My article on Manikandan’s Kadaisi Vivasayi, has been published in vol. XXIV October-December 2024 edition of E-Cine India https://fipresci-india.org/e-cine-india/ , the E-Journal of the India Chapter of FIPRESCI https://fipresci.org/– Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique- International Federation of Film Critics
Journal’s Link – https://fipresci-india.org/e-cine-india/
My article’s Link –https://fipresci-india.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/28.-Critique-Latha-Rajasekar-Kadaisi-Vivasayi.pdf
The title translates, ‘The Last Farmer’, and the movie is about ‘The Only Farmer’ of the village who could cultivate paddy for the village’s traditional pooja. Director Manikandan’s films are highly moralistic and predominantly rooted to the terrain he talks about. But this flick is a deep focus on ‘his’ native habitat and its religiosity, intended to relate the viewers to those simple souls.
The director embraces his ‘religious identity’ right from the opening credits, hinting the viewers about the orientation of the plot. The title begins with a praise for the ‘Southern country’s God’, Lord Siva, followed by a dedication to, Lord Muruga, The Founder of the native language ‘Tamil’, and his followers called ‘Siddhars’. Siddhars were divine humans, who have attained high degree of spiritual perfection and they have been acknowledged as scientists, doctors, alchemists, and mystics in the past. Manikandan intends to credit our contemporary belief systems to our ancestor’s, who believed in ‘self-surrender’ to obtain ‘unity with the absolute’. He guides the viewers to experience the associated ‘spiritual apprehensions’ of truths beyond intellect, through his fluid narrative style.
The next credit is even more interesting as the director introduces the audience to his ‘family deities’ called the ‘Kula Deivam’. The format is similar to a typical native wedding invitation of the south. A two-column family tree like deities list of both his parents. On his paternal side, ‘Valayapatti Chinnaakaaman’ is called upon to protect to begin with. ‘Valayapatti’ is the village of his dad’s origin and Chinnaakaaman, the deity’s name. Then comes his late grand-parents, parent, along with their village Vilaampatti, and the director even mentions the block to which the village belongs to- Usilampatti. An exact replica is on the adjacent column for his maternal grand-parents. The 85-year-old protagonist, who sadly had passes away before the film was released, also gets a placard in a similar pattern – ‘Perungamanallur village’s Late Nallandi, the son of Chinna Thevar.’
This little exercise, is the true essence of the movie. A humble journey to celebrate the social structure, to respect the societal spiritual practices and to focus on the need to sustain in food productivity chains, as farmers are the primary source of our lives.
Cow dung plastered floors are not just a house for the protagonist, farmer Maayandi, it is house for two of his cows and his hen and her chicks. Maayandi feeds the hen and her chicks, walks his cows to his farmland and checks the water level in his well, before turning on the motor. He waters his land and then walks the cows back home. This detailed early morning introductory routine of the farmer turns to become significant, as we are made to relate to it, while it beautifully intersects with the story, in the later half.
The director juxtaposes Mayandi’s idle gaze over the flying peacock from the hillock nearby, with a young shepherd’s overlapping conversation over a mobile call in the background, who asks his friend to bring his herd to the ‘location’ he had texted on WhatsApp. This shot composition, announces the audience on globalisation re-shaping our Indian villages, leaving the older generation behind and with them their ‘wisdom’.
A song sung by a ‘real life fanatical devotee of Lord Muruga’ of the 1960’s, Mr. T.M.Soundararajan, in his magnetic voice- ‘Karpanai Endrallum Karchilai Endralum’, is heard on a distant radio, as the film’s credits rolls. The director aims to emphasise through the song, the religious doctrine that is based on the awareness that comes from the spirit and not through science. The song translates – ‘Even if you are an imagination, even if you are a mere statue of stone, oh dear Lord Muruga, I would not forget you.’ The late veteran lyricist Mr. Vaali, before his venture into the films as song writer, was offended by constant abuses on Lord Muruga, by the then atheist political parties. In an emotional spurt, he supposedly wrote these lyrics on a post card and posted it to Mr. T.M. Soundararajan. The singer was immensely impressed with the words, that he composed the tune himself, sang and released it as a devotional album.
