Maryade Prashne

There’s a Bengaluru that has slowly been invisibilised in pop culture. It’s almost like they’d like you to believe India’s Silicon Valley is all about skyscrapers and pubs, people with laptops waltzing into swanky hotels and coffee shops, and health-conscious folks ordering flour from chakkis. But, there’s another Bengaluru, the one that was once the mainstream and is now the outlier — made up of locals and migrant workforce, all of whom fall under the broad category of the middle class — whose members walk hesitantly into star hotels, drink happily in open-to-the-sky bars, who stand in a queue to grind flour in a machine, and who struggle to pay their loans on time, every single month. The kind of people who wear unbranded inner garments and smell of sweat, as a character in Maryade Prashne says. The only thing they have for themselves is maryade or self-respect. What does one do when that is questioned? When intent is rubbished? That’s what Nagaraj Somayaji’s taut two-hour-long Maryade Prashne is all about.