Subha J Rao

It has been a week since the end credits rolled for Imtiaz Ali’s Main Wapas Aaunga, but the film has been playing non-stop inside my head and heart. It has been peeling itself, layer by layer, to reveal the nuances that might have been missed when you were bawling your heart out for a love lost, and people displaced. This is the second movie this year to pay spiritual homage to Sargodha — the first was Sriram Raghavan’s tender anti-war film Ikkis, about war hero Arul Khetarpal. I confess I saw the movie through the many stories of escape I had heard in my six years (1997-2003) in Delhi, living in Old Rajinder Nagar, one of the colonies the refugees settled in. Many Papajis and Maajis still shed salty tears for their Pind, for the people, potted plants and property they left behind, never to return to. As we knitted on chill winter mornings when the sun played peekaboo, the creases on Maaji’s face softened, and yet another past memory resurfaced.

Life in the hinterland can be brutal. Identities are distinctly carved out between the haves and the have-nots — the “have” here can refer to material wealth or social standing. In director Sasi’s Nooru Sami (A Hundred Gods), Selvi (a fabulous Swasika) is a young widow with two sons, struggling to raise them in a society that is judgmental and not very kind. Sasi is known for his deft portrayal of village life and its people, and Nooru Sami, based on a real-life story, benefits from his vision. It is filled with little nuggets, some pleasant, most not, which drive home the torment in Selvi’s heart.

In Tamil Nadu, there’s something called the kadamba maalai (mixed garland). It might look like a splotch of colours, but there’s synchrony in terms of colour and math involved in the frequency of a flower being used. Watching Thaai Kezhavi, that’s what I thought of the writing. Writer-director Sivakumar Murugesan handles multiple strands, but knows what to do with each, many minutes after the first reference. The floral reference? Watch the movie, and you’ll know why. Everyone has been raving about Radhika Sarathkumar’s performance and rightly so. The rest of the team hits it out of the park too, conveying a mix of yearning, small-mindedness, jealousy, mindless anger, and the like. But the root for all of that is the layered writing that has something for everyone, and which transports you to rural Tamil Nadu, where life moves at a different pace and where even a house where someone has died or is going to, can become a venue for entertainment.

Certain phrases are difficult to showcase visually. I can immediately think of two — ‘When the walls are closing in’ and ‘Iron grip’. But after watching Rahul Ravindran’s searing, slow-burn The Girlfriend, I know it is possible. Rahul effortlessly manages to do that with the help of his tech team and fabulous lead actors — look out for the one where Bhooma (chef’s kiss for Rashmika Mandanna) feels suffocated and rushes into a room, turns the tap on, and panics when she literally feels a square room turn into a narrow rectangle; and all the scenes where Vikram (an excellent Dheekshith Shetty makes you loathe him with every fibre) throws his arm around Bhooma and pulls her in.

There are many things women in India are terrified of, and with good reason. Walking on a lonely road after dark, being a lone female traveller in a bus, checking and double checking the surroundings before opening one’s car door, checking the bathrooms in public places for hidden cameras, verifying if hotel rooms are safe, if trial rooms are safe, if online chats are safe… in every single place, a woman is reduced to her body, and her individuality erased. Senna Hegde’s delightful yet punch-to-the-gut Avihitham (translates into illicit) adds one more to the list — a male tailor proudly claims he can size up a woman’s chest, waist and hip just by seeing her. Thanks sir, one more thing to be very afraid about.

I can’t remember the last time leaders of two opposing factions in a film spoke about the futility of their struggle and its relevance with more muddled honesty than in Mari Selvaraj’s Bison Kaalamadan. It helps that the leaders are played by Ameer (Pandiaraja) and Lal (Kandasamy), artists whose faces and voices convey honest anger and built-up fury, but also wander into areas filled with doubt. This makes them very non-leader-like and utterly human. This ability of Mari’s to question his own character is one of his defining traits.

There’s a scene in Kantara (2022) where you know something is going to happen to Guruva, who is Shiva’s cousin. He’s the voice of God, he’s the good one. And, before that, you see flashes of who Guruva is. So when landlord Devendra travels with him, you instinctively know Guruva is going to be the sacrificial lamb. Despite that, when you saw it on screen, the tears flowed. Because, you cared. Because, by then, they’d told you who Guruva is. You know what the loss of that life meant.

THERE’S A SHOT in Sarthak Hegde’s featurette Green Girl, where Ameena (a splendid Sucharita) and Jeevan (Mayur Gowda lives the role) speak about where they want to live, and later sit in companionable silence — he helps her with the lighter, she smokes, he is never tempted to. In that tiny space of freedom, the young couple lets the other be — their love encompasses, but also lets the individual in them thrive. That’s also why Ameena tries telling Jeevan not to get involved with a brash set of boys and men who affiliate themselves with a religion. But when he does not listen, she lets it be. He is also her safe space, and she’s herself with him.