The director parallels minimalism by overlapping Maayandi’s frugal market spending on vegetables, to a contrasting conversation in a fertiliser shop, on a man spending lakhs towards donation and fee for his son’s college admission. Genetically modified foods are of course tested for its safety but the apprehension on finding a hybrid variety, growing seedless tomatoes, seems unacceptable to the old farmer, Maayandi. He even goes on to curse the scientist for intervening in the natural process of tomatoes that usually grow from excreta. Maayandi’s ‘natural seed dispersal’ mention, is the director insisting upon the protagonist’s traits, an unexploited farmer in a world of rapid diffusion of technology.
A lightning struck tree in the village, stirs the guilt conscience of the villagers for not performing the annual ritual of the ‘Kula Deivam’ in the last fifteen years. Maayandi is seen calculating the age of the tree to be over 100 years by visualising it being around for generations, a sense of unifying our ancestry to nature.
Each family deity has a set pattern for worship and the director effortlessly highlights his thoughts on ‘caste’ being a relatively new discriminator in the otherwise inclusive ritual template. A group of middle-aged men are seen discriminating the ‘low caste born’, that they shouldn’t be a part of the festivity. But the older women are seen shutting them out, by insisting upon their traditional practices of requesting a mud horse made by a potter for the pooja and inviting ‘Parai’ music players of the low born men, as it is their music that would make the village’s pleas heard by the Gods.
It is indeed hearty to witness the younger generation fighting with the older ones, that the ritual will be participated by everyone, irrespective of their caste. A typical urban scenario to echo in the village setup, is a relief. Elements relating to ‘God’, were the root of discrimination in the recent past. When the same elements relating to God are used to reverse the curse, and unifying them as ‘humans’, in current scenario, is truly heart-warming. By making the young generation raising their voices in support of the older generation, Manikandan promisingly indicates, ‘discrimination’ is dying a slow but a sure death.
On the parallel the director introduces a character named Ramaiah who believes his dead lover is alive, and she is beside him ‘always’. His lover was his cousin, who had killed herself by poisoning, because her father refused her to marry Ramaiah. He carries heavy bags of belongings, wearing too many shirts one top of another, too many watches and often seen climbing up and down hillocks, in bare foot. His aggressive behaviour when someone doubts his belief that ‘his lover is alive’, seem weird to the villagers and to the viewers. We question his mental stability but the director gradually analogizes Ramaiah as a contemporary Siddhar, the insane looking sanest of all. I fascinatingly could smell the ashes that Ramaiah is seen smearing on people whom he acquaints, for I was reminded of my granddad ‘Arunachalam’, who kept the fragrant ash, ‘Thiruneer’ in a cloth potli bag called the ‘Surrukku Pai’.
A few old and a few young lots of the village, trip to the place of worship and an older man address pointing to a deity as – ‘Karuppan’. He refers to ‘Karuppusamy’, the God of protection, often seen at the entrance of a village. The director chooses to lure the audience to the crux, by making an old man fondly tag line Karuppan as ‘Seeyan’, meaning grand-dad. The viewers are made to infer that the spirits of our ancestors are standing, every ready to protect us from all evil in the form of Karuppu(black) Samy (God) and instantly we are made to connect Ramaiah’s belief that his lover isn’t dead – she is with him, beside him and maybe she is protecting him. He is furious when people mock at his belief, say, when he buys two cups of tea, one for him and one for ‘her’. But is seen mesmerised when someone acknowledges the fact, like Maayandi who brings three plates of food, two for him and Ramaiah and the third one for ‘her’.
Our spiritual system is being maintained through a coherent understanding of our predecessor’s life experiences. It results in shaping our spiritual values, beliefs, practices and the reasons behind. Ramaiah believes his lover is ‘alive’ and that is his spiritual orientation. His, is similar to most of the believers till date, as we believe our deities ‘come alive’ with the right worship pattern called ‘Padaiyal’. There are set patterns, particular ways to present God, our food, freshly grown fruits and water, along with loud instrumental music or chanting to grab His attention.
