The LunchboxCast: Irrfan Khan, Nimrat Kaur, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Bharati AchrekarDirection: Ritesh BatraHere's what Bollywood never did before. It never narrated a love story where the lovers don't meet. Ever, not even in one scene. And yet you are left with an overwhelming completeness of emotions as the end credits roll.That's a first that writer-director Ritesh Batra's debut feature serves up, giving love in the time of social networking an impressive new flavour.The Lunchbox, releasing this week after a remarkable tour of the global festival circuit including Cannes, uses an unconventional catalyst to push its love story. Playing Cupid here is food, in a tale about an aging man on the brink of retirement and a homemaker dividing her time between cooking, motherhood and a loveless marriage.Food essentially becomes a character in this film. Not many Bollywood filmmakers have drawn thematic context from gastronomic sights and colours this way - Stanley Ka Dabba comes to mind as a rare recent example - which is what makes The Lunchbox a unique experience.Batra creates a feel-good romance that, departing from norms of the genre in Bollywood, comes with starkly real characters and situations. In an age of email and SMS, The Lunchbox uses the old-fashioned letter as expression of emotions. It is something that gives the film a unique charm.Batra's screenplay focuses on the dabbawallah culture of Mumbai - delivery men who transport lunchboxes from housewives to their husbands in offices. The system has been around for ages and analysis shows the chance of a wrong delivery is one in millions.One such rare error lands the lunchbox Ila (Nimrat Kaur) prepared for her husband on the table of Saajan Fernandez (Irrfan Khan), sarkari babu and loner who is a few months from retiring. Ila discovers the mix-up soon enough, but doesn't inform her husband who wouldn't care anyway. Fernandez doesn't mind, the regular hotel from where he gets his lunchbox can never cook meals as delicious.The arrangement continues and the two strangers start an unlikely relationship through notes they regularly exchange in the lunchbox. The notes gradually becoming more intimate. Soon, they are revealing slices of their seemingly hopeless lives to each other.The Lunchbox imagines its characters with warmth, adding a twist of wit to their dreary lives. Irrfan is perfect rendering a character far older than his actual age. He lets Fernandez evolve gradually from a grumpy old man to someone who finds hope in love, adding deadpan resilience to a miserable existence.Nimrat Kaur is captured interestingly in close-ups, the faint scar on her forehead almost symbolising Ila's silent pangs in a life that was meant to be beautiful. She is a big reason the film remains adorable.The narrative is enriched by a couple of other characters. Nawazuddin Siddiqui as the goodnatured Aslam Sheikh, trainee who will take over from Fernandez, is a pleasant add-on. Sheikh plays a vital role in the transformation of Fernandez.But the really intriguing character in this film is of the auntyji upstairs. We never get to see her. She chats constantly with Ila through their kitchen windows as Ila is busy cooking lunch for her husband, often suggesting garnishing that could spice up the latter's marriage. Bharti Achrekar's is a class voice act as auntyji.Ritesh Batra's grasp of imagery belies the fact that he is a debutant, as Mumbai comes alive in its crowded locals, children playing cricket on the streets, rickshaws and ramshackle taxis. The imagining of the localities Fernandez and Ila reside in is quietly used to define their socio-cultural divide. Overall, the tone maintained never misses the point that The Lunchbox is essentially a love story.Send it to the Oscars? Why not. If the grudge against this film is it comes with little or no hype, at times the wrong train too can take you to the right station - as Nawazuddin's Aslam Sheikh spiritedly keeps saying all along.