Hello everyone, it is me, your Feisty Indian Aunty who this week watched a Tamil movie on Netflix called C/O Kaadhal. No, this isn’t your usual love story where the hero meets the heroine, professes his love, has to overcome warring parents, traverse different economic situations, get married and live happily ever after. No such luck.
This movie was an absolute shock to my Indian psyche. It is a masterpiece of storytelling about love. C/O Kaadhal is a movie worth 100 minutes of your time as it will appeal to your inner most emotions.
What is Love? How can it be experienced? What are the emotions involved? Is there an age where you have the right to fall in love? What about when children like each other? Do we call that love? Teenage love can be so captivating and yet dangerously disastrous. More so when teens get pregnant and the guy absolves himself of the responsibility of being “in love.”
What then do we say about love when one is older and more mature? Can love happen when one is fifty or sixty years old? Of course it can. It can happen to anyone, at any age, and anywhere. And that is what this movie is essentially about.
C/O Kaadhal captures the stories of four love “affairs.” A term I use with great respect. One story revolves around an office boy, Palani (Deepan N), who is single and constantly gossiped about by his neighborhood for not being married. He meets the widowed Aditi (Abitha Venkatraman) in his office and the both of them begin to develop feelings for one another. Aditi decides that she wants to marry Palani who, in turn, is terrified by the thought despite the fact he has feelings for her.
And then there is the schoolboy Velu (Nishesh) who has a crush on his classmate Sunitha (Shwetha) and tries to woo her in his own immature way. And the story of Bhargavi (Ayra), a college student who falls for Joseph (Karthik Rathnam), the henchman for a local big shot. And finally, Dhaadi (Vetri), who works in a liquor shop, and falls for a woman (Mumtaz Sorcar) without even seeing her face.
This is a movie of how these love stories come together.
C/O Kaadhal delves into India’s deep-seated feelings of entitlement. It explores society’s hang-ups. It asks what happens in one’s faith in God when God fails to grant you everything that you desperately desire. It speaks to having dignity in labour, it speaks of caste and community, of intermarriage, of love between people of different faiths as well as the forbidden love between a man and a prostitute.
The movie left me with so many lingering images in my head. The image of a boy whose first love is taken away from him and how we faces up to the consequences of his actions. The woman who is blackmailed by her parents to give up her lover. The man who marries beyond his station. C/O Kaadhal drives home the message that love can be both the cause of all that is really great in the world and also some of its most hideous evils.
Can love ever “conquer all?” I don’t know. But this movie gave me some hope.
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