The old man continues to narrate the youngsters that the main deity Ayyan, Ayyanar, Aaiyappan are all one and the same, indicating ‘our fathers’. He adds, ‘one who breaks free of his thoughts, perceptions, feelings and wills’, become God. The Kula (family) Deivam (God) is seen as a rock lamp and the elderly says, the deity is a mere ‘oil lamp’ made of stone, and it is garlanded and worshipped. Another old man claims that idol worship were later additions to the primary fire worship format, summarizing mankind’s religious practices where, ‘Fire’ is either worshipped at or is a tool of worship, across religions.
Director Manikandan, spells it out for the audience that these statues are real people who had lived the earth, to become our Gods. One cannot refrain from recollecting those opening credits of Manikandan’s vertical family tree – deities on top, followed by his great grandparents, his grandparents and his dad and then today it is ‘him’, and tomorrow it will be his ‘kids’– A simplification of ‘Aham Brahmasmi’, translating, ‘I am God’.
The reasons behind discontinuing the annual ritual, apparently was the misbehaviour of a few villagers in ill-treating the lower caste men at the festival. Manikandan’s emphasise on the rituals being a ‘mandate of collective worship by all’, highlights that festivals are hostility neutralisers as well. It dawned on me why my eighty-two-year-old dad goes through deliberate hardships in organising our annual ritual, by pooling in all relatives, many of whom are a disinterested bunch.
Manikandan’s second analogy is the corporate sector investment to that of elephant rearing. The village’s wealthiest farmer, sells his fifteen acers of farming land, to buy an elephant for his adult son ‘Thadikozhanthai’, the name translates ‘plump baby’, a reference to the wealthy. The analogy is in line with a Tamil saying that goes, ‘Yaannaiyai katti theeni poda mudiyaadhu’, translating, it is impossible to feed an elephant enough. Manikandan layers the analogy with an irony of few other farmers selling their farmlands to a ‘financing company’ whose motive is to do ’organic farming’. The sorrow of felling a healthy tree by these buyers, is magnified as Manikandan ends the sequence by merging an aerial shot of the lighting struck tree, whose bark and wood fibres had exploded.
A native farmer, is exploited by globalised techniques and hybrid seeds, that tempt big profits. Later forced to surrender his land to corporates, who proclaim to revert back to ‘traditional farming practices’ under a fancy banner of ‘organic farming’. As a viewer, I was left puzzled asking myself, ‘Life definitely is not coming a full circle for these farmers, does it?’.
When the broker offers a handsome return for his farmlands, Maayandi refuses it. His genuine reason being, if he sells his land, he may not have an urge to wake up early every day. It sounds superficially ignorant on the face of it but it is the most simplified truth, as it defines the synchronized life of the human race, one with ‘nature’. Just like the high-pitched chirping birds that welcome every dawn of our lives, Maayandi’s day begins at dawn, and his life is defined by his simplistic routine.
The broker whines that Maayandi has been deaf for four decades and hence doesn’t have much wisdom to what is happening around. But his imparity, has turned a boon, as he is clinging on to the piece of ancestry land amidst the evolving land mafia madness. Maayandi replies to the broker – the money in return for his land might only be used by him as his pillow and nothing much, a deliberate featuring of minimalism. We are nodding in agreement, given the routine of Maayandi’s, as to what would a stash of cash mean to a ‘self-sustained’ man like him, who is desireless and doesn’t have any wants or needs.
Director Manikandan’s illustrative demonstration of the ritualistic process of ‘sowing paddy’ is an inspiring compilation through his protagonist, Maayandi. A little girl is asked to take handful of grains and it is wrapped in a jute cloth and soaked. She is duly paid a little treat of palm sugar candy for her job. Little girls are village’s little goddesses and their growth symbolises, that the crops would grow just like them. But sadly, I couldn’t help thinking, a natural biological process such as puberty would easily snatch such privileges from them.
