It is the Tamil version of a Telugu movie. A family has come with a marriage proposal, and Sriman Narayana’s grandmother – a decrepit K R Vijaya – who is worried about SN’s marriage getting delayed, is happy. ‘Where is Sriman Narayana?’ every one of them asks. ‘He must still be on campus,’ the grandmother says with a weary sadness in her voice. ‘Don’t you know he is a college teacher?’ Or something to that effect; her tinny, faint words are obscured by a fast-approaching machine.
Now a car comes hurtling down at breakneck speed. Brakes screech and rubber burns as the huge automobile jerks to a halt in front of the house. Scarcely does it stop when one of its front doors flings open and flies in the air. With it flies a dushman screaming in horror!
Out comes the foot that booted out the door with the passenger clinging to it. Now the entire body, big and beefy, heaves itself out of the car. Sriman Narayana has arrived! A fleshy rather than muscular body and a weary face bespeaking agedness and a certain tiredness, SN, however, carries his bulk effortlessly and walks briskly through the lawns. Like a Renaissance hero – “empowered, limitless in his capacities” (Leon Battista Alberti).
It’s a throwback to an earlier age. I let out a bored, tired sigh and turn the TV off.
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