Stanley Ka Dabba

When the film starts and you see little Stanley, a muddy-faced fourth grader sitting alone in a classroom, you immediately start anticipating a taare-zameen-par kind of teaching-learning problem equation. What you soon discover though is a film that not only deals with student-teacher equations, but several big and small issues.

Stanley, unlike Ishaan of TZP, has a big group of friends in his classroom who are ever ready to share their dabbas with him, sometimes wondering why he never gets a dabba from home. Though this doesn’t seem to be a pressing concern for his friends, it turns out to become a reason for his pan-chewing, dabba obsessed Hindi teacher, Mr. Verma, to suspend him from attending classes. After missing out on school for a few days, Stanley returns to school with a newfound confidence and a 5 layered dabba – sharing it with his teachers and friends along with anecdotes of his mother’s cooking secrets.

The film has a smattering of well sketched out characters – Rosy Miss, Stanley’s English teacher who has a soft corner for him and whose warm and friendly teaching style is a sharp contrast from Mrs. Iyer’s, the matter-of-fact science teacher who can’t digest a live model of lighthouse as an acceptable submission of a ‘project.’ Also, the kids from the classroom are so normal, it is hard to believe that you are not watching a documentary on 4th grade school life in India.
Amol Gupte crafts this story wonderfully, capturing not only moments but also universal feelings. I particularly loved his insight on the obsession with the ‘dabba’. The anticipation of break time and the chance of getting your hands on the several mouth-watering tiffin boxes that have the unique taste that differs from one house to another, is such a simple truth. Also how the film manages to hook the audience in a way that they feel an urgent itch to know where Stanley actually comes from and then going on to give a serious message on the social fabric of this country.

Obviously, there remain some questions that crop up as the credits start rolling, but a warm, fuzzy feeling overshadows them as you sit back, wanting to dedicate a minute more to this film viewing experience.