Frames per Second: The long walk home-2

The government has extended the Covid-19 lockdown - but provided little succour to the most vulnerable

In the very first scene of Peepli Live (2010), Natha (Omkar Das Manikpuri) — a farmer and the protagonist of the film — asks his elder brother, Budhiya (Raghuvir Yadav): “Zameen chali gayi to kya hoga? (What will happen if we lose our land?)”

The possibility of this calamity descending on the two brothers is alarmingly real — they have been served an ultimatum by a bank to repay a loan or give up their ancestral, agricultural land. When the local MLA and strongman Bhai Thakur (Sitaram Panchal) and his cronies tell the Manikpuri brothers — in cruel jest —