Our childhood is shaped by curiosity, questions, and magical stories. Set in 1962, director Irfana Majumdar’s Hindi film Shankar’s Fairies takes us into the life of a young girl, Anjana (Shreeja Mishra), who forms a special bond with her family’s housekeeper, Shankar (Jaihind Kumar), in a well-off household.
Anjana is the elder daughter of a senior police officer (Gaurav Saini) and his artist-homemaker wife (Irfana Majumdar). They live in a village, and the era is that of the tumultuous Indo-China War. With its after-effects reaching the remotest corners of India, Anjana’s schoolmates amusingly joke about chowmein, linking it to a possible Chinese invasion. While I found it a little too mature for the children’s understanding of the larger political context, it makes sense if we assume they overheard family members cracking the same one-liner.
Overhearing and observing are also how Anjana feeds her inquisitiveness. While she shares a warm bond with her police superintendent father, her mother is enterprising yet strict. However, it is through Shankar that her imagination truly blossoms. The man is a fountain of vivid folk tales. By painting simple yet magical images of otherworldly beings such as witches and fairies, Shankar helps Anjana nurture a sharp, creative mind. Her teacher—even at one point—applauds the young girl for her writerly bent of mind.
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Aside from the warm yet somewhat distant bond that Anjana shares with Shankar, the film also works as a fine character study of the latter. Serving his employer for decades, Shankar hails from a faraway village. Through his worldview, the film subtly addresses concepts such as caste, class, and economic barriers that (still) separate people in developing countries. There are fleeting mentions of the war, the dacoit culture in the area, police violence, convent school discipline, and religion, besides cleverly underlining politics, hierarchy, and the never-ending loop of disparity in Indian society.
What impressed me most was how Shankar’s Fairies plays out like a gentle memoir, which, as it turns out, the film is, though suitably fictionalized. The mood is similar to Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, but a lot less eventful. Majumdar seems fascinated by capturing the period as she is by exploring her lead character Anjana’s inner world. Shankar’s thoughts remain unexplored, and understandably so. For a story conceived from the perspective of a school-going daughter of a privileged couple, there’s only so much the narrative can reveal about their loyal yet mysterious family servant.
The piano-based music is gentle on the ear. The era-accurate set design brings us closer to the era. By the end, Majumdar’s vision and storytelling leave an emotional impact while also highlighting the deep-rooted class divide in India.
Rating: ★★★★
Shankar’s Fairies was screened at the 74th Locarno Film Festival.
Author at Filmy Sasi
