Palak and Anuja endear us to their bittersweet world, observes Sukanya Verma.
Anuja begins with a girl telling her tween sibling a Panchatantra story about how a faithful mongoose saved a farmer's child from a poisonous snake yet was mistaken for an attacker because of his master's impetuous impulses.
Making a thoughtful decision is central to writer-director Adams J Graves' Oscar-nominated live-action short film -- backed by the likes of Guneet Monga, Mindy Kaling and Priyanka Chopra Jones -- about a pair of orphaned sisters inhabiting Delhi's grimy, shabby slums.
But the warm gaze of their luminously captured sisterhood and slice-of-life-below-poverty line also sees the dignity in their spirit to overcome hardships and chart their own fairy tale.
Like Hansel and Gretel, they hope to make their way out of the darkness and come up with ingenious ways to outwit a ruthless world.
Rising above a statistic of the economically disadvantaged left to fend for themselves by an apathetic system, Anuja's humane gaze sneaks into their personal interactions strewn in humour and humble aspirations.
Palak (Ananya Shanbhag), the older one, appears to be on the brink of adulthood and has grown wiser beyond her years in the absence of a father and mother whose stories they hold on to and savour like candies in a box.
Anuja (Sajda Pathan), somewhere in the range of 10 passed off as 14, is a young Maths whiz, who is offered a choice between an accounts assistant at the sweatshop the sisters toil in or a boarding school scholarship.
It's a mild mannered depiction of a robbed childhood that pulls down its rose-tinted glasses every now and then.
Like the boorish manner of Anuja and Palak's boss, his foul tongue and creepy style suggest he's both conceited towards and exploitative of his surroundings.
In barely 22 minutes, Palak and Anuja endear us to their bittersweet world and dreams that may not always come true yet feel breathtakingly alive and triumphant even in their fleeting realisation.
Graves doesn't disclose Anuja's choice but the post credits alludes to an uplifting outcome since the child playing her knows this story only too well.
Before the Non-Profit Organisation Salaam Baalak Trust took her under their wing, Sajda Pathan was one of the street kids engaged in child labour. Both she and Ananya are a picture of disarming authenticity and adorable chemistry.
They talk about various things under the sun (and their rundown roof) and the most life affirming of them is no matter how real the struggle is, how uncertain the days ahead, nobody can do a darn thing about a kid's smarts.
Anuja streams on Netflix.
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