Layers of 'Cake' like life itself

Most might recall for longer that glorious rant of a young Pakistani cricketfan bemoaning the teams World Cup loss to India at Old Trafford this week than the boringly onesided match itselfThe thoroughly amusing video which went viral on the Internet had a tearyeyed bloke deeply upset because the Pak cricket team hed heard were busy eating burgers he mentioned that twice and peeze pizzas the night before the big gameIs there more to the burger than meets the eye In Karachi yes Burgs short for burger refers to an entire subset of Anglicisedwesternised young in the Sindh capital who are wholly disconnected from their supposedly local culture They probably live in the gated Defence in Clifton Cantonment which as a tony neighbourhood is as wellknown to nonKarachi folk as say Gangnamin Seoul or MalabarPali Hill in Mumbai No never been to Karachi Know this from a friend from back in the day Got reminded of it only when the Pakistani family in Asim Abbasis stellar directorial debutant Cake available on Netflix calls a nonresident desi kid visiting from New York a burger Because he cant pronounce the word palla for hilsa fishBut the family in the film itself is what you would call burg In terms of lifestyle mdash shopping at swanky supermarkets women driving home at midnight from a posh New Years Eve party mdash they could belong to anywhere in the liberal First World that India has as many massive boroughs ofSure I sound like a typically western ignoramus being so surprised by these facts But what to do Ignorance breeds from lack of exposure And Pakistan for an Indian progressively seems further than it ever wasSo I first watched Cake as a peek into a world I know of as little as Im curious about And then I watched it second time on as simply a warm adorable yet heartwrenching story of a mildly dysfunctional family mdash brilliantly branching off from British independent films by the likes of Mike Leigh or Ken Loach Or closer home a robust version of Shakun Batras Kapoor amp Sons 2016Kapoor amp Sons had Pak superstar Fawad Khan in the lead Cake has Bollywoods own Aarti Bajaj Jab We Met Rockstar DevD as editor with Udit Duseja on sound This is apart from Hindi film songs in particular RD Burmans Piya Tu Ab Toh Aaja being a motif running throughout Guess a family that sings together livesloves together One would like to wish that for the subcontinent as wellNow never mind movies that are hopeless from the getgo Ones that start off well majority of them do but eventually dont work I believe inevitably have a moment that you can pinpoint on the timeline as Im sure in the script This is that dipping point where proceedings begin petering out for a picture that it never recovers from thereafter Tell me a film And Ill tell you that point for me personally as a viewer of courseAbbasis Cake in that sense is an exception It takes at least about 1520 minutes getting into The movie starts off with slightly Romalike familyhome montage followed by relatively clumsy OTT introductions to key characters And then theres a complete switch or upward spike on the timeline Once you are slowly but surely led into this world theres no question of remaining unaffected by such a soulful screenplay so skillfully executed All of it leading to an incredibly choreographed talkinghead sequence set in a farmhouse between two sisters their brother his wife their father his Man Friday mdash shot entirely as a single take running into several minutes It ought to count as one of the best climax scenes weve witnessed in a family drama everAt the centre of it of course are the two phenomenally poised female leads One of whom Aamina Sheikh perhaps looks a bit like Sobhita Dhulipala from Amazon Primes Made In Heaven and sounds a lil like actor Divya DuttaThe second one Sanam Saeed plays a character visiting from London There are short videos on YouTube briefly delving into this characters recent backstory This is a great freebie DVDextra since DVDs hardly exist Of course Im making these references merely because like many others Im totally unfamiliar with these gifted actors previous worksEither way youre likely to fall for both in the same way that most girls and boys of my vintage fell in love with Marina Khan Dr Zoya Ali from the gentle Pak drama Dhoop Kinare DK in the 90s Snooping around on Marina Khans Insta I still find my friends fangirling on her every day Think I was more interested in mimicking Rahat Kazmi Dr Ahmer Ansari from DK instead Kaise mijaaz hain aapke Because everything in Urdu sounds like poetry Yeah well and even in that distance weve sort of grown up together Havent weMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individuals and dont represent those of the paperCatch up on all the latest Mumbai news crime news current affairs and also a complete guide on Mumbai from food to things to do and events across the city here Also 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