Ronth

During certain passages in Shahi Kabir’s Ronth , we do not feel like we’re watching the story of two separate police officers, played by Roshan Mathew and Dilesh Pothan. Instead, the sparks in Shahi Kabir’s writing give us the feeling that we’re watching one person on two opposite ends of a character arc with each character representing a before and an after scenario of what serving in the police force can do to you. On one end of this arc is Roshan’s Dinnath, a junior officer at the Dharamshala police station in Idukki, still naive and open-eyed about the kind of upright police officer he wants to be. On the other is his senior Yohannan (Dileesh Pothan), decades into his service and closer in form to the pot-bellied police officer we’re used to seeing in real life. ohannan appears to be far more practical and real, almost to a fault. At one point, we see him taking money from a priest after an accident. Yohannan figures by going close to the priest that the latter’s had a glass of wine, but instead of letting him go easy, Yohannan asks the priest to cough up a certain an amount of money. Yohannan is quick to clarify that this amount is not a bribe. He explains to Dinnath about the money he needs to pay the garage for fixing up their police jeep and how difficult it is to be able to get a refund from the police department. When Yohannan ends up giving us his side of the story, we needn’t fully agree with his point, but we understand where he’s coming from.

One day might not be enough to get to know a person inside out, but Shahi Kabir’s Ronth almost achieves the impossible of giving us a peek into the deepest recesses of the hearts and minds of not one, but two people over the course of a single night. The writer-director pulls this off not through grand scenarios, but the crucial little details, which are sprinkled throughout the film. These are the kind of details that can be absorbed only by those who have actually lived through similar scenarios, which Kabir has, as a former police officer. Like, the scene where a senior policeman accepts a bribe to let off an inebriated priest involved in a road accident. In most films, such a scene, meant as part of character delineation without much connection to the larger narrative, would end there. Instead, here, it spills over into the next scene in the police jeep, where the policeman explains to his junior that the money is not meant for him, but to pay for the repairs of the jeep, since the reimbursements from the department take a long time to come. The scene thus gently transforms into a commentary on the system, just like the rest of the film.