The twists of life

Manorathangal (Minescapes, Malayalam; 2024)

An anthology based on stories by MT Vasudevan Nair

After the release of the Hema committee report, the murmur, which started in 2019, is heard once again. More new victims of the Malayalam film industry are voicing their bad experiences out in the open. The report results from the Government's investigations into the alleged rise of sexual misconduct, exploitation and #MeToo complaints against big players of Mollywood.

The report's contents paint badly for the safety and working environment for the fairer sex. The report paints a picture of Mollywood as run by a mafia of senior directors, producers, and male actors who call the shots and decide which actress gets chosen and who gets the boot. To make it to the cast, the new actresses would have to endure much humiliation, denigration, and assault. The report prompted many Malayalam Movie Association chief members to resign to clear their names.

On one hand, civil societies assert that India is still not a safe place for ladies to work. This becomes more relevant now after the gruesome rape and murder of the Calcutta on-call doctor. Others are quick to add all these are not specific to Kerala or India alone. Patriarchy and power play are spread worldwide. Sudden retaliation by the public is politically motivated, ignited by self-interested parties out to create mayhem in India. Now that Malayalam movies are becoming more popular than other regional productions, people are bound to be jealous.

This collection of stories was written by Kerala's most influential storyteller, MT Vasudevan Nair. Most of the narration talks about nostalgia and how the test of time changes one's perception of reality. The picture of truth fed to us as children is a smokescreen. Time and tide change everything; hence, it is no use being haughty about what we have or being frustrated with things we do not.

The nine snippets in this collection are acted by many brilliant who's who in Malayalam cinema—Mohanlal, Mammooty, Siddique, Fahad Fazil, and more. This offering also sees the return of two famous actresses, Madhu and Nadia, after a hiatus. It talks about loneliness in a foreign country, loneliness in marriage, secret lives that adults have, love in the countryside, the hassle of having a family heirloom and how the family members vulture over it, how our values change with time and education and many more.  

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The unseen non-medical effects of lockdown?

Unpaused (Anthology of 5 episodes, Hindi; 2020)
Unpaused: Naya Safar (5 episodes; 2021)

As the numbers of Omicron variant cases continue to rise, allegedly after a large congregation of unvaccinated pilgrims made it all the way to the Holy Land, now is an opportune time to reminisce the good old days when a virus from Wuhan labs jumped ship and affected humans. It is mind-boggling to fathom how much this pandemic had jolted the core of our existence.

It goes without saying that the pandemic has affected everyone in so many ways. Economically, it affected all, predominantly those on the lower rung of the food chain. Interestingly, the ten of the richest globally has doubled their wealth at the end of the second wave.

Inconspicuously, Covid infection started as a concern only for the affluent and frequent flyers as they picked the bug after globetrotting. The poor were not so concerned then. Soon, the tables turned. Living in a restricted living space and close proximity between family members made the poor more vulnerable and even outcasts when society started combating the disease.

What is often forgotten in the equation is the psychological component of this whole calamity. In years to come, the full extent of the post-traumatic stress of being cooped indoors, studying online for two years, non-attendance of familial functions and spending hours gazing at a blue screen will come to the fore.

These two anthology types of miniseries explore many of the stresses people endured in the past two waves of the pandemic. Many of the stories are so surreal and plucks the strings of the viewers' hearts. We stop complaining about our shoes when we see someone with no legs.

In the first season of Unpaused, the episode that piqued my interest was the one called 'Glitch'. In a futuristic universe, Covid has mutated so many times. The world is divided into two types of people - the 'hypos', short for hypochondriacs who simply live an isolated life with a morbid phobia of coming in contact with humans and the 'warriors', who are scientists and frontliners who fight hard to annihilate the virus. It is no more Covid-19; it is Covid-30 in the year 2030. Years of isolation have drained people of interactive social skills, and they have to depend on computer programmes to hook people up. A glitch in the systems meets two people' virtually' in a chat room. The problem is that one is a hypo and the other a warrior. The warrior in real life is a mute scientist. After an initial stormy hook-up, love transcended all differences. The hypo learns sign language and overcomes his germophobia tendencies.

