Unpaused review: A middling anthology

What if this virus is here to stay? The characters played by Gulshan Devaiah and Saiyami Kher look futuristic in the way they create a ‘bubble date’ in a bar/lounge. Or in the way he, a ‘hypo’, refuses to leave his apartment, or she, a ‘warrior’ is at work in a lab, talking about heroes who don’t ‘wear a cape but a PPE’. Fear of infection is all around, but the longing for companionship is stronger.

A rat drives a young girl (Rajguru) out of her apartment. An acerbic elderly lady (Dubey) starts out growling, ends up smiling: this one is the least engaging of the lot. Another segment uses another acerbic elderly lady (Shah) being drawn to a younger human, an auto-rickshaw driver (Bhardwaj), who happens to be poles apart, class and religion-wise. And a migrant couple (Banerjee and Ohlyan) get stuck in the city, with nowhere to go.

I liked the last two the most. Though the story of a woman who lives in a posh flat and a roza-breaking Muslim auto-driver has a predictable arc, starting off with irritation and ending with affection, both Shah and Bhardwaj (so good in Prateek Vats’ Eeb Allay Ooo, out today in theatres), make us watch. As do the migrant couple hiding out in the city, in a luxury apartment kitted out with jacuzzis and modular kitchens: when you cannot switch on fancy gas stoves, you light fires on the floor, which also doubles up as your bed. How will these two get used to their lives in the village, which lies at the end of a long walk home?