The ‘ploughing tools’ are considered divine in this part of the country and Manikandan meticulously documents the process encompassing its divinity, a keep-sake compilation for the non-farming generations to come, indeed. And it begins with a ‘Karpooram’ Aarthi (camphor light) for the peacock feather decorated Tamil God ‘Murugan’. From washing the Ayyanaar Arivaal (the protector God’s lengthy sickle), to freshly grinding fragrant sandalwood paste to decorate the iron ‘Marakkal’, a cylindrical measuring pot with closed bottom that is used to store grains and is used in auspicious events such as wedding, the movie swells with aesthetics.
Maayandi cleans the plough carefully as if he would shower an infant, cleansing it with care and wields it on the land with his two cows on either side. The lyrical song in the background, supports his sentiments with words that translate the respect the farmers have for their land. The ploughed and watered land, the soaked seeds rhythmically thrown to grow into sprouts, converting the small patch into an emerald carpet, is a visual treat to the ‘soul’. The visuals intercut with Ramaiah swaying on the hillock his vibrant coloured clothes, that fly like kites in the wind, are director’s edit, that prompts in corelation with the mood of the viewers.
The potter explaining his disability to make the mud horse for the ritual is a satirical irony. The potter is no longer allowed to gather the red soil from the river bed, as Government has banned such activities. While mafias flourish in corruption of sand mining, the poor villager’s livelihood and the traditions associated with his creative skill, is seen to suffocate. The Director’s strength is, he is content in just subliminally touching upon such issues, to initiate a conversation within the viewer’s minds.
When Maayandi sees a couple of peahens and a peacock dead in his farm land, the viewers are made to infer that Maayandi had visualised them as ‘Lord Muruga’ and his two consorts ‘Valli and Deivaanai’, as the peacocks are personified as the Lord himself. One is assured of this thought process of Maayandi, as he is seen repeating, the phrase, ‘one peacock and two peahens’ in more than one instance. In a natural instinct, he buries them in the scorching heat, with the crows and cuckoos as his witness.
Ramaiah, in his first meet with Maayandi, would have fondly recited his experiences of his pilgrim to a 2000-year-old shrine of Lord Murugan in Palani. His ‘first-person narration’ of a puranic story about his very own Lord Murugan going around the world to get the golden mango from his dad, is sure to puzzle the viewers, but not Maayandi. During the second visit, Maayandi shares his grief to Ramaiah about the dead peafowls. Ramaiah is quite disturbed as it is the ‘Vahana’ – vehicle of his favourite God Murugan and he too seem to have personified the peafowls with God. After a brief moment of silence, he says, he believes that the Lord has some plans of his own. Naively, in a dramatic irony both of them are disturbed about the death of the birds, for it belongs to their Lord, and not because, the peacocks are our nation’s pride.
The first conflict in the movie arrives after forty odd minutes of ‘lifestyle exploration’ of the eighty-two-year-old man and his village. A passerby, seemingly a peasant hunter, in the grudge that Maayandi refused to give him the dead bird and instead buried them himself, lodges a complaint in the police station that Maayandi killed those peafowls. The viewers along with Maayandi are made to step-out of the tranquil world of his and step into the deceitful real world. But the beauty is that Maayandi continues to remain in the genuine cocoon of his, as the film progresses with sequences of the legal proceedings.
Funnily, on realising that the khaki uniformed man is not an electric post repair man but police, due to his hearing disability Maayandi gives a random reply, that he inherited the land from his grandfather, thinking the constable asked him about his land. All the old man could relate with a policeman, was a probable land dispute. When he gets ready wearing two different slippers as a pair, to accompany the constable to the police station, without any hesitation, the eerie background score, wrenches the viewers of the uncertainties ahead.
Past humiliation by the villagers, behind police personnel registering a case against Maayandi, twists the tale. The court proceedings begin with a young magistrate. She swiftly holds the inspector responsible for his ulterior motives and sympathizes with the elderly man who says he did not kill the peafowls. Director Manikandan never ceases to add positivity even in the real-world scenario and Magistrate Mangaiyarkarasi (her name translates ‘queen of women’) is one big hope for many, including the viewers.