In the second season, two of its episodes were, I thought they were very well made. In 'War Room', a quiet school teacher was assigned to help out at a hotline centre to arrange ICU beds for Covid patients. She carries the burden of the death of her teenage son on her sleeve. He had apparently committed suicide. Legal proceedings were ongoing as she tried to sue his college principal for negligence as the school did not arrange for medical assistance in time to save him. Despite the overhanging sorrow over her head, the teacher hoped to serve society to pay her dues. Fate plays its twisted humour when she gets into a position to deny a bed for the said principal when his son called in requesting an ICU bed. The rest of the story is about she deals with this moral dilemma.

'Vaikunth' (Heaven) is another exciting episode with a compelling storyline. A crematorium worker has his hands full as the number of Covid deaths increases during the second wave. He is a single parent, and his father is admitted for Covid. He also has a young son whom he is trying desperately to educate. He thinks he is doing excellent service to mankind by diligently handling the extra bodies to cremate. Unfortunately, his landlord and his neighbours believe otherwise. They are not comfortable with his close link to Covid, attending to Covid death and his father being Covid+. Nobody is willing to care for his son temporarily; hence, both stay on the crematorium premises. Meanwhile, there is no avenue available to find out whatever happened to his father. He is a 'frontliner', braving himself against the unseen enemy, but nobody actually gives him a second look. 

There are more things to appreciate than the story itself in these two and other episodes. The subtle inclusion of motifs (like the fire in Vaikunth - fire to cremate at the end of life, fire to light the stove for sustenance, and fire to light a cigarette to enjoy life) and the excellent cinematography. The episode ends with a poetic message about how the ashes from the burnt bodies are used to fertilise the rice fields to germinate new seeds, completing the circle of life from ashes to ashes. 

Hope is the thing with feathers/ That perches in the soul…." Emily Dickinson

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Number 9, Number 9.

Nava Rasa (Tamil, 9 Expressions)
Miniseries, Netflix

Quite early in my life, I have come to realise that there is nothing sacrosanct in numbers. They are just there to aid calculations and the day-to-day running of our lives. What started as a way to measure the land area for the landowners to tax their subjects has come to rule every aspect of our life.

We find ways to glorify numbers as and how we deem fit. One for one God, Two for two opposing forces of Nature, Three for the three arms of divinity (either trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost or Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva combo as you wish), Four corners of space, Five fingers or the Five Elements of Nature being air, water, fire, land and sky (Pancha Bhootam) and so on. Each number is feted for its uniqueness.

The number 8 signifies good fortune amongst the Chinese diaspora. Probably because of its symmetry, both along the X and Y axes, it denotes balance which is quintessential of the ying-and-yang order of things.

The Number 9, on the other hand, holds a special place in the Hindu traditions - Navarathri denoting the nine forms of Devi, 9 openings into the human body, 9 universal elements earth, sky, water, air, fire, space, time, soul and mind, 9 celestial bodies in the solar system that control over emotion and life path, 9 navagraha (gemstones) which correspond to the 9 celestial bodies that pave our life and the 9 rasas (emotions) that affects body, mind and soul. 

These are compassion (karuna), laughter (haasya), wonder (adbhuta), disgust (bibhatsa), peace (shaantha), anger (raudra), fear (bhayaanaka), valour (veera) and love (shringaara). These emotions are best seen expressed during Bharatnatyam performances when they are depicted with facial, eye expressions and hands gesticulations.

Mathematically, the number 9 is exciting. We remember our multiplication tables where all multiples of 9 add up to 9 when individual digits are added. 

This anthology of short stories is based on the nine emotions mentioned above. Each of them is told in various settings, from a battlefield in Tamil Eelam to the household of a Brahmin and the exclusive set of the abode of a rocket scientist from ISRO. All of them are short, intense viewing, which leaves a kind of lingering after taste.

My favourite episode (disgust)

When the regret-stricken murderer seeks the grieving widow for forgiveness in the compassion episode, she asks the former her place to forgive. In a situation where so many parties could have avoided the final outcome when they were capable of doing so but did not, everybody is at fault! Who is she to forgive?

The episode on laughter shows the story of a boy who was a write-off in school but returns to his alma mater as a feted comedian to share his experiences playing pranks in school and getting into trouble repeatedly. 

A thought-provoking episode relates how we try to our humanitarian spirit by saving animals but have no qualms at killing each other. In another, we are reminded that some secrets of the universe are better kept under wraps. We, humans, cannot be trusted to handle such enigmas. We end up just outsmarting and destroying each other. 

