Course Index
On the Visiting India Versus Living In India page, located here, I had you watch the first forty-five minutes of The Lunchbox (2014). Here is a quick summary of the film - A lonely housewife, Ila, decides to try adding some spice to her stale marriage by preparing a special lunch for her neglectful husband. Unfortunately, the delivery goes astray and winds up in the hands of Saajan, an irritable widower. Curious about her husband's lack of response, Ila adds a note to the next day's lunchbox, and thus begins an unusual friendship in which Saajan and Ila can talk about their joys and sorrows without ever meeting in person.
After you watch the first forty-five minutes of The Lunchbox (2014) on the Visiting India Versus Living In India page located here
The Lunchbox (2014) is a one hundred per cent a fictional narrative film. You might even call it a fairy tale. But it also features actual Dabbawalahs as extras, real guys who practice and identify with this very Indian, very Mumbai profession, so some of its scenes seem almost if they are a documentary.
Learn a little bit more about Dabbawalahs Of Mumbai as an example of a 21st century micro social network not located in cyber-space. Below are five of little windows into Mumbai to actually see what this very sensory social network is like - i.e., the entire network consists of interactions + relationships between people in real, (as opposed to), cyber-space.
One last note on The Lunchbox (2014) and The Dabbawalahs of Mumbai
Now, it is very important for me to point out here, that even where there are Dabbawalahs there are still Facebook users. In India, where you can get your lunch delivered by a Dabbawalah - at least in Mumbai - there are a 100 million Facebook users, which is just under the number of users in the United States, which is about 150 million. So this isn't a matter of saying, "Let's look at people's interactions in India, they are not as technological advanced as the United States." This is about taking a closer look at people's actual, sensory interactions in the 21st century - i.e. now - in a place far away from our own, right here, in the United States. I always wanted to pick a story that would allow up to dig deeper into this question of how the experience of physical, sensory romantic love is different than the experience of imagined romantic love - whether it is imagined in real or cyber space.