The court proceedings fondly remind the director’s 2016 film, yet another gem, ‘Andavan Kattalai’. Maayandi, is concerned not about him being remanded but about his saplings dying without someone to water them. The director tries to throw light on innate humanness in all characters of his. For instance, the Magistrate asking the constable to water the plants in return for his mistake of facts in haste, which lead to the old man’s remand. The youngsters readily agreeing to take care of Maayandi’s cattle. The co-inmate in the prison taking tutorials from Maayandi on farming. Unearthing kindness in human minds are sourced elegantly by the director through such sequences. And while doing so, he is also signalling the masses, that farming is an innate quality of humans.
Manikandan also touches upon another vital quality of humans, ‘adaptability’. The constable adapts to the routine of Maayandi to the extent that he enjoys the solitude to become one with the village community’s annual ritual. The prison inmate learns to grow plants inside the prison in whatever broken cups and jars he could lay his hand, trying to sort his future after his prison life. When Maayandi says, ‘God has given us thousands of seeds and anything would grow if it is sown and watered’, I was left to visualise, the kinds of shrubs and weeds that menacingly grow on unkept roadsides, every fissure of rocks and walls, and even in between the creases of my freshly laid cobble stoned road.
A stranger throws a satirical remark on GST, but Raamaiah chooses to remain silent. He goes on to question Raamaiah if he knows who rules the state, and he instantly replies, ‘It has always been Lord Murugan’. Director’s grievance on the plight of the complex taxation format on the ignorant lot, hints a pacifying solution through Ramaiah’s portrayal. ‘God will save them’.
Raamaiah meets an old Siddhar, who applies ashes on his fore head and gives some in his hand. When asked for whom the ashes were, the Siddhar turns towards the tree where Raamaiah had kept his bags, and says ‘for her who is sitting under the tree’. Raamaiah, played by actor Vijay Sethupathi, emotes with mixed emotions. He is happy that his lover is visible to the Siddhar’s eyes and on the other hand, is sad that he either had forgot about her or didn’t believe in her existence completely. Had he believed in her existence whole heartedly without an ounce of doubt, he wouldn’t have left her starving, by offering ‘her’ food packet to the Siddhar.
Director Manikandan organically overlaps the sequences of the youngsters regretting their actions of killing the peafowl the previous years and Maayandi’s grandson Karuppan going to Palani, to pray for an obstacle-free festivity. Karuppan meets Raamaiah climbing a hill in Palani, and witnesses’ ‘Mysticism’ himself – the ‘mystical theology’ of Raamaiah vanishing in thin air.
Maayandi asks Karuppan about Raamaiah, as Karuppan gives the potli bag of ash to him. The director chooses to layer his screenplay with intercuts of actual visuals of Karuppan’s narration to Maayandi. What we as audience witness is a meditative compilation, captured from a camera that is first placed on the top of the hillock, as if we take the place of ‘The Almighty’ and welcome Raamaiah, into our arms. He climbs, carrying the two seemingly heavy bags that he is seen carrying for the entire run of the movie.
The music then softens, and now the camera is placed down on the rock to visualise Rammaiah from behind, after he had climbed to the top of the hill. And now, he seems to be ‘The Almighty’ himself. He comes down briefly to give the polti bag of ash, as if he is handing over the baton to the younger generation and says (blesses) that everything would be sorted, once the deity’s ritual is performed.
He climbs back and the sound of a squawking peafowl, tears the wind and the sun makes its way out of the dark cloud. The puzzling frown on Raamaiah’s face, is wiped off and he smiles big. He smiles heartily like an infant. The instrumental melody, compliments his ‘altered state of consciousness’ and his expanded spiritual awareness. When Karuppan turns back to look at Raamaiah – ‘He’ is gone. The music stops and the camera freezes in its inclined angle capturing the two heavy bags and the rays of light falling right in the middle – ‘A state of spiritual perfection’. He did obtain ‘Unity’ with the ‘Absolute’ through ‘Self-surrender’.
