India has such rich repertoire of traditional and healthy food, that it is surprising there are so few films revolving around it. That’s just one reason why Sachin Kundalkar’s Marathi film Gulabjaam is such a delight.

Pune-based writer and filmmaker Kundalkar has made two other films — Restaurant and Vazandar — with food at their centre, but Gulabjaam is a full-blooded romance with Maharashtrian cuisine, which, for some reason is not as popular outside the state as Punjabi, Gujarati, Udupi and Mughlai food.

Which is why the male lead of the film, Aditya (Siddharth Chandekar) gives up his well-paid job in London to come Pune to learn to cook traditional Maharashtrian food, because he wants to open a café serving it in London. Like so many boys growing up in conservative families, his passion for cooking was not encouraged, and he was forced into a banking career. Like a good Indian son, he did not rebel

till much later.

In Pune, as he goes about sampling the food, he encounters the famed Pune rudeness;  on requesting a kitchen visit in a restaurant, the waiter snaps, “You want to wash the dishes?” The author of an old, yellowing cook book turns down his request for learning to make the dishes from her, saying that the book was written for new brides, not for boys!

Finally, he tastes the perfect gulabjaam in his friend’s tiffin, is transported to his childhood, and impelled to go meet the cook, Radha Agarkar (Sonali Kulkarni — perfect), only to have the door slammed in his face. Radha, with her shapeless clothes, tight plait, and stern expression is the neighbourhood grouch, who only communicates with her maid and tiffin delivery boy.  Her home in the old part of Pune looks like it has been caught in the past — a dead landline indicates the owner’s deliberate reclusiveness. (An old man sits in the downstairs verandah, reading and watching the world go by — a reminder of another age.) The only time Radha goes out, it is to watch a film in an old moviehall — her favourite being Ranbir Kapoor.

When Aditya persists and lands up outside her door at the crack of dawn, she lets him come in and help with shopping, grinding (she won’t use a mixer), and washing. It takes a lot of patience and good cheer on the part of Aditya to crack her hard outer shell and get her to agree to teach him, her condition being that in any argument they have, she will win.

She warms up to Aditya and a real friendship develops, but Kundalkar does not go the way of a conventional romance, and it’s not just because she is older than him, or that he is engaged to a childhood friend — a greedy harpy of a girl who is in contrast to Radha’s serenity.  They are just two different people with different lifestyles that do not match.

Gradually, the reason for Radha’s odd behavior is revealed, and Aditya takes it upon himself to help her overcome her fears and phobias. In the meantime, they cook delicious-looking meals; lovingly shot (even the making of tea is magical). Maharashtrian food is simple but spicy with subtly hidden flavours. And somehow the film manages to convey that through its visuals and the expressions on the faces of those who eat Radha’s food.

The film is also about nostalgia for a gentler, less hurried way of life, when the women of the house had the time to hand-grind spices and chutneys, cook with seasonal ingredients, roll, flatten, fry, garnish and serve a blend of colours, textures and flavours on a banana leaf or thali that often looked like a carefully-drawn rangoli.

Radha cooks because she can and has to, Aditya because he wants to — it’s a match made in heaven’s kitchen.