Saibal Chatterjee hails Termite as a remarkable debut in fiction, beginning with the unforgettable line: “Shaunak Sen’s first stab at fiction is a triumph,” celebrating its meditative, humane cinematic brilliance.

The opening image of Termite, Cannes Golden Eye-winning and Oscar-nominated documentarian Shaunak Sen’s first stab at fiction, is telling: a solitary man taps and pokes a wall looking for termites, insects whose existence is defined by extreme sociality.

The camera’s focus is on fingers running across a faded, cracked, cemented surface, pressing against it, feeling, inspecting, sussing with intent. The fingers belong to a termite exterminator, a Tamil migrant in Old Delhi.

The man, Ajith (played by Puducherry theatre practitioner Valavane Koumarane), verbalises letters to an uncle – he writes regularly and in his own language – and says that all the Hindi he hears is getting too much for him.

Alienation, Routine and Belonging

Ajith is a slave to routine. He barely speaks and goes about his job with studied detachment. His lack of familiarity with the environs he operates in only heightens his sense of isolation.

Termite is an austere examination of alienation, friendship, yearning for human bonding, and the desire for reassuring familiarity amid stimuli that seem, sound, and are, alien.

The 31-minute short film, which premiered at the 51st Toronto International Film Festival on Friday, was shot evocatively in seedy interiors and dimly lit forested areas by DoP Ben Bernhard (with additional cinematography by Saumyanand Sahi).

Termite, filmed in five days with Sen’s own outfit KiteRabbit Films and Dimpy Agrawal’s Gubbara Entertainment, and presented by Azim Premji Foundation, has only two principal actors.

Friendship Against Quiet Despair

The film is strewn with visuals of termites gnawing through soil, plants and other surfaces. Millions of termites always work as one, a reality that Ajith was introduced to by his father, from whom he inherited his calling. He recalls being told that it is “community (that) saves us”.

To Ajith individually, “community” isn’t the people who requisition his services for their infected premises. They are just customers. To him, community is the silent, steady bond he has with Saud Ahmed (Faisal Malik), his roommate and only friend, a man who is far more at ease with the world they inhabit.

Life takes a sudden turn for Saud. While he responds enthusiastically to the new opportunity, the development disrupts Ajith’s notion of the home that he has created far away from home.

As Ajith’s thoughts and recollections, conveyed only through epistles, are revealed, the mention of his absent father evokes pleasant nostalgia and points to questions that have remained unanswered.

An old man (Vipin Sharma) arrives at their door one night with a proposal that catches Saud by surprise. I can hardly believe that we are still marriageable, he quips to Ajith.

The old man’s daughter, Tabassum (Shilpa Shukla), has had an unpleasant brush with matrimony, but the father is keen to see her hitched again.

Saud, like Ajith, is on the wrong side of forty. The two men have no reason to believe that they still have time, but with one of them now in with a chance to start over, the other is faced with the prospect of the loss of a friend.

Any disruption of routine has the potential of putting the ‘home’ they share in grave jeopardy.

A Miniaturist Cinematic Masterpiece

In a world where connections are transactional and shallow, life isn’t easy for Ajith and Saud. The two are at ease with each other not only because they live under the same roof.

The two men have meals in a small eatery. They sleep on a bunk bed, with Ajith occupying the lower bunk. They play carrom on the terrace, which appears to be the only recreation they can afford.

Both are assailed by the feeling that life is passing them by. In one of his letters, Ajith reveals to his uncle that Saud believes that, at the stage of life they are in, it is but natural for old friends to drift away. It is this fear of an impending rupture that gnaws at him.

The performances in the film do not feel like performances at all. Valavane Koumarane conveys a psyche weighed down by an affinity with the secret ways of the termites.

Faisal Malik is a terrific foil to the pensive Koumarane. Vipin Sharma and Shilpa Shukla, in the two supporting roles, merge completely with the world that Termite makes its way through.

Termite is magnificently “miniaturist” cinema, as expressive as it is meditative. Vivified by Sen’s documentary precision, it is at once quietly observational and profoundly creative.