The first relief in the film Bow Barracks Forever comes nearly forty-five minutes into the film . This is when a little angelic looking Anglo-Indian boy called Jason ( K Medhora) closes his eyes and counts till hundred in a game of hide-and-seek on the dilapidated terrace of the shabby tenement. This is where Bradley Lobo, one of the characters in the film, in an inter-cut, practices for the Christmas show and delivers a neat little dance based on the Anjan Dutt remix of the Beatles number When I saw her standing there. Till then the film is a roller coaster ride with brutal aggression and sex-in-your-face, when not giving us clichéd images representing the lives of a few Christian families marginalized in every sense of the term. They want out – the equally shabby staircase of Bow Barracks acts as a metaphor but in realty, they are very much trapped within the confines of hand pulled rickshaws and the floral bedroom sheets of their overcrowded tenement lives.

The Anglo-Indians form a minority of people who have always been caught between two worlds through history and circumstances. Not really accepted by the English, they never felt at home in India after the country gained its independence, in a way sharing the same fate as many other Eurasians spread across the country. If Bombay has seen more of a Christian Goan concentration, thanks to Portuguese rule in nearby Goa, Calcutta was once the toast of the Anglo-Indians. They enriched the city's cosmopolitan landscape with pretty secretaries , well-known sportspersons and talented musicians. The Goans (who had migrated to the city to work at its many restaurants) and the Anglo-Indian became synonymous with each other through their proximity but considered themselves quite separate to each other. Though not visible in the surface, both the communities harbour a love-hate relationship with each other, distinguishable through their surnames. Technically Emily Lobo, the main protagonist who makes wines for a living, is a Goan and not an Anglo-Indian , the high point in her life being that telephone call to her son in faraway London as her younger son makes out with the married but battered Ann next door. She could well be Sandra from Bandra but in this case the story is more about a group of hapless people (all minorities included) whose tenement is about to be taken over by a realtor – the wicked Mr Mukherjee and if they do not get a lakh of rupees to repair the building, they would soon be evicted. And how they stop it in spite of all their shortcoming and eccentricities is what the script is all about.

Bow Barracks on Bow Street stands a mute witness to all this. The quaint red-brick block of flats, once the garrison of the American GIs posted in the city, which is stashed behind the posh Central Avenue. And you might feel Violet Stoneham, the gentle Anglo-Indian English teacher of 36 Chowringhee Lane resurfaces in Bow Barracks Forever as Emily Lobo do not, however, look here for the refined world of Shakespeare and a certain pet cat called Sir Toby in here. Do not look for brave men; what you get instead is a brutal world where the F-word is bandied about like sparklers in a firecracker store. The young girl bunks classes to hang out with the chokra boys – pidgin English for the roadside rowdies belonging to the ' Indian ' communities; the young man dreams of playing good music and cannot hold on to his regular job in a record store; the older men are either smugglers or cheaters. The ageing women, in their printed frocks, their cute little cross pendants neatly in place, are as foul mouthed as the " bustee lok" they love to abhor . The lingo is Anglo Indian – yeah men – never man – mudder and fudder – need I add the rest. Trapped within confined places makes a case for closed minds but even if the Anglo-Indians are a garrulous lot, I have never seen them bark at each other in what is conversation as in the film during my own growing up years within the proximity of Bow Barracks. The fun is definitely missing from this once fun loving community, the residuals of which continue to fight a losing battle in their daily bid for survival. The film carries forward the message so disastrously handled by the director in his first film, Bada Din (1998). It had failed despite a star cast in Shabana Azmi and Tara Deshpande while in Bow Barracks Forever, the director has just about got his act together but sadly amateurishly so.

All the main characters have a problem living with each other – be it mother and son, daughter and step father, husband and wife and the mohalla. They want to escape – anywhere – even if it is to the coal mine town of Asansol which is but a couple of hours away from the city. Young Sally, the would- be-school drop-out is in love with Bradley who, in turn, wants to rescue Ann from her violent cruel husband, Tom. Mrs Lobo waits for that letter from Ken, her son in England while Rosa D'Costa wants to migrate to Sydney like the Dawsons . Simple wants apparently yet unattainable for the people are caught in a time warp situation from were there is actually no escape. The one good moment in the film is when Bradley tells his mother that she should forget about that letter from Kenny promising to take her to London which will never come and that failure is something one has to accept. The bitter disappointment in Emily's eyes due to this realization holds the audiences for a brief moment. Otherwise, the film totally lacks any pauses or reflective moments that could help us undertand the characters better and whenever, Victor Bannerjee's saxophone soulfully rents the air, someone yells at him to shut up. The ghost of Bada Din's underdog comes to haunt the director again and again, and just like in his previous film The Bong Connection, the whole film has been tarred by a very thick brush.

Pritish Nandy Communications which has released the film almost after two years of its completion, reiterates the catch line of ' triumph of the human spirit. ' The community realizes finally that whatever change should come, should be from within, but when that translates into entertainment, the multiplex audiences that have been created for such cinema long consigned to vague film festivals, have the right to chose considering they have to spend over hundred rupees for a ticket. If triumph over the human spirit is the raison d'etre of the film, give me the free television live cast of a little boy being saved from being buried forever under a well.

What are the choices, therefore, in the film? The camera work by Indranil Mukherjee captures the interiors - the suffocating bedrooms scenes bringing out the suffocting live of its characters extremely well but the exterior location of the tenement and the area around it within the bigger bustling metro could have been better established. Though everyone is talking about the music in Bow Barracks Forever, Neel Dutt's music lacks the purity of the bitter sweet jazz blues sound; there is a mite of Beatles rock and roll sound, songs by Kenny Rogers but too much of techno to nudge the other sounds out. The appearance of a singer like Usha Uthup as a real character comes across as forced and playing to the gallery rather than fitting naturally into the film . There are a number of bands that are very professional in the city and if Dutt comes out of this home talent production, he would go a longer way in furnishing a far more professional look to his films.

What finally triumphs in the film is the talented pool of good actors. Lillete Dubey as Emily Lobo does deliver a convincing performance (when she is allowed to) and so does her daughter Neha as the matter-of-fact Ann. Moon Moon Sen, the over sexed Rosa is a little over the top in her sexual appetite but when she ultimately returns to Bow Barracks with suitcase in one hand and a vanity bag on the other, after running away with Bipin for a short while, she does captures a vulnerable side to her. Melville is well played by Avijit Dutt whereas Clayton Rogers as Bradley and Sohini Pal (daughter of Bengali mainstream actor Tapas Pal) as Sally respectively are very good as well but there is no remarkable histrionics you can carry back in your mind. Sabysachi Chakraborty as the Armenian Tom, sporting blue-grey contact lenses, is the odd man out as far as physical appearances go, but somehow making up with his tough dude role. If anyone really diasappoints, surprisingly it is Victor Bannerjee who plays Peter the cheater who cons folks to buy worthless antiques. He is the guy who plays the loney sax with his heart (of gold) but appears over the top at times being Fagin-like from Oliver Twist in his mannersisms.

The trouble with fictionalizing accounts of a minority community is that it does fall into the same stereotypical trap that one tries to avoid in a bid to be more sympathetic. With Bow Barracks Forever, the director traps the community in the same clichés that it often tries to escape from.