Beyond Bollywood: ‘Bangalore Days’ and The Unsung Allure of Settling 

It’s fitting that a film named Bangalore Days unfolds in the language of ‘lore’. Like canonical stories and memories featuring characters who, to paraphrase the line from The Office, know they’re in the good old days before they’ve actually left them. The title sounds nostalgic, but the defining aspect of Anjali Menon’s coming-of-age drama is this intuitive ability to stage a place as the identity of a time. It revolves around the journeys of three 20-something cousins from small-town Kerala who are living the dream — or so they think. Fate reunites Kunju (Nazriya Nazim), Kuttan (Nivin Pauly) and Aju (Dulquer Salmaan) in Bangalore, the way childhood friends sometimes find themselves navigating the honeymoon phase of adulthood together.  

Kunju quits her MBA aspirations and agrees to an arranged marriage with a sombre corporate man named Das (Fahadh Faasil); Kuttan is the nerdy software engineer who romanticises his hometown; Aju is the cool drifter who dropped out of the rat-race and works as a bike mechanic. It’s as if they’ve bargained for lesser fortunes to be in close vicinity of each other. They represent different dimensions of the pressure to follow Malayali convention — the ‘burden’ of high literacy rates, progressivism co-existing with patriarchy, the skewed gender politics, a paradoxical society of two social extremes. But when they’re together, it’s like summer vacation all over again: free of responsibilities, history, tension, hope and limits.

They explore Bangalore like it’s an exciting destination rather than a modern city; it’s yet to be their forever, and they’re still subconsciously visiting the place instead of living in it. The myths and multicultural madness of the metropolis are softened by each other’s company and familiarity. You can tell that they probably fantasised about this arrangement as kids without quite expecting it to come true. Consequently, the narrative is rooted in their now-ness. The film captures that shapeless transition between the past and the future: when change goes hand in hand with compromise, and expectations get laced with reality. Each of them is on the brink of the rest of their lives; uncertainty is a privilege.

Family is often framed as the ultimate hindrance to personal growth; nosy relatives with no boundaries would need to snap ties and break ‘free’ to achieve grown-up independence and fulfillment. But movies like Bangalore Days reclaim the ‘youngness’ of formative bonds. It destigmatises the family-coded tropes of Indian storytelling. The individualism of the three protagonists remains tethered to who they are with one another. It’s almost like they cannot be partners, suitors, strivers or professionals if they are not cousins. Being siblings without having to commit to the image of actual brothers and sisters — Siblings With Benefits, if you may — liberates them from the duties of blood attachments and extended connections. They couldn’t choose their immediate family, but they did choose their friends-like family.

To an outsider, their influence on one another may reek of clannishness. What the film does refreshingly well is humanise both sides. Kunju’s husband, Das, is introduced as that uptight outsider at first; he resents how carefree his wife is around them, and initially looks down on the three as immature kids who are yet to confront the fickless of the real world. In a parallel universe, Fahadh Faasil’s curt Das mutates into the sociopathic Shami of Kumbalangi Nights. But instead of demonising Das and turning him into an easy antagonist, the film allows him to be a consequence of his experiences and trauma. Some of the film’s most moving scenes feature him shedding the mask of curated masculinity, being vulnerable, and finding companionship through acceptance. She changes him, not vice versa. As a result, it reframes Das as the fourth protagonist who starts belonging to a family rather than a supporting character who begrudges the idea of one. Not many Indian movies know how to explore the morality of arranged matches or the Good Malayali Boy Syndrome without scrutiny, but Bangalore Days manages to defang our notions of traditionalism. It is not without borrowed personalities and broad strokes, not to mention the use of a popular Ludovico Einaudi track in a dramatic climax.

But there’s a mainstream wisdom about the film in the way it bats for “settling” in life, as if to say: it’s fine to find your tribe and choose company over lofty ambition, chemistry over grand passion, or little wins over big dreams. It’s fine to want continuity over greatness. It normalises the gratification of living in the moment and seeing time in places, stillness in evolution, and people in accomplishments. Settling often gets a bad rap for how weak it sounds, but when placed in context of a society that keeps demanding, it is nothing less than an act of courage. It evokes autonomy in an age of conditioning. After all, one person’s lore is another’s agency to be the best — and not biggest — version of themselves.