” the fisherman retorts.

These witty banters didn’t prepare me for a climax that veers into betrayal and revenge. Betrayal as Ratan publishes Tarini’s stories in Gujarati under the pen name Gorkhe, and revenge as Tarini extracts his pound of flesh. To give Mahadevan his due, he did give us a clue. In one of the early sessions, Ratan asks Tarini if his stories are original. But it is so casually put that I failed to make much of it. And, that’s where director Mahadevan scores. He does not saddle his viewers with unnecessary dramatic tension.

Both Rawal and Hussain understood his vision. Hussain is fantastic as the mild-mannered, ever-smiling Gujarati businessman and Rawal as the eccentric creative genius. The side characters — Ratan’s love interest Saraswati (Revathy), the librarian Suzie (Tannishtha Chatterjee) and Ratan’s Man Friday Manikchand (Jayesh More) — make their presence felt without intruding. Even the cat — the “right creature in the wrong place”, which roams around the Garodia household and steals from the fish tank, just knows when to purr and when to claw.

Kudos to Mahadevan for defying the ‘hyper-everything’ norm and reiterating the fact that slow and subtle is not always boring.

This is how you tell a story. Watch it!

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