A piece of cloud rained as a shower of blessings for Bauddhayan Mukherji and his crew on Thursday evening. The former student of South Point School had arranged a screening of the film Manikbabur Megh, produced by his company Little Lamb Films, for retired teachers of his school.

Shepherded by members of the Care wing of Aspexs, the school alumni association, 55 senior citizens reached PVR-INOX (South City) for the 6pm show.

Producer Bauddhayan Mukherji interacts with his former teachers

“It must be over 10 years when I had last watched a film in a theatre,” said Shukla Karmakar, who taught in the kindergarten section and came from neighbouring Jodhpur Park. Aruna Gupta, a Sanskrit teacher who retired in 2006, also was “coming to a hall after ages”.

Baudhyayan, from the class of 1990, introduced the teachers to his wife and the film’s co-producer Monalisa Mukherji and the director Abhinandan Banerjee.

The 96-minute cinematic ode to Manikbabu’s solitary life that is mundane to the point of insignificance kept the audience riveted as the middle-aged pen pusher, who dozes in office amid a pile of unopened files and goes to sleep with a tattered copy of Abol Tabol by his pillow, who accepts every unfavourable turn of event with silent stoicism, finally takes a leap of fantasy that is construed by people around him as nonsense.

When the film ends, it is a release — not into despair but into wish fulfillment, of an existential kind.

The lights came on and the credits rolled with a lilting song playing in the background penned by the director himself, the lyrics of which give voice to the laconic Manikbabu addressing his beloved cloud — the Manikbabu, who through the film communicates so little with people around him. Spotting the makers standing under the screen, there was applause but it was muted. The audience still seemed to be in a trance.

“Ei chhobi ar amader nei, e ekhon apnader (This film is not ours any more; it is yours now). Our means are limited. And we have spent it all on the film itself. So nothing is left to spend on publicity,” Bauddhayan addressed the audience emotionally.

Once the viewers trooped out of the semi-lit hall in silence and reached the foyer, they found their voice. “Anabadya! E dhoroner chhobi dekhini (Flawless! Haven’t seen a film like this),” gushed Chandra Gupta, 76. “Bolbar kono bhasha nei eto bhalo legechhe! (No language to describe how much I liked it),” added retired mathematics teacher Sripurna Chowdhury, 81.

Rama Basu, 82, who had retired in 2000, loved the scene where Manikbabu lay amid his plants on the rooftop. “I love gardening. I still tend to plants at my Narendrapur home,” she said. She also had a special word for the soundscape. “You can almost feel the cloud approaching,” said the daughter of yesteryear sound recordist Shyamsundar Ghosh. “My father used to work at New Theatres and had recorded songs with Hemanta Mukherjee and Sandhya Mukherjee.”

(L-R) Director Abhinandan Banerjee, Chandan Sen, Bauddhayan Mukherji, his daughter Aarsha and his wife and co-producer Monalisa Mukherji at the Manikbabur Megh screening for retired teachers of South Point School at PVR-INOX (South City)

Bengali teacher Jayati Bhattacharya was even more eloquent. “The idea is so beautiful. And the acting is of such a high calibre — minimalistic. His expressions make up for the lack of words. It is not a film that you see and forget. The film showed us reality in a new light like Pather Panchali had done,” she said.

The comparison with Ray’s masterpiece (which was his debut too) made the 32-year-old debutant filmmaker blush in distinct discomfort. “Ami parley matitey mishey jai (If I could, I would sink to the ground),” he confided in t2, escaping soon after from the shower of adulation to a corner. “All I did was make a simple film. I have no pretensions to esoteric movie-making. People are writing reams on social media, clicking pictures of clouds, drawing sketches.... This response is overwhelming,” said the bearded Birati boy, now settled in Mumbai, who conceived the film when he was 23 and made it at 26.

By then, Bauddhayan had logged into a booking website and announced that even the next day’s show at Nandan was houseful. “Eight days in a row. Even the weekend seats are almost gone,” said the elated co-producer.

Taking his eyes off the mobile screen, and on spotting biology teacher Anuradha Goswami, he walked up to her. “It is a matter of pride for us that our student has produced such a film,” the lady told him.

“I had this belief that our retired teachers would be able to relate to Manikbabu and his existence which is uniquely unremarkable. This film needs a kind of life experience and wisdom to be appreciated. When we were in school, we would look for validation from our teachers. Today, I again felt like being a student seeking validation,” he told t2, as the teachers praised his bravery in backing such an offbeat film.

Producer Bauddhayan Mukherji hands over tickets to the Aspexs Care wing volunteers before the screening as his wife and co-producer Monalisa (right) looks on

Chandan “Manikbabu” Sen, meanwhile, was obliging requests for photographs. “Atmaprachar korte lojja kore. (Self-publicity embarrasses me) I can’t change at 62. I am taking these encounters like getting audience feedback after a play,” said the stage veteran, who has been seen more in TV serials than in films in recent years. “Apnar onek purashkar pawa uchit,” more than one retired teacher told him. He did not tell them that he had already bagged a Best Actor award in the Pacific Meridian Film Festival in Moscow, or that the film had won the Netpac award for the Best Asian Film at the Kolkata International Film Festival in 2022.

“This is the first time that an ex-student of ours has sponsored a film show for our retired teachers. They were floored by the brilliance of the film and touched by Bauddhayan’s sincerity — how he stood at the gate with his wife and daughter and handed over tickets to each of us and then stayed back to interact with us,” said Sharmila Ray, a senior mentor of Care who had passed out of South Point in 1974 and retired as a mathematics teacher in 2020.