Last night I watched a film that has been doing the rounds in film festivals all of last year. Touted, hailed and received as a pathbreaking astounding feature in the barrage of nonsensical things we get to see otherwise these days, the movie was meant to work wonders on the viewers’ minds. It was to act as a cleanser, meant to be seen without handheld modern day devices such as the mobile phone, iPad, etc. It was supposed to make you ponder about the frivolity of everything around us.

And so last night, I turned off the room’s lights and turned on the television, keeping my phone away and the iPad in a different room altogether. The movie opened slowly, as “a-day-in-the-life-of-a-city worker” template unfolded before our eyes. A vision of clean, possibly rain washed, Tokyo as seen from a height, spreading out before us, very early in the morning mesmerised me. The worker gets ready, and steps out of his what seems to be very tiny, working class house.