A dining table is not just a venue for a great meal but is also an alcove where several memories, conversations, agreements, disagreements, banters and memories cook up. Rogan Josh serves us the same dish but in a pristine plate.

Just when the pressure cooker’s whistle goes off, a wrinkled hand sprinkles some essential herbs to garnish the ‘Rogan Josh’ cooked in it. Wine glasses on the wooden furniture, and a relic clock on the wall, calm, cosy ambience and a dinner table ready to witness the flavours of the characters about to meet us is how the movie sets the whole mood.

Vijay Kapoor (Naseeruddin Shah) is a head chef at The Taj, Mumbai. He and his wife Firoza (Avantika Akerkar) hosts his 65th birthday house party. On the menu is his favourite and famed dish 'Rogan Josh', also what he is acclaimed for. Their friends Zakhir (Shishir Sharma) and his wife Preeti (Shriswara) show up for the celebration. Vijay's son Varun (Bhuvan Arora) too, joins them on the dining table, precisely two minutes late for which he is constantly taunted by his dad.

Their conversation at the dining table is just like how every other family cum friends get together would sound like. It unfolds with time to give the viewers subtle hints of their past, but leaves no room for us to precisely guess what's in the desert. An applause for writer-director Sanjeev Vig as he manages to keep the viewer gripped till the end through their chatter where awkward and uncomfortable silence constantly condenses as well as dissolves. Having said that, he makes sure the cat isn’t out of the bag until the end.

A special mention of the camera work. Freehand camera movement instead of a static one makes us too, a part of the scene. We have got to see this type of direction in Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra's ‘Rang De Basanti’ as well. Sanjeev Vig’s insidious shift of camera focus from his subject to the objects around reveals the plot gradually.

For example, sharp focus the clock in the dining room showing 8 o'clock or the calendar in the kitchen showing the date 26/11/2017; yes, that's a hint. Kudos to Shishir Sharma, Avantika Akrekar, Bhuwan Arora and Shriswara for their cursive and effortless performances. Naseeruddin Shah is a treat himself, unexpected close-up of him has added depth to the scenes.

This short film, produced by Abhishek Rege under the banner of Endemol Shine India is a tribute to the agonising wounds this nation is still nursing and trying to recover from. The end will move you, scrub your deep cuts, but will teach you something extremely essential to take away from it. For that last spoon of mystery, Rogan Ghosh makes for a worthwhile 17-minute watch.

First Published:Nov 30, 2018 10:27 PM IST