Choke 2020

In a crowded, lower-middle-class neighborhood of Mumbai, a couple named Sarita Pillai and Sushant Pillai struggle to make ends meet while raising their young son. Despite the daily grind, they share a musical background that hints at brighter moments from the past. A flashback reveals Sarita’s grave stage fright during a reality singing show, when the roar of a large audience caused her to freeze. That traumatic memory still shadows her, coloring how she navigates the present pressures of work, family, and debt.

Today, Sarita works as a bank teller and is the family’s primary breadwinner, while Sushant battles frequent unemployment and turns to small schemes to cobble together income. The long hours and mounting responsibilities at home sow friction between them, as each tries to hold the household together despite the mounting strain.

In their apartment building, an unnamed man arrives with a heavy suitcase and stashes sizable cash bundles in a ziploc bag, stuffing them into the bathroom drain. The concealed loot causes the building’s water pipes to choke, and odd sounds echo from the kitchen sink. One night, Sarita wakes for a drink of water and discovers the hidden cash. After confirming it’s real at her bank, she uses the money to clear Sushant’s debts and to furnish their home with nicer amenities. To justify the windfall, she tells Sushant it came from her mother’s fixed deposit.

As Sarita begins to enjoy the financial windfall, the film also tracks the neighbors’ struggles and the tense relationship with Tai, the neighbor downstairs whom Sarita affectionately calls sister. The new wealth alters their dynamics and briefly eases old anxieties, offering moments of relief amid ongoing hardship.

Everything changes when Prime Minister Modi announces demonetization, banning the use of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 notes. The couple and their neighbors are blindsided by the sudden upheaval: Tai faces a cruel setback just as she plans her daughter’s wedding, and Sarita’s carefully managed flow of money collapses into a stressful scramble once more.

Demonetization pushes Sarita back into long bank lines, irritable customers, and heightened scrutiny at work. Sushant grows suspicious after glimpsing a video involving Reddy, a man from whom he had borrowed money, and wrongly concludes Sarita is having an affair. In truth, Sarita had used the hidden cash to repay Reddy, but the truth remains unclear to him.

Hope seems to return when Sarita stumbles upon another surprise: newly minted Rs. 2000 notes appear in her kitchen pipe. The prospect of fresh cash fuels her, and she goes to great lengths to keep it hidden, even locking the kitchen and shielding it from visitors.

But the dream of easy money shatters again when thieves storm a bank, force the staff at gunpoint, and seize all the cash—including the money Sarita had tucked away. The loss leaves her devastated, reinforcing the sense that she has again failed at a crucial moment.

The police soon connect the fabled cash to a broader crime network tied to a local politician and a corrupt bank officer in another city. When questioned, Sarita fears that her own use of the cash could entangle her in trouble, but Sushant reveals the existence of the ziploc bags full of money. The neighbors seize the opportunity and quietly reclaim large sums for themselves, slipping back to their homes as detectives collect Sushant’s details during the investigation.

One year later, after returning from a trip, the Pillais learn that they are entitled to a 10% share of the recovered cash. The exact amount remains shrouded in mystery, leaving the balance of what was recovered and what was kept by others open to interpretation, and inviting the audience to wonder about the true cost of their luck.