‘Nadi
Karayinile’: Off beat and touching
This celluloid version of popular Kannada novelist Sara Abubaker’s
work “Nadi Karayinile” comes to the screen a couple
of years after its completion, having made it to the international
film festival circuit meanwhile.
Centering around
a Muslim family’s trials and tribulations, it’s about
a father’s machinations that leads to his daughters’
ruin, touching on the concept of ‘talaq’ whereby a man
can get divorce from his wife by calling out ‘talaq’
thrice.
After his first
daughter Jameela (Suvalakshmi) is happily married to small-time
textile shop owner Naseer (Ramji), Mohmad finalises his second daughter’s
marriage. When Naseer refuses to help during a financial crunch,
a furious Mohmad takes away the unsuspecting Jameela with him on
false pretext.
Selling her
jewels, he manages to get his second daughter married. Getting deeper
into debt, Mohmad agrees to a suggestion to get Jameela married
to a wealthy old man who would pay off his debts. But before that
Jameela has to get divorced (get talaq) from Naseer.
Realising that
it is an impossible task since Naseer still loved Jameela, the scheming
Mohmad tricks Naseer into believing that Jameela does not want to
return to him, and manages to get Naseer to give talaq to Jameela.
When a shocked
Jameela learns about her farther’s machinations, the dutiful
daughter, for the first time, vents her anger and hurt on her father.
Struck by remorse, Mohmad now tries to set matters right but finds
it a difficult task.
For, if Jameela
has to re-marry Naseer, she has to first get married to another
man, get a talaq from him and then re-marry her first husband. Mohmad
now has to hunt for a second husband. The son-in-law of his second
daughter suggests a man who is mentally imbalanced and would pose
no problem.
Produced by
V Sunder, the film (earlier titled ‘Jameela’), off-beat
and touching in its portrayal of the goings-on in a Muslim family,
was the only Indian entry at the Shanghai Film Festival 2001. |