We yearn to unshackle ourselves from poverty at any cost but is it better done morally? Is success at any expense justifiable? Will our evil past haunt us? Should we just accept bad things that befall us and carry on with life with no complaints? Life just feels unfair when we do all the right things but only to be returned with misfortunes. Life is not fair.

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Fighting fire with fire is futile.

Ajeeb Dustaans (2020)
Netflix

This anthology of four stories is based on the topic of discrimination. With its rich civilisation that had stood the test of time against repeated foreign powers who are hellbent on destroying their culture and looting their wealth, India is again under the scrutiny of modern people to find faults in its societal makeup.

Well, the colonised can go on ranting about how the invaders destroyed their rich tapestry way of life and life sciences that were light-years ahead of their barbaric invaders. They can complain of how the British and their ingenious strategies of 'divide and rule' derailed the natives' societies even now, long after leaving their shores. But for how long? Shouldn't the post-colonial countries wise up already? Like Japan, which was beaten to a pulp and bombed to smithereens after the Second World War. Rather than being sore with their aggressors, did they not embrace the victors' technological advancement to rise from their ashes to showcase the greatest Olympic Games in less than 20 years after the end of World War Two?

All men are created equal in the eyes of God or the Law, they say. All beings are One; they also preached that we are all part of The Supreme Being, the Paramathma. We somehow attach caveats to all these teachings. We classify and subclassify according to colour, gender, class, caste, race, disabilities, etc. This division is Universal. By no means it is confined to India or Hinduism, but repeatedly we see India in a bad light when it comes to discrimination. Don't the British royalty and their henchmen get special privilege by virtue of their birth into the Windsor clan? Aren't the immigrants treated as second class citizens subjected to discrimination and stereotyping? Don't the Arabs consider themselves superior to darker-skinned brethren in the same religion of peace?

Direct antagonism by the affected parties against the grain of things are bound to be combative. The people who tend to gain from the pre-existing arrangement will be hellbent on maintaining the status quo. Affirmative action to help the downtrodden will not alleviate them but, on the contrary, just create sluggards and encourage brain drain. The government-sanctioned quota system introduced in India to balance the unequal distribution of opportunities to various societal layers only pushed the less qualified to occupy important posts and the more qualified seeking greener pastures elsewhere. The people in 'higher castes' are discriminated against. The country is left in the hands of not the best but the second-best because of their surnames.

The film sends home this message. To fight a cruel system, it is improper to clash the broken system head-on. Instead, one should use his wit and wisdom to beat it at its own game.

In the first story, the son of a loyal driver to a ruthless landowner is cheated blind. The son, an accountant, comes to bid farewell to his father's employer before leaving to start work as an accountant in the UK. The landowner cajoles the son to work for him instead by dangling a fat paycheque. The landowner had earlier broken his father's leg after crashing the landowner's car. So the son siphons off some money and, to top it off, seduces the landowner's unloved wife.

In the second story, a resourceful housemaid sees how the poor like her are made to do all the dirty work whilst the rich create an artificial cocoon to be just amongst themselves. The rich do not want the poor to be near, so they live in guarded communities. Still, the poor must be at the beck and call when they want. 

The third act shows how a less qualified person gets into a job due to her surname. A more competent and capable person is overlooked because of her caste. The woman scorned uses her God-given shrewdness to devise a win-win situation for her to usurp the post without any evident antagonism. 

The final offering shows that it is not only the marginalised who use victimhood to fulfil their desires. A sexually frustrated mother with a teenage daughter who is progressively losing her hearing is embroiled in a loveless marriage. She finds love in a hearing-impaired photographer. However, she drops him like a hot potato when she realises that she has to stay faithful to her marriage vows. 

An entertaining one, especially if you are expecting unconventional endings with a twist.

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Modern love

Kutty ♥️ Story ( Short ♥️ Story, Tamil; 2021)

Maybe because our attention spans get shorter, we seem to be content with short stories rather than full-length feature films these days. With the democratisation of viewing platforms, we, the viewers, never had it so good. Not only we get new faces to act, but we also have storylines that break the traditional, predictable plot of boy meets girl, meets opposition, but love conquers all. 

Securing finance for new ventures had always been difficult for moviemakers. Banks and other financial institutions were not forthcoming with loans. Hence, the association of producers and the Mumbai mafia and their associates. The Mafia dictated who could act and even approved storylines. Their network ensured only certain Moghuls could rule the silver screen. All that came to nought when OTTs paid their clients upfront and were liberal with their storylines. Herein also lie the problem, some say. They allege that breaking India forces try to portray only negative images of India (ala Slumdog Millionaire).

