Darjeeling Backdrop film ‘Nimtoh’ Brings Out the Extraordinary in an Ordinary Boy
Saurav Rai’s debut feature film concerning a boy’s anxiety over an invitation to a wedding is set to be screened at the Mumbai Film Festival.
The story goes around as the son of Tashi’s boss is getting married, and Tashi keenly hopes to receive an invitation for the same. The film reveals the boy jangling with immense anticipation and impatience waiting for the same. The shows depicts his not at all stopping to keep bothering his grandmother as they guard a cardamom orchard at night – one of the many tasks they perform for their master.
He continues to ask this question, Is there a “nimtoh”, or an invitation, bearing Tashi’s name? After all, Tashi and his grandmother serve their patrons quite faithfully and tirelessly!
However, as Saurav Rai’s Nimtoh comes up, Tashi’s attempts to fix a seat at the wedding table leads him into both the droll moments and dark truths of real life.
Rai’s debut feature is set in the back drop of a village in Darjeeling and is in the Nepali language. With over 85 well-spent minutes, the 33-year-old filmmaker has come up with a measure of Tashi’s irrepressible personality, his tough-love relationship with his grandmother, and quite evident, the invisible wall separating the servants from the served ones.
As the film rolls, it shows Tashi and his grandmother living on their boss’s property, however, never allowed to forget that they are insider-outsiders. They are not always welcomed in the house – which is quite obviously revealed in the scene of the film when Tashi walks in the living room to watch television and his ends up making his employer changing the channel.
Nimtoh is among the 10 titles in the Indian competition section at the Mumbai Film Festival (October 17-24). However, the other films include Gitanjali Rao’s animated feature Bombay Rose and Archana Phadke’s personal documentary About Love.
Saurav Rai sharing bits about his film said, “I enjoy making observational films about personal themes, about what I see and what moves me, about my roots, my own people and internal conflicts.
