The savagery of racial injustice has come to haunt humanity, yet again, with the brutal murder of George Floyd, 46, on the streets of Minneapolis in broad daylight. The incident instantly made headlines because law enforcement agencies were involved while a 17-year old had the presence of mind to film the brutality on her phone. These bellicose emotions often hurled towards visible minorities is no less ‘xenophobic’ in nature — from the Greek Xenos, meaning “stranger” or “foreigner”, and Phobos, meaning “fear”. In short, it’s a fear or hatred of that which is perceived to be foreign or strange. On those lines, Axone (‘Aa-Koo-Ne’) is a praiseworthy narrative and an attempt to address that systemic xenophobic mentality towards the culture and the people from the North-Eastern states of India. Also, I love movies that are made with the capital city of India, New Delhi, as a backdrop, and I assure you that there are only a few of them.
By the way, I’d suggest not reading any further than this if you haven’t watched the movie yet (it’s playing on Netflix right now) and if you don’t want the spoilers to ruin all the fun.
The narrative begins with a group of friends from North East India, a patch of territory that’s almost separated by the country of Bangladesh, in a Delhi community who have an elaborate meal planned for the wedding of one of their mates Minam (Asenla Jamir). The challenge is the dish itself called ‘Axone’ that uses a slice of smelly pork arguably having the most obnoxious odour that’s irking the neighbourhood to no limits, albeit it gives them a strong excuse to abuse the members of this peaceful group even further. The evidence of which comes through one of the most riveting sequences during the first half of the movie when a pair of good-for-nothing blokes pass lewd comments at Chanbi (played by the awesome Lia Laishram) and when he’s confronted by her she’s thwacked in full view of her boyfriend — we later learn that the boyfriend has had his own traumatic episode making him submissive. That shocking episode that’s rarely pictured in Bollywood fantasy dramas strikes you to discover how grave the situation might be for the common North-Easterners living in the rest of India. As well as, those races that are not part of the predominant Hindi-speaking culture brought about by the media and Hindi movies, by and large. The group (Sayani Gupta, Tenzin Dalha, amongst others) face racial slurs at almost every nook and corner of the locality while scrambling for a kitchen venue, pleading and begging. Oddly enough they seem to have accepted such contemptuous behaviour, comical or abusive in nature. In all that comedy though the reality begins to hit hard.
It was a brilliant gambit by the filmmaker choosing to portray the lingering pain and the distress of abuses interspersed within a dark comedy and delivered effectively through actors from the northeast which was heartening to see. Now Axone wouldn’t have been so interesting after all without the Nani’s (Dolly Ahluwalia) Punjabi/Hindi swearing, or without the endearing nature of Shiv (Rohan Tandon), the landlord’s son, who was crucial in supporting the circle to set up a place to cook the meal, while fending off his mad and wary girlfriend — without him in the big picture Axone was literally or figuratively out of reach. Lastly, Vinay Pathak in a pivotal role as the landlord provides the Delhi-ite flavour that we have come to admire in several of his movies, his dead-pan comic style is easily the most entertaining stuff!
The making of a culinary dish on a special day spilled so much hatred out in the open, the plight of the northeasterner who have lived through this experience every day in the urban centers of India is unpalpable. Axone might be smelling awful but the experience of being from the northeast is super tasteful. You just need to learn to enjoy and live with the differences, prefer the diversity and not butcher it.
