On paternal love...

Aelay (ஏலே! Hey You! Tamil; 2021)

We always complain that our fathers are not expressive enough, that they are not touchy enough. We allege that they are relatively economical with their display of affection. We despise their approach to solving problems. We say they are too laid back, sometimes also detached.  In our minds, our fathers exhibit all the traits of how a father should not be. We resolve to be just the opposite of what they were.

We spend a great deal of our adulthood not seeing eye-to-eye with our fathers. We tell ourselves we will not be like him when we grow older. Slowly, with the lessons learnt from the School of Hard Knock and Life, we soon realise that he managed, with and despite his knowledge and experience, to hold the fort for others to prosper. In the traditional sense, he looked at himself as a material provider. As for their deeds and misdeeds that he has under his belt, they cannot be held against as he did with his family's best interest at heart. As for vices, he is, after all, human. It is for him to err and for us to forgive.

We should not forget that our parents have to fulfil a particular personal obligation to merit their existence. They also may have likes, desires and sometimes guilty pleasures. Their sole purpose of being is not just to procreate and nurture their progeny. 

Parthi returns home to fulfil his filial duties at his father's funeral. He never a good relationship with his father. His father, a widower, brought him and his sister up working as an ice cream vendor. He was quite a character in his younger days, dodging moneylender and conning people of their monies to earn some extra cash. Parthi grew up hating covering up his father's antic, and he thought his father was quite an embarrassment.

At the funeral, Parthi realised that he had no tears for his father's demise. Unbeknownst to everyone, the father is just up to one of his tricks again - faking his own death to claim insurance! Amidst all this mayhem, Parthi's hears that his childhood is getting married. Parthi's father, meanwhile, is puzzled why his son feels no sorrow. 

Their backstory is told in flashbacks, and the ongoing story describes how Parthi tries to appreciate his father's struggles. The father's foolhardy comes to light, but only to die for real—an entertaining movie without much of the mainstream cinema's glitz performed by new actors. 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.