‘Kismath’… A thought-provoking social commentary on the state of inter-caste relationships in India.
The opening credits roll over a series of scenes from Ponnani — the backwaters, the rain, the tiled roof houses, churches, temples, mosques, (indicating the diversity and secularism of the place), the sea, bananas, pottery and much more. The movie takes place in Ponnani, but these scenes suggest that this story can be set in any part of Kerela, and by the end of it, you realise that it could be told from any corner of the country.
Kismath’s core isn’t new. In the Marathi hit Sairat, we follow the story of two people belonging to different castes falling in love, while Annayum Rasoolum, was set upon the religious differences between the leads. The ending wasn’t happy in either of them, and neither is it here.
In Kismath, Shane Nigam plays Irfan, a 23-year-old Muslim boy in love with Anitha, played by Shruthy Menon, a 28 year Hindu, belonging to the scheduled caste. It is like a recipe for disaster. It hence suits to call a movie completely based on human action and reaction as Kismath, (meaning fate), because this is the horrible fate of falling in love in our country.
In Sairat and Annayum Rasoolum, an extensive amount of time is spent on watching the leads fall in love, but in Kismath, we start bang in the middle, when the couple decides to head to the police station to ask for protection and are then trapped there for the enormity of the movie.
What follows is an extensive look into the still existing prejudices in our society. We get a whole scene dedicated to a drunken driving case, where the suspect is let off because the officer in charge and him belong to the same caste. There is an Assamese, a suspect of a road collision case, who is physically harassed and has to shell out a lot of money because he has the disadvantage of not speaking the native language. There is also an innocent man who becomes a scapegoat for the police force to avoid inspection.
Vinay Forrt is equal parts terrific and equal parts frightening as the sub-inspector of the station. Whether he is complaining about his chair or having breakfast in his office when Irfan and Anitha visit him, or when he shouts at a police officer to let a dead body flow down the river, so that the next precinct finds it and can handle the case, his reactions and answers are so unpredictable and so unforeseeable that upon hearing them you don’t know whether to laugh or not.
In (the previously watched) Om Shanti Oshana, the director doesn’t even consider that both the leads belong from different religious backgrounds, and when found out, it doesn’t even matter, but movies like this and Annayum Rasoolum, beg to differ and show the harsh reality of falling in love with someone outside your community.