This collection of four short stories looks at love, what else, and its problems in four different scenarios. 

In the first story, எதிர் பார முத்தம் (Unexpected kiss), the age-old topic of platonic love is discussed. Is it possible for a male to build a friendship with another person of the fairer sex without having romance interfering in the bond? In their forties, a group of old friends reminisce about the protagonist's fling in college over a round of drinks. Now, married to a different girl, he denies any romantic link then or ever. The girl, after migrating, now returns and sets a meeting with the protagonist.

The next one, அவனும் நானும் (He and Me), talks about unplanned pregnancy in a college girl and the mountain of decisions she has to make to deal with it, whether to terminate, to give for adoption or modify her life ambitions. This, she has to decide amidst the fear of disappointing the parents and the society's hawkeyed look.

லோகம் (Universe) is a slightly different presentation. Two gamers, both with different avatars and anonymous identities, meet in a game. The male gamer falls in love with the girl in cyberspace but loses her contact when her avatar dies during a crucial moment. The lovestruck gamer reveals his feelings during a radio interview, and they are reunited. Most of the story is told in animation. The take message is that the world can be pretty depressing for some people, and they have to create false personas to find happiness. We hide our cracked interior by applying a thick mask of makeup to put up a happy front.

ஆடல்-பாடல் (Dance-Songs) explores the lopsided societal viewing of infidelity. A man's occasional fling is forgiven but not a woman's. A husband and wife, with a young child, have to deal with this problem. The wife lures her husband to respond to a flirtatious phone call and catches him read redhanded. He apologises, only to tell the wife that she had a short fling with her ex-boyfriend after her marriage. This riles up the husband. He uses his resources to uncover the identity of her boyfriend. After sleepless nights of research, he realises his double standard. They were no such person. Why does society expect the female community members to portray a perfect picture of chastity, but the bar is significantly lowered for the patriarchy?

It is an excellent and refreshing set of short stories, even for the not so lovey-dovey type. 

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Are you ready for the challenge?

Paava Kadhaigal (பாவ கதைகள், Sinful Tales, Tamil, 2020)

Netflix Miniseries S1, E1-4.

From a movie-making, storytelling or cinematographic point of view, this anthology of four stories hit the nail and gets an all-star rating. It also deserves an A+ for the attention-grabbing edge of the seat type of suspense in my books. It is all hunky-dory for entertainment value, but somehow, I could not help it but compare it to the novel 'Mother India' which came out in 1927 when the heat of self-rule was very much in everybody lips. It can be described as a polemic book that attacked the practices, religion and every fibre of Indian society. Katherine Mayo, the author, a historian by training, thought that India was not fit for self-rule and independence looking at India's treatment of India's women, animals and the untouchables.

What do you know? Despite all the leaps and bounds that the society had bounced, the storytellers decided that the old formula of societal discrimination against LGBT, women, castes and victim-blaming would sell. Are they covertly telling that Indians are not ready to meet the new world's challenges as they are still stuck in the colonial era's quagmire?

The first story (Thangam, Beloved) deals with a love triangle where falls in love with a Muslim girl against both families' wishes. This is complicated by the girl's gay brother, who is supposed to be the bridge for their union, who also falls for the sister's beau. He, however, sacrifices his affection for the sake of his dear friend and beloved sister. But both families are having none of those and have no qualms into resorting to honour killing for normalcy. 

For the record, India had legally accepted transgender people as the third sex since 2014. It replaced the 153-year-old colonial law set by the Colonial Powers which viewed the same-sex relationship as an offence. Since antiquity, hijras (the third gender) have been recorded in Indian history, including Kama Sutra, to straighten the record.

The second offering (Love Penna Uttranum, Let us Love) tells the nefarious act of Janus-faced local politicians who seemingly promote inter-caste marriages, but in reality, vehemently opposes it. He does not hesitate to stage an accident of his daughter who fell in love with the politician's lowly driver. Things become intricate when his second daughter turns up with her friends and confess to being a lesbian. 

The funny thing is that the murderous father eventually realised his wayward ways, turned over a new leaf, had to leave his wild country to become a regular person to learn rap music in a civilised country like France!

