It was the nostalgia factor and some stunning visuals that struck a chord with me as far as 96 was concerned. Though I wouldn’t call myself a big fan of the entire movie, it’s just for that nostalgic factor that I keep going back to a few scenes from that.
Watching the trailer & some scenes from Meiyazhagan and some interviews with Arvind Swamy & Karthi, I was looking forward to experiencing yet another wave of nostalgia. Meiyazhagan more than fulfilled that wish, since there was so much that I could personally relate to!
Just like how Karthi keeps going back to the summer of ‘94, you will often hear me referring to every single summer vacation of mine during my school days! If my attachment to Madras is one thing, my attachment to my grandmother’s place is quite another! The summer vacations, synonymous with the affection from the extended family back there and the carefree, happy days spent with cousins, is something that I keep craving for, during not just the chaotic, but also the quiet moments of my daily life. Oh and not to forget that pollution-free, lush green, beautiful atmosphere totally in contrast to the city life. You have to visit a village to know what darkness during the night time and a sky full of stars even mean.
As years pass by, we change and so do the people around us. The more you grow older, the more the difficult facets of, not just life in itself, but also the people themselves, that you see. Yet when you go back to that time in life when you were just a child and you saw only goodness around you, the attachment that you felt for people and places was just so pure, wasn’t it? It’s that pure attachment that Meiyazhagan seems to have for Arulmozhi Varman in the movie. To him it doesn’t matter that Arul might have changed over the years and he continues to adore him just like how he did when he was a child, even claiming that he is all that he is today only because of Arul.
For someone like Arul who just doesn’t let himself go back to the memories of those good, old times and keeps holding on to the anger and frustration at having to let go of his life at his ancestral house, listening to Meiyazhagan constantly reminisce about the time he spent with Arul back then, does bring back to him an old slice of himself.
It could be the simple act of placing the mobile on the clothes stand while on a call by Hema (Devadrashini) or the feeling of comfort experienced by Arul when being back in his native – there were several ‘been-there-did-that’ moments in the movie – the morning train from Madras to Thanjavur, the scenes of the pacchaipasel vayal (the lush green paddy fields) around Thanjavur, the huge temples, graamatthu veeDu (the grand village home), the bus journey through fields and villages, it’s-a-small-world moment when the bus conductor turns out to be Arul’s father’s student, the joyous summer vacations, the skepticism that Arul feels, the relationship with relatives and, finally, believe it or not, the hesitation to ask one’s name after having such deep conversations with them!
There are many such beautiful moments like the one where the temple elephant passes by Arul while he is on a conversation with his wife on the mobile. He doesn’t even tell his wife about this. Such is his nature preferring to process the experience of this moment in solitude.
Of course, I didn’t enjoy all the aspects of the movie. For instance, that meeting with his cousin where Arul puts golusu didn’t really gel well. The songs praised by almost everyone were not to my liking at all. I would have preferred it if the entire conversation between Arul & Meiyazhagan happened without drinks in the picture.
Despite all these, Meiyazhagan succeeds in evoking nostalgia in a much more relatable way to me than 96 and that’s why I keep going back to several scenes in this too.
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Watching Meiyazhagan, I kept telling myself that, had it been the good, old days when Sudhish Kamath wrote for ‘The Hindu’, this would have been the kind of movie that he would have enjoyed and given a great rating. That’s when I remembered his Twitter page, scrolled through the posts and found a write-up about Meiyazhagan! There were also comments from a few of them saying how they used to read his reviews in Metro Plus. Yet another nostalgia brought on by Meiyazhagan! 🙂