Picture Credits: Kottke.org
‘Meet Tungrus and His Pet Chicken from Hell’ – an absurd piece of Bombay portrayed through Rishi Chadna’s film on the Bhadres’ and their pet rooster
Annie Louis
Rishi Chadna’s short film ‘Meet Tungrus and His Pet Chicken from Hell’ explores Mumbai’s chaos and absurdity through the Bhaders, a middle-class family with two pet cats and a rooster. Mumbai is one of India’s most populated metropolises, a city known for its swift pace. The suburbs are usually filled with cramped apartments in which middle-class people live. The film follows a simple plot— Mr Bharde buys a chick from a street vendor, the chick survives and becomes their hellish pet—yet small moments in the film allude to a not-so-simple plot. The film’s characters are relatable if you had the typical middle-class upbringing in a city. Their house, where the film was shot, represents a space familiar to us, with tables stacked up, a guitar with its dusty cover on in a corner and a mandatory glass TV unit with tiny cubicles to place souvenirs collected over the years. As absurd as it is to meet a family with a pet rooster, the characters, the space shown extends a feeling that we know this family, they can be our next-door neighbours, and the chances of this happening in our house are not zero.
The love-hate relationship between the family members and the rooster leans more towards hate, the disgruntled feeling that arises while dealing with a cranky child. In between the interview frames, the film bursts into the rooster fluttering around the house, the annoyance visible on the family’s face. The rest of the family seem madder at the patriarch Mr Bhadre than the rooster. The wife calls him ‘uncle’ and says he brings home pets and stuff and leaves the raising part to the rest of them. Moments like when the wife here addresses her husband as ‘uncle’ reveals to us a small cultural practice. The film archives this habit of married Indian women referring to their husbands with regard to the relationship others share with their husbands. It’s not uncommon in India to hear wives calling their husbands ‘dolly-ki-pappa’ or ‘Sanjay appa’. The younger son calls his dad bringing the rooster home a ‘classic dad moment’ with a straight face. Nobody is happy with the Mr.Bhadre-caused rooster situation, but what they are unhappier about is the fact that he wants to slaughter their pet chicken and make a meal out of it.
The film is paced funny, showing us the Tom-Jerry dynamics of the family and the rooster until Mr Bhadre reveals his plan to kill it. The film then turns morose. We see that the ‘dad’ character brings the rooster into the house, asks everyone to deal with the not-so-kind living situation it creates and then decides to snatch it all away. In the final moments of the film, despite the characters’ last tries to tone down their pet’s death, we are left with the chilling scene of the rooster getting slaughtered. The film asks us to answer the question it raised: Is it okay to eat your pet? The rooster’s death also exhibits the fleetingness of the ‘sheher’.
The Lost Star 
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