Thursday Special Review: In Varun Tandon's Short, It's Companionship That Survives Everything

In a small town in northern India, Ram and Shakuntala Mishra live in a government cottage allotted to the telecom department. The house and the surroundings have a peculiar stillness that hints at the lives that have learned to move slowly.

Ram leaves every morning in neatly pressed clothes and with a lunchbox, carrying the discipline and stability that come from being a government employee for years. Shakuntala, as most wives do, wakes up before dawn breaks. She prepares delicacies for him with precision and infuses them with love. While Ram leaves for work, Shakuntala stays back tending to the kitchen and some painful memories that refuse to fade.

Thursday Special is a twenty-six-minute short film that opens a window into this small world of Mishra's. It is an intimate tale of a couple in their late fifties who have survived the unthinkable. Losing children. And, with them, the zeal for life. Now what remains is companionship.

Varun Tandon, a National Award-winning filmmaker, sets the film firmly in the everyday life of this couple. There is no drama. Instead of hurried scenes, Yashveer Singh's camera captures the beauty in mundane details of life. A lunchbox being packed. An everyday to-and-fro walk to work and back home. Piles of files on the table. Tandon builds the atmosphere that allows the viewer to feel the weight of time and grief that Ram and Shakuntala carry with them.

Food becomes a language of love in the Mishra household. Thursday holds a special place in their week. A midweek ritual that the couple follows has survived grief and routine for years.

The calm rhythm of the film is disrupted when Shakuntala discovers that Ram has been hiding something from her. She catches him red-handed, and in that moment the carefully balanced world of the Mishra household trembles. What follows is not loud or confrontational as expected. The director chooses restraint over drama in the climatic conflict and subsequent tension between the two.

Seasoned actors Anubha Fatehpuria and Ramakanth Dayama make Ram and Shakuntala their own. Tandon's less-is-more approach in storytelling trusts the audience to read between the lines and feel the emotional shifts.

Released on January 29 on the Humans of Cinema channel on YouTube, the film arrives after a strong run on the international festival circuit. At the Küstendorf Film Festival 2025, Thursday Special bagged The Most Poetic Film award from the celebrated Serbian filmmaker, Emir Kusturica. Acclaimed filmmakers Shoojit Sircar and Vikramaditya Motwane are onboard as presenters.

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