Prasanth Vijay made his debut with The Summer of Miracles, where the protagonist was a nine-year-old boy who becomes obsessed with the idea of becoming invisible. The protagonist of Prasanth’s second feature is a young woman in the twelfth standard, played by Aathira Rajeev. Her name is Kalyani, and she, too, deals with a kind of invisibility: the absence of her recently deceased mother. The film opens with the aftermath of the death. Various well-meaning relatives buzz about, as Kalyani and her father Raghu (Pradeep Geedha) sit in a daze. As a nuclear unit, Raghu and his wife did not believe in rituals. But society will have its way, and so the relatives organise a purification rite because Kalyani’s mother died on an “inauspicious day”. All the woman’s possessions have to be burned, apparently, and in the nick of time, Kalyani saves a notebook filled with handwritten recipes.
This recipe book becomes a quiet metaphor. Just like a dish is made of ingredients put together in a certain way, so is a person a composite of various characteristics nurtured a certain way. Kalyani’s mother wrote down instructions, but not every single detail. Some of it remained in her head – and we see how we can never fully know anything or anyone. Everyone has their secrets – or rather, an inner life that they don’t easily share with others. For instance, what is the truth behind the relationship between Kalyani’s parents? The relatives gossip that her father used to hit her mother, and maybe a slap landed the wrong way, which caused the mother’s death. Kalyani confesses to a cousin that her parents were always fighting. Were there some missing ingredients in the marriage?
Looking at Raghu, it certainly seems so. I felt the man, with his fondness for poetry, especially Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali, must have been quite different from his wife. We know both characters through the books that define them: the recipe book, the poetry book. One is a meticulous set of instructions, with limited scope for improvisation. The other is more free-flowing and open to interpretation. You can write down a sequence of “how-to” points to make a dish, but there’s no rigid recipe for poetry. And Kalyani, at the cusp of adulthood, has to figure things out on her own. It’s not like her mother left her a set of instructions on how to handle life. She is confused. At one point, her father tells her to make her own decisions. At another point, he asks her to stay away from a teacher at school, a man named Aamir.
Raghu says people like Aamir cannot be trusted. But why? Is it the man’s youth, or is the real problem his name? Later, in an office conversation, we hear Raghu talk about someone being from a particular caste. Behind his genial facade – and Pradeep Geedha plays this duality beautifully – is the man an ugly racist, a womaniser? Does he really miss his wife, or does he just miss the fact that she used to handle everything at home, leaving him time to gift copies of Gitanjali to female colleagues? What about the long calls he has at night, smiling from ear to ear? Varkey’s gentle, rippling piano-based score seems to echo the quiet confusions inside Kalyani. Just how many secrets does her father have? Just how many “missing ingredients” is she unaware of?
Aathira Rajeev plays Kalyani superbly. Like the director, like the film, like Indu Lakshmi’s screenwriting, she rarely raises her voice or her expressions – not even when men come and threaten her father. In a standout scene, she talks to Laila (Ranjini George), who has filed a complaint against her father. You can see Kalyani’s confusion. With every look, Aathira Rajeev seems to be asking: “Oh dear! Is this what adulting feels like?” In another exquisite scene, we find Kalyani with her mother’s recipe book. An earlier attempt at cooking something (based on the book) ended up such a disaster that father and daughter ended up laughing about it. But this time, Kalyani looks determined. She may not know her mother’s secrets. But it’s time for her, now, to fill in the blanks. It’s time to grow up and make up her own recipes.