The third story (Vaanmagal, Daughter of the Sky) takes a swipe at the perceived Indian society's propensity to victim-blaming. A pre-pubescent girl is raped (after a mix-up), and the family is more interested in hiding the 'shame' and taking the blame for such a malady to have taken place. Seeking legal redress and punishing the perpetrator are not options as they viewed as a humiliation to the victim. At one time, the mother even thinks of killing off her 12-year-old kid for bringing shame to the family! This episode is a subtle attack on the Tamilian practice of public announcement when a girl attains menarche. It is construed as a roll call to deviant to pounce on an unassuming young girl. 

The final episode (Oor Iravu, One Night) is the heart-wrenching one which is probably based on a real event. After she had eloped with her boyfriend from her village two years previously, a father visits her gravid daughter. She is now settled in the city with a stable job and a lovely apartment. Their union was opposed by her family because of the boy's caste, hence the clandestine arrangement. It appears had mended his ways and invites the couple to his home for a baby shower celebration. The suspense is what happens in the father's house—an intense performance by Prakash Raj, who always excels in character roles. 

Good entertainment value. 

(P.S. The Bollywood 1957 national award-winning blockbuster 'Mother India' was a rebuke to the novel of the same name portraying a stoic self-sacrificing single mother who, despite the adversities in her life, manages to bring up her two sons.)

Does anybody love anyone anyway?

Sillu Karupatti (சில்லுக்கருப்பட்டி, Tamil; 2019)

Netflix

Picking a movie from a list of Netflix is like opening a box of chocolates. "You never know what you gonna get!..." I was pleasantly surprised by my choice. Sometimes it is the movie unheard of with an equally unfamiliar cast may be the one with the most exciting storyline. 

This movie is an anthology of four unrelated stories with love being the common theme. Its four stories try to show that the emotion that releases butterflies in the tummy, the special feeling called love, at different age groups. Love needs are different at various times of one's life, and it carries a different meaning at other periods of their lifetimes.

The first story revolves around teens and love blossoms in the most unromantic place of all, the city dumpster. A slum-boy who scavenges the trash comes across some greeting cards, memorabilia and a photograph of a young girl. Curious how the girl would be in real life, he follows the garbage trump to get a peek at the owner. In summary, it is puppy love. Looking at the apparent disparity in social class and education levels of both, the viewers can guess the relationship would go nowhere.

The next one is the love of the contemporary kind, involving all modalities considered modern. There is the current Chennai landscape complete with spanking new highways and clean Hyundai cars, Ole call cab service, modern private medical centres and social media. Here a young man in his early 30s, who is all excited in anticipation of tying the nuptial knots with his gal that he found on an online matrimonial page, is diagnosed with testicular cancer. His beau bolts and he has to deal with the ailment on his own. Love is found again in strange places; this time in the form of a fellow occupant of a shared cab. Love blossoms by being an anchor weathering the storm.


The third story is about love in the twilight years. The traditional way of Indian life would dictate that those senior years of experience is the opportune time to prepare for the ethereal world. Not so in the modern world, it seems. Loneliness and fairly robust health necessitate romantic liaisons, especially when the offsprings are nowhere around to be seen. 

A scary piece of device. It eavesdrops.
Like the nosy neighbour auntie, Alexa.

The final clip is about love in contemporary times. After years of marriage, the spark that drew the couple together is somewhat missing. Husband and wife just carry on life doing their society-sanctioned duties without giving second thoughts to the amorous need of the other. Life, as each knew it, was the repetitive action of working at home or office, caring for the needs of kids and being trapped in the quagmire of the cycle of repetition. Remedy comes through the cupid work of a modern AI device.

Love, as they say, makes the world to stay relevant. At the spring of adolescence, with the raging of hormones, the youths think with their impulse. Nature needs them to be amorous. Progeny has to happen. The young cannot be wasting time in critical thinking and analysing. Continuity of the species is of paramount importance.

It used to be a time when society, which used to be patriarchal, dictated how the female species were left with no choice but conform to assume their role in society. With female empowerment came reduced fertility and threat of extinction. Nature fought back. Love had to bloom somehow, and it does.

It is love that holds a family and a society together. Left to their own devices, Man can be self-centred with their 'selfish gene' taking charge. The weak and the old would be left to rot. Hence, love manifest as compassion to care for the ones left behind in the race of time. Even the participants at the twilight stage of their years need someone to ride into the sunset...

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