In 2021, NYU Abu Dhabi undoubtedly enjoyed its fair share of the collective global tumult. This last summer has been particularly marked by a downpour of unwelcome news — the changes in study support, an uncooperative travel agency and the instruction mode chaos, among others — all of which combined to make this period a distressing reality for many people. A student body made resilient and strengthened on its foundations of diversity had grown agitated over discrimination in campus arrivals, academic opportunities and financial security.

In a time like this, the community might find some semblance of its misfortune in Wes Anderson’s film The Darjeeling Limited. Debuting three years prior to the foundation of the university and 12 years before the emergence of the Covid-19 virus, the movie nearly perfectly anticipated, in analogical terms, the pandemic episodes of NYUAD. In the strange and tangled brotherhood of Jack, Francis and Peter Whitman, the main characters of the film, the student body might catch an outline of its relationship with the administration and the government that funds it and possibly find a lesson in the clever work of the screenwriter.

In the first scene of The Darjeeling Limited, Peter is seen racing another man at a train station in India to board an eloping train, an opening metaphor for the race to the finish line of admission our global leaders had to run. Just like them, Peter is successful in boarding the train, where he is reunited with his brothers Francis and Jack after prolonged separation. Following a deadly motorcycle accident, Francis had realised a need to rekindle the faltering bond between him and his brothers, none of whom have been in touch since their father’s funeral a year ago. At his behest, Peter and Jack accompany him on their trail through the Indian countryside.

On board The Darjeeling Limited, the brothers are still grieving the death of their father, whose bags and suitcases they drag along on their journey. They reminisce about their late parent and make assumptions about his worldview. Much like the absence of John Sexton and His Highness Sheikh Zayed Al Nahyan from the premises of NYUAD, the father never makes an appearance in the film. We only learn about him through the assumptions his sons make. As the current administration of the university makes its way forward on its deductions from The Shibboleth, so does Francis support his arguments with a timely “dad would’ve hated it.”

Throughout the film, Peter and Jack are inundated by the various agreements proposed by their brother. In his search for the lost connection with them, Francis tries to extract promises of complete honesty and openness. He wants them to “become brothers again.” However, the brothers are not so easily reconciled and their distorted communication repeatedly generates friction amongst them. Their conversations are often so unwieldy that the faces of the brothers melt into images of emails between NYUAD students and Student Mobility or Student Finance. Most of the time they are talking less to each other and more to themselves, keeping secrets and making guesses.

A recurrent theme in the film and one relatable to an NYUAD student, is loss: the brothers lose their parents, Peter loses his fiancé, Francis loses his facial structure to a motorcycle accident. At one point, the locomotive stops in its tracks and Francis’s assistant explains, “I guess the train's lost.” Jack is understandably confused, “how can a train be lost on its tracks?” From the loss of a cash stipend, to the loss of YouGotAGift vouchers — most NYUAD students have also been through it all. In contrast, the most striking element in The Darjeeling Limited is, perhaps, the brothers’ desperate attempt to salvage their relationship through the journey. They stay true to their itinerary: finding themselves and their lost brotherhood somewhere along the Indian countryside.

Not long after the train gathers its bearings, it stops again, but this time on the command of the chief steward, who resolves to throw Francis, Jack and Peter off The Darjeeling Limited on account of their spiritual activities onboard, including sneaking in and letting loose a poisonous snake they had traded at a bazaar. As the brothers are trudging away from their last railway station, they come to the bank of a river, where three young Indian boys are crossing the river on a makeshift raft. Their raft eventually collapses and the adrift boys are left at the mercy of the physical faculties of the brothers.

Francis, Jack and Peter manage to save two boys, who lead them to their village for an unanticipated funeral. The foreigners are received warmly by the boys’ family. The communal mourning that follows appears in sharp contrast to their hospitality as they make the Whitman brothers feel at home in the village. When it’s time to finally leave for home, the villagers help them carry their father’s luggage to the train station.

But the river had shifted the dynamics of more than one family.

The brothers realise that they no longer feel the same attachment to their absent parents. The villagers’ kindness despite their grief jolts them out of their desperate search. While Francis, Jack and Peter carry their father’s bags and suitcase along with them throughout the whole film, the villagers part with their deceased through a ceremony that celebrates closeness and kinship. They accept pain and loss as fundamental elements of life, even when they come from loved ones, but they avoid allowing them to become overarching themes of life.

The Darjeeling Limited is a story where the journey itself becomes the destination. Francis, Jack and Peter, much like NYUAD students at their university, remember their transient existence through India. As the film ends and the brothers prepare to leave, Peter fondly looks back at their host, “I’ll never forget how this country smells. It’s kind of spicy.”