A comedic tragedy?

Tourist Family (Tamil, 2025)

Written and Directed by Abishan Jeevinth

I never knew that something as sombre as economic migrants fleeing illegally for greener pastures could be transformed into a comedy. This film is a testament to the idea that such a production can be made. 

There is no doubt that economic migrants making the difficult decision to uproot themselves from familiar surroundings and slip under the cover of darkness into a foreign land in search of a better life is no pleasure cruise. However, we must understand the desperation that drives them to take this risk. 

Despite the serious subject, the storyteller successfully presents their narratives in a light-hearted manner. Comedic situations arise when we least expect them, diverting the occasional tense buildup. 

A family of four - parents, a teenage son, and a preteen son- boards a boat from Sri Lanka and reaches Rameshwaram in the dark. The boys' maternal uncle, who had escaped to Tamil Nadu much earlier, is their sponsor. He arranged for their landing and accommodation. Unfortunately, from the very beginning, the family is intercepted by the Tamil Nadu police. The police constable, himself of Jaffnaese origin, who caught them, took pity on their ingenuity in escaping poverty that had struck Sri Lanka and let them go. 

The illegal immigrants arrive in a housing colony, as arranged by the uncle. Of all the places, they end up renting a room owned, of all people, by a police inspector. Although they believed their thick Sri Lankan accent would give them away, the inspector naively assumed they were Malayalis. Shortly thereafter, the refugee family became close to the other occupants of the colony due to their affable nature.

Meanwhile, a complainant turns up at the police station after losing his pet dog. The constable who let the illegal immigrant go, remembers seeing the dog with the Jaffnese. Then a bomb blasts off at a dumpsite, suggesting it could be the work of Sri Lankan terrorists. The constable is taken aback. Could he have made a major snafu? The hunt for the possible dangerous terrorist family goes full force.

Migration has been a part of human civilisation. People have always moved from point A to point B, influenced by various push and pull factors. The émigrés would typically assimilate into their newfound land. Integration was not an issue then. Recently, the new-age immigrants have arrived with a different mindset. They come in with a chip on their shoulder, look down on their hosts, and want to supplant their system. They fail to recognise that the hosts had something good going while the newcomers are there because they have messed up their own country and sought refuge elsewhere. If their own system were so great, they would be ruling the world.

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A cautionary tale

Everything was hunky dory when others ruled them. Kingdoms after kingdoms came and went. Everybody lived within their space and thought they had everything taken care of.

Then, they even shared a sacred region, Katargama or Kathirgama. Each community claimed the local deity, Murugan, as their own. The Buddhists are told that Lord Buddha himself sanctioned Lord Murugan to protect Sri Lankans from the elements. The Tamils, with their ancestral affiliations, brought in their own diety and gave him his divine status.

Even the local aboriginal people there, the Veddas, the island's earliest inhabitants, claim the sacred area as theirs. Their DNA studies revealed their commonality with the tribals in Malaysia, India, and Myanmar, which is more apparent than their Singhalese and Tamil Indian brothers. The Muslims did not want to be left out. They built a mosque nearby to avoid missing out on the blessings.

So, they had a giant compound with a collection of temples of worship in a single area. It was heart-wrenching to see Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and Veddas all congregating in one area to pay respects to the Almighty to gain blessings.

It went on fine when they were ruled by others - the Indian dynasties and the European imperialists. Trouble started brewing when the colonial masters left the roost for the colonies to determine their destiny. Every ethnicity had the fear that the other would dominate them. Everyone, through the democratically elected leaders, pushed for their respective agendas. When peaceful means failed, they had to resort to armed struggle.

The gods can only protect us so much. Above all, human intellect should prevail. Sri Lanka's experience over the last few years is a cautionary tale for other nations trying to establish a strong footing and elevate themselves to a higher level.

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Any news is good news!

The Family Man (Miniseries, Season 1,2; 2019-21)
Amazon Prime

I would not have given a damn to this web series if not for the adverse publicity it garnered after the release of its trailer for the second season. Many people and leaders from the ruling party from the state of Tamil Nadu were up in arms and wanted the show to be banned. But, as they say in showbiz lingo, any news is good news. All that hoopla just piqued the interest of even those remotely interested in the turmoil perpetrated on India by its neighbours. Suddenly everybody took an interest and have become experts on India's strategic defence. Its detractors, however, say that it is India's uninvited meddling of their affairs that is at fault. But, perhaps, it is not so straightforward. 

India, much like Israel, is surrounded by neighbours who try to correct their cognitive dissonance by shoving down their narrow and destructive ideologies across their borders. However, practising passive resistance or turning the other cheeks will not this time, hence the preventive defensive measures.

