Suman Ghosh

A four year old girl's search for "Happiness" on the streets of Kolkata

Legendary figures of Indian cinema Aparna Sen and Soumitra Chatterjee head up the ensemble cast of this bittersweet tale of family ties and disillusionment. An elderly couple is celebrating their 50th anniversary, and family members gather at their once magnificent, now largely decrepit mansion, where they married a half-century before. As relatives young and old arrive and reminisce about their lives, stories are exchanged about the great family's past. But it does not take long to see that reality is more complicated than family myth. Long-buried family secrets inevitably arise as do secrets that may have been better kept locked away. To face the "fading pride of a nebulous past," family closeness is needed now more than ever. Suman Ghosh directs with a fine eye for the pretensions and wrongdoings of the upper middle class as well as its underlying strength and pain.

A group of people from government arrives to promote the new identification cards. Parsua becomes the first who has the card that everyone is reluctant to have, and becomes a star. One day, Parsua receives a divination sign that his wife will die due to the serial number.

A documentary on the Indian Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen

Shyamal Uncle, an eighty-year old retiree living with his wife in Paikpara (an old Kolkata neighborhood), notices one day that the street lights near his house are left on even during the day. He finds it unconscionable to let this waste go and decides to take action. He talks to a number of people - from the local vendor to the local political leader; from the electricity officer to the police officer. But no one even bothers to listen to him and he is given the runaround. Even his wife is skeptical of his endeavor. Drawing a contrast with the mundane existence of his personal life, the film is a story of Shyamal Uncle's journey as he fights the brush offs, insults, and skepticism with one single goal - turn off the lights.

At the end, the only love which lasts is the love that has accepted everything, every disappointment, every failure and every betrayal, which has accepted even the sad fact that in the end there is no desire as deep as the simple desire for companionship." Inspired by this Graham Greene quote, "Podokkhep" is the story of an unusual bond between a retired man and a 5-year-old girl where he rediscovers life in his twilight years through this friendship.