By Robert St Martin
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 6/18/24 – The opening night film at this year’s Los Angeles-based film festival Dances with Films is Paper Flowers (USA, 2023), the second feature film of Indian American director Mahesh Pailoor. Paper Flowers will screen at the Ovation/Chinese TCL Theatre in Hollywood at 7:30 pm on Thursday, June 20. This is the story of young Indian American named Shalin Shah, who has just graduated from USC. He is trying to determine the direction of his life, but the film is not a joyous ride forward. Based on the true story of Shalin Shah, the film becomes a meditation on mortality and the importance of living each moment of life to the fullest and sharing that with others.
We first meet Shalin’s Indian American upper-middle class parents organizing a little celebration to honor his graduation. They are puzzled that he has not applied to medical school. Instead, Shalin (played by actor Kapil Talwaikar) has decided that he wants to volunteer for a two-year stint in the Peace Corps in Peru. With a loving family and a caring girlfriend, Shalin does not seem all that special – until a health crisis changes everything for him and the film shifts to focus on how Shalin learns to value the small things in life.
Shalin is an even-tempered young man who comes from a life of privilege with doting parents and little hardship. Early on in the film, Shalin and the audience are made to understand that the standard expectation in Indian American families is for their children to marry other Indian Americans. During his college years, Shalin has been involved with Fiona (played by Olivia Liang), who he has known since high school but has never introduced to his parents. So, Fiona being Chinese American does not fit in their marital expectations for Shalin by his parents. His father is quite adamant that marriage is not for love but for cultural continuity.
Shalin’s parents are hoping that he might pursue Ami (Anita Kalathara), an Indian American young woman who has just been admitted to medical school and plans to become a physician. On the other hand, Fiona has majored in Business with an emphasis on marketing and wants to work in the garment industry. Shalin has never introduced Fiona to his own parents and now he is about to depart for Peru and work with the Peace Corps. It seems that he is abandoning her, and she is not particularly happy about it.
On the other hand, Olivia has a Father Mr. Chang (played by Wes Liang) who is quite comfortable with Shalin and Olivia being together. He grew up in the USA and thinks that most likely Shalin’s father (played by Faran Tahir) is used to the old ways of India culture regarding marriage and family. Shalin’s mother Reema Shah (Meera Simban) is more understanding than her husband because she recalled falling in love with the senior Shah in India. All this romantic standard set-up amid minor cultural misunderstanding seems like it will be resolved by the Shah’s finally inviting Fiona to their house for dinner.
This is where the rather obvious metaphor of paper flowers kicks in, as Shalin makes a bouquet of paper flowers for Fiona and shows up on her doorstep to serenade her romantically and announce the planned family dinner. There is a bit of friction at the said dinner, and we leave all that behind, as Shalin soon is headed to the airport for his Peace Corps stint in Peru. He arrives and instantly we find him in the Andes in an indigenous community helping to build a community center for the local people.
Skyping via his cell phone with his parents and with Fiona about how happy he is with the people there in the village in Peru, Shalin seems to know Spanish so he can communicate with the local people. He has a noticeable cough that he exhibited even at the beginning of the film. Shalin is bit of an idealist, and he imagines that he can do things that might change the world or improve it a little. However, a routine check-up at a clinic reveals a devastating diagnosis: He has a rare and aggressive cancer with a huge tumor in his chest that needs immediate treatment. Forced to return home after only two months in Peru, Shalin leans on his loved ones for support as he grapples with his mortality.
Based on the real events in the short life of Shalin Shah, the screenplay was written by director Mahesh Pailoor, with assistance from Mary Krell-Oishi and Asit Vyas, who the director knew from projects related to advertising content he did at UCLA What makes the rest of the film worth seeing is the way Shalin responds to his frightening health diagnosis and how he changes. Hospitalized back in Los Angeles, Shalin’s is forever changed by the severity of his condition, which does bring his family closer as well as his long-term girlfriend Fiona. When he learns that his cancer has metastasized and he has only a few months to live, he discovers that the true meaning of life isn’t measured in time, but in the richness of each moment.
With a renewed zest for life, Shalin pens a viral manifesto, spreading beyond him and inspiring the world to find beauty in every sunset. That manifesto written down is shared online by his girlfriend Fiona and his best friend Milan (Karan Soni). The manifesto catches the attention of Varun Soni, Dean of Religious Studies at USC who honors Shalin at the USC graduation ceremony. When the head of the Peace Corps reads his story, she visits Shalin personally to thank him for his efforts at sharing his message that cancer showed him the way to live and honor life’s moments. Shalin Shah passed away on May 16. 2015 at the age of 22.
