Janhavi?s restaurant serves inspiring fare

HAVE YOU been feeling low, are easily irritable and not quite up to things that interested you most in life? A physician would see signs of depression but chances are that you are not running the restaurant wholeheartedly. It may sound puzzling, but that is what the movie ‘Restaurant’ is all about.

Janhavi is a young and successful restaurateur running a trendy eatery on the outskirts of a city. She is the scion of an erstwhile royal family and a trained chef. She was a lonely child, brought up by a compassionate grandmother in the absence of parents, who instilled in her a passion for cooking. At the catering school, Jinni acquires culinary skills as well as a boyfriend, plans a restaurant and life with him.

He commits suicide and Jinni’s world is shattered. To make life worse, she gets entangled in a property dispute with her cousins, endangering the house and restaurant – the remnants of her dream.

We come to this world as individuals and include others in our scheme of life; we may not be a part of their thought. This happens with Jinni. Hurt and let down, she does everything to keep her world moving except what interests her most – creative cooking, revamping the place, including continental cuisine in the menu, even getting a new qualified chef.

Thus, walks in her classmate from the catering school who had found real joy of cooking – the thing called job satisfaction.

Impatient and disoriented, Jinni loses the legal battle for the piece of property and in a way the vanity that had been driving her ambitions. The understanding colleague helps her discover her lost passion.

Taking the reigns of life in her hand, she reasons with her cousin playing his emotions with her rationale. And no wise man is blind to reason, or to profiting.

Changes made through evolution are long lasting than those imposed by revolution. An accomplished cook’s axiom finds relevance in life too. Marathi cinema has come a long way. It has evolved over the period. There have been too many good directors but unlike cooks they worked on different broths. Sachin Kendlekar has turned a seemingly ordinary theme into one with much wider application.

With a little difference, it could be the dilemma in anyone’s life. Its appeal lies in treatment, picturisation and fine directorial touches; the convincing way in which Sonali Kulkarni, the girl next door, walks out of gloom. A special screening of the film was organised by Marathi Samaj on Tuesday morning at Madhumilan theatre.