Behind the gentrification...

Kakka Muttai (Crow's Egg, 2015)

Story, Direction: M. Manikandan. 

Thanks to JT for the recommendation.

All they wanted was to eat pizza. All the advertisements convinced them that it indeed tasted heavenly. It must be valid since even their favourite movie star endorsed it. All the graphic images of fillings of the pizza and sticky cheesy must be an experience to behold, they thought. And they made it their once-a-lifetime achievement to savour one of those. For these two boys from the Chennai slums, paying ₹ 299 for a box of pizza is abominable. After all, for these slum boys, whose father is in jail and mother is at wit's end trying to get him out, it is just a flitting dream. The boys, nicknamed Kakka Muttai, cannot afford to go to school and scrap a living selling coal that drops off a moving train. On a good day, they manage to earn ₹15. 

They see their favourite playing ground slowly being cordoned off and transforming into a shop lot and a happening pizza parlour. They are intrigued by all the hype surrounding the place. Even their favourite movie star, Simbu, is seen dining there. And they keep watching the pizza advertisement repeatedly flashing on the telly. The boys resolve to save money, bit by bit, to lay their fingers into the coveted divine meal. 

In the meantime, slum boys are shooed from the pizza parlour. A security guard is placed there. It seems their presence is not welcomed. 

After getting a windfall, they managed to save ₹ 300. But when they arrived to buy pizza, they were chased away. They were not dressed up to patronise the place. The guard went as far as to assault the boys. A passer-by took a video of the event and viralled it. 

A comedy of errors ensued. A local goon, on being aware of the incriminating video, tries to make a quick buck extorting to sell the video to TV channels. A local politically connected man from the slum tries to earn brownie points when local dwellers plan a demonstration. The goon's sidekick tries to outsmart his boss by breaking a 'better' deal with a TV channel when in fact, his boss was trying to fleece him. 

In the meantime, when the pizza owner realises the bluff, they send their own people to apprehend the boy to do damage control… 

We see gentrification happening around us. We feel proud seeing the backwater backyard that we once lived, undergoing beautification, look whitewashed and refined. Suddenly we find our parents, if they owned the properties, boasting about their prized million-dollar property. Unfortunately, the whole exercise comes with a cost. 

A segment of the population would be left out in this rat race. If life is an F1 race, they would forever be the minion Minaldi, just to make the race, not win it! 

The displaced segment will be pushed more and more to the periphery. This group is the target of politicians and matters most for mass decisions. Their concerns are often highlighted to smokescreen the leaders' true intentions. 

The marginalised will stay marginalised. Wealth is a zero-sum game. It cannot be created from thin air. To make money, somebody has to lose. The same usual suspects repeatedly appear on both ends of the spectrum. The peep show may vary, but the stage remains the same.

(PS. When the brothers finally dug into the pizza, they realised it was all a letdown. The gooey feel and bland taste were a turnoff. They learned the experience was not worth their effort. That is marketing in modern times, turning unassuming humans, i.e. (m)asses, into ravaging zombies oblivious to what they actually need.) 

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