TASC is a fictitious branch of India's National Investigation Agency (NIA). Its main objective is (like Minority Report) to whiff off any potential threats and nip it off at the bud. It does its work via its telecommunication intelligence and contacts. The protagonist of the story, Srikanth Tiwari, leads this highly sensitive and secretive agency. Even Srikanth's family thinks that he is just a paper-pushing civil servant who appears busier than he actually is. Srikanth has a wife, a teacher, and two teenage children. The stories of the two seasons comprise Srikanth's manoeuvering his roles of a high-level espionage and a family man without these two functions overlapping.

Season One narrates TASC's supervision of three captured ISIS terrorists. It reveals a twisted plan involving ISI of Pakistan and a grand scheme to cause significant damage to India. Srikanth has to handle his children's teenage angst, his wife's possible infidelity, and the demand for further affluence in life on his home front.

It is the second season that captured everybody hearts. After achieving only half success in trying to avert a major chemical poisoning of New Delhi where 80 over citizens perished (but 1 million over were saved), Tewari leaves the force to join the private sector. After a gruelling exercise trying to fit into the new age labour force, he is relieved when his boss calls him back. Apparently, the baddies from Season 1, an ex-Major from the Pakistani and an ISIS terrorist, have joined forces with the remnants of what sounds like LTTE to plan a major assassination attempt on Indian PM, which she is scheduled to meet the Sri Lankan PM for talks.

The storytellers took the liberty to take parts of what happened in history more than 30 years ago to retrofit it to the storyline. A clandestine Sri Lanka Tamil militant group in the Northern part of the island, akin to LTTE, is decimated by the Government Army led by General Rupatunga. The rebel leaders, however, escape; two to the UK and one to Tamil Nadu. Many years later, the rebel leaders in exile managed to get recognition for an independent Tamil country, within Sri Lanka, from many foreign countries. 

India and  Sri Lanka are at peace. The Prime Minister agrees to capture and return the rebel who is hiding in Chennai. Unfortunately, he is accidentally killed in the ambush. This angers the rebel leaders in the UK. One of them teams up with the ex-Pakistan army from Season 1 and an ISIS terrorist to assassinate the Indian PM, who has an uncanny resemblance to West Bengal CM, Mamta Banerjee, who will be meeting his Sri Lankan counterpart in Chennai for bilateral talk. The dormant rebels and sympathisers all rally up for this big event. 

Chellam Sir

Twitter's favourite meme trigger.

This is where Tewari and his team come in with their expertise to avert the crime. They team up with the Tamil Nadu police for this mission. Unlike most Bollywood and Hindi productions, this show does not look at the Tamilians condescendingly or make fun of their accents or mannerism. If anything, it tries to avert stereotyping of the South of India into one homogenous piece of culture. 

Meanwhile, Srikanth's domestic problems escalate. When the top is shaky, the bottom crumbles. His children go wayward. His 15 years girl befriends an older boy who is actually an ally of ISIS.

A lovable character worthy of mention is that of a retired NIA agent, Chellam. HE is Srikanth's contact in Chennai about the Sri Lankan Tamil rebels. He appears in disguises and camouflage and is described as the most paranoid person in the world. Fans are already talking about spin-offs based on his work experience, or possibly he could be a double-crosser! Srikanth's sidekick blended well into his role. His nemesis, the lean, mean fighting machine in Raji, is a shift from the usual larger-than-life portrayal of a female Indian actress.

Raji as the emotionally-drained rebel
Samatha Akkineni

So, what was all the controversy about the show? Nothing actually. After viewing the trailer, many thought it would be harping on the historical events that occurred during the 1990s when LTTE was hunted down by Sri Lankan Singhala Government. The State of Tamil Nadu, bonded with Northern Sri Lanka via a common language, Tamil, were sympathetic to the rebel cause. They provided asylum and a base for their activities. The Indian Central Government, however, were o the same page with the Lankan government for peace on the island. The rebels saw that as encouraging the Lankan army to basically carry out genocide. That culminated in Rajiv Gandhi's assassination by a suicide squad during a political rally.

As it always happens, people who know the least make the loudest noise. People demand a ban without viewing a performance or reading a book. In their simple minds, if everybody else says so, it must be right. In the eyes of the learned, it is the Kruger-Dunning effect in its full glory.  

[P.S. The state powers in Tamil Nadu are getting hot under their collars about this series as the state is trying to get the seven people sentenced for life pardoned for Rajiv Gandhi's assassination commuted by the Indian President after spending 30 years behind bars. The powers that be are fearful that the public sentiment may be rekindled of a time when their leader was blown away with plastic-bomb impregnated garland.] 

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