It’s a pain we can all identify with: the pain of being in love and missing your beloved.
For Kayal, a teenager working as a housemaid in a zamindar’s (land owner’s) house, love is a new experience, something unanticipated in her life. So when Cupid strikes his arrow, coming at a most improbable time and under implausible circumstances, Kayal is bewildered.
She listens in disbelief when a stranger, Aaron, openly professes his love for her in the presence of many. She tries to understand the strange new feeling clasping her heart. But after a point, Kayal breaking down into tears, runs indoors calling out to her mother.
Her mother is a mere photograph on the wall that the orphan girl holds close to her bosom while her grandmother calms her down, then urges Kayal to leave home and seek out her beloved.
The innocent Kayal looks up and asks, “Where? How?”
After all, she had only met Aaron for the first time the night before, when at, the insistence of her employer, she questioned him to find out the whereabouts of her employer’s daughter, who had eloped on the eve of her marriage.
And, in the stillness of the dark night, Aaron listening to her talk is completely besotted by her beautiful eyes that light up in the glow of a lantern.
Director-scriptwriter Solomon builds up this love story gradually, introducing us first to Aaron and Socrates, two insignificant young men who feed their wanderlust by taking up temporary work. “Like the wind,” as Aaron puts it, they have seen the snow-capped ranges of Ladakh, posed before the Taj Mahal, trekked through the rainforests of Meghalaya, rolled on the sand dunes of Rajasthan and now were bound towards Kanyakumari, the only place left to cover.
En route they unwittingly help a pair of lovers to elope, which lands them into trouble.
Solomon has carved his characters with immense love. It’s not just the lead players — even the fringe actors have a definite identity, be it Socrates, (newcomer Vincent) or the bride’s father and her uncle (Tamil journalist Yogi Devaraj).
Amidst a high-tension drama at the zamindar’s home with the bride’s disappearance, Solomon tickles your funny bone too.
Hilarious moments abound with an old woman’s speechlessness and a batty senior citizen who struts around in his new attire. More funny moments lie in store during the second half of the story when a group of college girls decide to help Kayal in her search for her beloved.
Yes, there is talk of violence and inter-caste marriage and there is anger, but it is not brutal nor heard in expletives.
With new actors playing the lead roles, Solomon’s story is believable. Chandran as Aaron rocks as he goes through a gamut of emotions. As you follow Anandhi to Kanyakumari, your heart beats fast with one question: When will she unite with Aaron? But then a tsunami strikes.
So will Kayal go the Mynaa and Kumki way, Solomon’s earlier two films?
Go watch Kayal for a visual extravaganza as cameraman Vetrivel Mahendran reveals nature in her finery, and savour Imman’s melodious compositions.
