Oridathu (1987)

The time is the mid-fifties, when the Indian states were being reorganised. The place is a remote village in Kerala. There is a palpable hum of excitement as the village Panchayath, led by the Brahmin landlord, is determined to bring the benefits of electricity to this backward place.

As the story unfolds, it introduces us to an array of characters in the village...the Communist tailor given to fiery speeches, laced with quotations; the landlord's bossy manager; Kuttan, the odd job man, hitching his star to the influential newcomers; the wise school teacher, the adolescent boy and girl; the braggarl overseer...

Families and groups are deftly sketched with a cartoonist's sharp eye. Each group has its own story to tell, in self-contained episodes that are all interrelated. The vela or the festival of the local temple is a symbol of the harmony that prevailed in the village in those pre-electricity days.

After the executive engineer from the Electricity Department has surveyed the place with becoming solemnity, there follows a flurry of activity. The overseer, flatteringly called engineer by the villagers who do not know the distinction, has an eye for the girls. Kuttan, the man for all jobs, becomes the overseer's faithful servitor. He induces the girl he hopes to marry to join the electricity workforce.

A doctor following in the wake of electricity sets up a dispensary in the village. Kuttan decides he is a more prestigious master to serve. The village soon stops treating the overseer with awe. He displays a taste for the arts and theatricals, forms an amateur group and earnestly begins rehearsing for a romantic play about separated lovers. Young Jose plays the heroine's role.

Jose is a bright, ambitious boy who plans to leave the village to work outside Kerala, once the coming festival is over. The disenchantment with electricity is gradual. The location of the electric pole makes old friends and neighbours fall out. There are dire omens of death.

At first, cows are electrocuted atop the wire, then a cow fallen in a huddle. Death also comes to Kuttan's girlfriend who is pregnant. Kuttan cannot afford to support her, and abortion seems the only way out. Next morning, her dead body is found in the temple pond. The doctor, who has finalised marriage negotiations with the manager's daughter is unmasked - as a quack and a would-be bigamist to boot. Kuttan's simple trust is betrayed by the overseer who seduces his sister.

Before the larger calamity strikes, there is a symbolic burial of the beautiful temple lamppost, whose wick was ceremonially lit every evening. Its gentle glow has now been replaced by harsh electric glare. The story moves inexorably to its culmination.

At the temple festival every year, Kuttan traditionally dons the vestments of the Kali, the avenging goddess. He decides to wreak vengeance on the overseer who he sees as the root cause of all calamities in the village. But in the clash, it is young Jose, who gets electrocuted. The cry of the innocent victim is drowned by the pyrotechnical dazzle of the festival fireworks, which are sparked off in the melee — a parable of nuclear holocaust. The frame freezes on a parachuting mannikin headed for the earth, arms outsretcged as if in crucifixion.