Kadhal to Draupathi!!

Movies play a big part in our lives knowingly or unknowingly as they nearly inherit our house by continuously playing in our TVs. Kadhal (a Tamil movie) which released 15 years back was a shock to the social system. The story revolves around a poor mechanic and his love interest, a rich girl from an upper caste. The movie starts with the girl showing interest in the boy, who later reciprocates. The boy is afraid of the girl’s parents and their powerful relatives. As the tension builds up, the girl decides to elope with the boy from Madurai to Chennai.

Their stay in Chennai is marked with many difficulties, which had not been shown in Tamil movies before. They had to adjust to various hardships, at which point even I thought that the girl would leave her lover and go back to her parents, for they were searching frantically along with relatives for their girl. However, she stays put with her lover and they get married, literally on the streets. One of relatives then finds out that she lives in Chennai and convinces her and her husband (the boy) to come visit the girl’s parents in hope that the parents would accept their marriage.

Herein lay the twist to the movie, where the relative specifies the fact that he had lost an arm in a caste fight and would never accept a boy from another caste. All through this movie, caste plays an undertone to money but rears its head in the climax. The boy is hit dramatically with a boulder and the girl agrees to marry another person if her lover’s life is spared. In the final scene of the movie, the girl meets her lover again (after some years) wherein he has lost his mind (due to the hit on his head) and is roaming on the streets in ragged clothes. The girl’s present husband understands his wife and takes her lover along to be treated in a hospital. These heart-rending scenes had made the movie into a super hit.

The movie sorely underlined the brutal caste divide in the society and underlined the need for an equal society. However, recent news of ‘honor’ killing among a section of the society has sent shock waves. ‘Pariyaerum Perumal’ movie recently spoke on the same issue of caste inequality.

‘Draupathi’, a new Tamil movie, shows us another facet of the caste system wherein boys from the lower caste specifically target girls from rich upper caste. There have been many media stories, wherein a boy from the so-called lower caste elopes with a girl from upper caste and later demands a ransom to sort their family issues. They then divorce the girl and marry from their own caste, thereby seemingly taking revenge for the injustice done to their ancestors. Perhaps, this grave injustice meted to the parents of the girls has propelled this movie to become a super-hit among the masses as it runs now to packed theatre halls.

The caste system was created for the purposes of assigning work to a group of people: kshtriyas (administrators and warriors), Brahmins (priestly work), Vaishyas (artisans, merchants, tradesmen and farmers), and Shudras (laboring classes). However, it has outlived its initial purpose and should be shelved permanently for the betterment of the society.