Karuppan climbs to stand where Ramaiah stood, right in between the two bags and now it is the Director Manikandan narrating the story of our ancestors – we stepping into their shoes, acknowledging their experiences, and start worshipping them as our ‘guiding light’, our ‘Kula Deivam’. Karuppan only briefly looks down in a ‘scientific instinct’, but as soon as he climbs up the rock, he just looks straight into the sky, into the ray of light, in to the heavenly abode. When he narrates to Maayandi that Raamaiah disappeared, Maayandi corrects him promptly, no, he didn’t disappear, ‘He flew away’. The bags sit there on the top, as the sun sets, indicating the soul departed leaving behind his baggage.
Raamaiah, left his baggage behind, he let go of what he was clinging on to, he let go of desires, he let go of expectations. He relinquished all attachments to become one with the God, to become a divine human, a ‘Siddhar’. He is gone. But continues to live in the ‘ashes’ that he carried with him in the blue polti – for the old and young generation to smear ‘Him’ on their foreheads.
The long corridor leading to the prison cell where the old man is ‘caged’, looks longingly at the distant shining moon through his prison grills – in sorrow of being restrained. But when he is brought to the court the next morning, in an urge to see his crops, just like any mother would long to see her children, he sneaks to the farmland to see the shocking sight of his dying crops. A youngster had sprayed an expired chemical compound. The constable picks him back to the court. Maayandi is not frustrated, he just is dejected.
Finally, when the magistrate says he can go home, he is not seen happy. He is rather numb. After the release formalities, Maayandi is seen wiping hard, the thumb impression ink, from his earth filled muddy hand. An ‘impression’ he is new to, an impression that he would relate to disputes maybe, an impression that is alien on his muddy hand, an impression that reminds him of the unreasonable restriction over a month, an impression he didn’t get when he buried a dead street dog a year back, an impression that reminds of the monetary compensation he was offered to ignore watering the saplings that were sown for their deity.
The magistrate trying to speed up the release formalities goes in person to the prison complex. Manikandan’s goodness showcasing never ceases. It is not the ‘Magistrate’ who wanted to visit Maayandi go home. It is ‘Mangaiaarkarasi’ who wants to be a part of liberating the innocent farmer, ‘the last farmer’. She wanted to witness Maayandi go back to his farmland and wants to assist him replenish his land with a new set of emerald carpet.
But when he is seen lying down on the bench outside the prison office, along with Mangayarkarasi, viewers are left with pounding heartbeats, puzzled if Director Manikandan resorted to the most common melodramatic end for the character. A small movement is what our eyes are searching for, in that puny body of Maayandi’s.
The silence is broken by his fellow inmate who took farming lessons from Maayandi. As he screams asking Maayandi to wake, we viewers too are screaming within asking someone to shake the old man to come alive. But the distant peacock does that for the ones on screen and off screen. Maayandi wakes, all startled in a jolt and the silence continues, for us to comfort ourselves.
Mangayarkarasi on reaching Maayandi’s land, comforts him like a mother, saying, every villager, elephant included, would assist him collectively to re-sow seeds for the deity. For generations, families were built, on such simple fundamentals, right? ‘Humans with humanity’ coming together to pray the Gods.
How can a movie so positive, end without the resumed annual festivity? With the decorated lamp deity, the ‘Padayal’ of all kind arrives. But the ‘Marakkal’ of freshly harvested paddy arrives with a hero’s welcome with everyone cheering for our hero Mayaandi. Manikandan insists on capturing the celebrations only briefly, to go back to Maayandi’s routine.
Maayandi, is greeted on his routine by a peacock who is seen fanning its feathery tail from the top of a hillock. We know who it is. It is HIM, the Vahana of Subramaniayan alias Karthikeyan alias Murugan alias Raamaiah, the Siddhar, who once lived on the top to the hill.