A celebrity author Animesh Mukherjee (Soumitra Chatterjee) is headed to Delhi to attend an award ceremony. His wife Bonhi (Angana Bose) carefully packs his suitcase and repeatedly instructs him about his medication that he must abide by. Somehow in the marriage of almost 40 years, Bonhi's concern appears all fuss and routine to Animesh, who has planned a clandestine meeting with his old flame from college Mohona (Rupa Ganguly), a widow who lives alone in the same city, on his way back from Delhi. Animesh can spend all of 28 hours with Mohona before he must return home and he is excited about it. So is Mohona, after all, this will be the first time they will meet in privacy after several years and she is looking forward to spending a day with her first love, clearly harbouring a multitude of emotions in her heart. Animesh turns up as planned, it's a moment that Mohona has dreamt of for the past four decades, but fate has other plans.
After a late dinner chatting over nostalgic encounters, Animesh starts feeling uneasy, suffers a massive cardiac arrest, and eventually dies in Mohona's bedroom in the middle of the night. Distraught, she can barely control her grief and pull herself together, but then she finds herself in the centre of a storm with police, media, forensic experts, neighbours and even her daughter accusing her of an affair, kicking up a scandal. Mohona hasn't had a moment to herself to absorb the chain of events and the loss of her dear friend, but must face the situation with dignity and truthfulness. In such a condition, Mohona needs an ally who understands her and will provide her a support she can latch on to, and it does arrive eventually, but from an unimaginable source.
Punascha is a thought provoking film about a mature romance and friendship, more about psychological needs and fulfillment. Marked by an exceptionally strong performance by Rupa Ganguly who enacts droves of emotions with utter ease, and duly supported by Soumitra Chatterjee and Angana Bose, Punascha will force you to take sides and turn judgemental about the secret rendezvous of the ageing couple, and its social legitimacy. But it's excruciatingly slow, prolonged by a mashup of well intentioned songs that almost stalled the flow of the narrative, force feeding the nostalgia to the viewers who perhaps wanted Punascha to proceed somewhat more briskly.
