Kaisi Ye Paheli

Conceptually, Kaisi Ye Paheli goes for broke. The 95-minute independent film, written and directed by Ananyabrata Chakravorty, wears the cloak of yet another small-town whodunnit. There’s a death in misty Kalimpong; sullen cop Uttam (Sukant Goel) and his boss, Tamang (Chittaranjan Giri), are flummoxed by the details: a religious girl poisoned by a holy sweet? The theatrical Bondo (Rajit Kapur, always) is summoned from Kolkata by the powers that be; the senior sleuth has a direct line to “Didi,” and behaves like he’s an amalgamation of Byomkesh Bakshi and Feluda in his head. Meanwhile, Uttam’s home situation is complicated — he resents his widowed mother (Sadhana Singh) for various reasons, not least because she constantly recalls their past life and late husband. The mother-son bond is strained, she aches for his attention, so it’s amusing when Tamang and team unofficially recruit her to be part of the investigation because of her passion for Bengali detective novels. Uttam’s colleagues confide in her like sons in their downtime; it’s a quirky touch without the energy of a quirky touch.