31st October movie review: It has nothing we didn’t know
The assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on that fateful 1984 October day had led to three days of shocking mayhem in the national capital, where armed mobs rampaged through many parts of Delhi, burning and killing Sikhs, and pillaging their establishments.
It was, not to put too fine a point on it, a pogrom. The smell of burnt flesh and rubber was everywhere: the news of the assassination was finally confirmed by the BBC, leading to a bloody aftermath. Almost everywhere you turned, there was a vehicle or a body in flames.
The film opens on that day, showing a Sikh family– Davinder (Vir Das) and Tajinder (Soha Ali Khan) and their children, two boys and a babe in arms—going about their usual routine. Davinder walks the little boys to the school bus and goes off to work at the local electricity office (DESU); Tajinder heads to the nearby market.