Readers Write In #442: Kadaisi Vivasayi: The Last Awakening

By Macaulay Perapulla

In his book, “Nutmeg’s Curse”, Amitav Ghosh explores the history of nutmeg to ask a fundamental question that is extremely poignant in an age of climate change: Is our generation doomed to be the victims of the curse of the planet, as we’ve been treating the planet as a sort of inert repository of resources for a long time and now the planet seems to be striking back, almost vindictively at us ?

When I sat down to watch “Kadaisi Vivasaayi”, my expectations were set: I expected the old deaf protagonist to talk about the paeans of old ways of living, in which there was no difference between life and livelihood, unlike most of us, children of modernity, who’ve learned to pretend that there exists a chasm between what we do for a living and the ways in which we live.

In Kadaisi Vivasaayi, Manikandan does something unexpected and profound: By chronicling the unhurried yet vigorous life of a deaf protagonist, he reminds us of what we’ve forgotten to hear all along: Can we start healing the curse of the planet and celebrate nature as a sentient living being who needs to be celebrated so that we discover indigenous ways of healing our terraformed planet and our broken relationship with her?

By setting the story in a village near the western ghats (you see “Merku thodarchi malai” written in plain language in the police station limits), Manikandan borrows the cultural elements from the village milieu (Murugan, Karuppu and so much more) and tells the tale of a cursed village which finally discovers its spiritual and religious awakening, thanks to a brief episode of existential crisis triggered by the the death of a god’s vehicle. There are so many layers in the movie, and the movie takes its sweet time to get into its rhythm. Few performances are a bit odd in tonality, but once the movie sets its rhythm, it’s spell binding.