Anupam Kher was in Los Angeles for his musical play. He ended up at David O. Russell's house for lunch instead of just doing press.

Kher shared the reunion on Instagram on September 15, posting a photo with Russell alongside a note addressed directly to the filmmaker. The two go back to 2012's Silver Linings Playbook, Russell's Oscar-winning tragicomedy in which Kher played Dr Cliff Patel opposite Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence and Robert De Niro. Fourteen years on, they're apparently still trading notes on Shiva and cinema over a meal.

"Dearest David O. Russell, It was so wonderful meeting you in Los Angeles," Kher wrote. "Thank you for the delicious lunch, for our beautiful conversations about Shiva, life, cinema and your latest film #Madden, and for welcoming me into your home. What a beautiful house!! And what extraordinary energy it has!!"

He went further, calling the catch-up something close to a reset button. "Meeting you is always rejuvenating. I come away feeling more hopeful about life, more excited about cinema, and more inspired to work," Kher wrote, before circling back to the film that started it all. "Working with you in #SilverLiningPlaybook was truly a great experience for me! An experience that I will always treasure. I look forward to working with you again and again and again!"

That last line is doing a lot of work. Nobody's announced a project, and there's nothing in Kher's post that points to an actual role or a script in hand. Russell is currently attached to a film titled Madden, which came up at lunch, but Kher's post doesn't say he's part of it. Read it as an actor being warm and hopeful about a director he clearly admires, not as casting news.

The LA trip itself was for work of a different kind. Kher has been performing Jaane Pehchaane Anjane, a multilingual stage production in Hindi, Punjabi and English, written and directed by Gajendra Ahire with music by Anu Malik. He shares the stage with Swaroop Sampat. The play was staged on September 13 at the Cook Auditorium in Anaheim, part of the Greater LA circuit that Indian theatre productions tour regularly.

So the sequence reads like this. Kher flies in for a play. Somewhere between shows, he swings by an old collaborator's home, they eat, they talk about God and movies, and he comes home with a photo and a hopeful caption. It's a nice story about two people who made a good film together once. Whether it turns into a second one is a separate question, and right now there's no answer to it beyond Kher's own wishful thinking on Instagram.