Musings on latest Tamil movie Aruvi (English: mountain waterfall)

You go on trip to a remote place. You find a Waterfall so beautiful. It carries the water from different sources in its upstream and gushes out from the greatest heights and falls into the deepest depths majestically. The raga and tune of the music it makes fills our heart with joy. And you start wondering the beauty of God’s creation and the exquisiteness of nature. 

Now, you start to get this feeling to have a bath in it, play in its water and taste the water. But the water is not pure. Its muddy due to the rains. Now, will you be bothered more about its purity? If the water is not pure, still you accept its beauty. Will you not? Do you want the purity or beauty or you feel content enough with its mere existence? Aruvi answers this question perfectly in an uncompromising manner. The answer is quite hilarious but exorbitantly emotional to consume.

I was reading Sudha Murthy’s Three Thousand Stitches in which the first chapter describes the Devadasi women and their bounded life to insane rules of diluted Hindu temple tradition in Karnataka. To ignite a sense of acceptance of ‘out of the box’ people into our lives does not require great sacrifices. It just needs a sensible heart to at least recognise them that they are humans like us and are entitled to lead a neat, dignified and healthy life full of love and happiness.

We live in the world of stupid people. Aruvi decides to teach them a lesson and becomes rebellious. Last year’s Pink dealt with the significance of the meaning of just ‘NO’ by a woman in compromising circumstances and was an honest feminist film. On similar ideology, I thought Aruvi to be a feminist film, but it is not. Its plot resonates with both the genders across the age spectrum. It appeal is Universal and Eternal. She is cute, pretty, innocent, bold, devastated, unlucky, expelled, betrayed and lost.

Aruvi explores the kind of life we are living in. She hits your head too hard to sleep. She literally makes you look yourself in the mirror and asks you to judge what kind of person you see in the mirror? And it’s up to us to decide what kind of person we are.

Aruvi will make you cry and melts your heart to empathize with her. Every drop of the tear shed will get lost in this beautiful waterfall. When was the last time the general audience gave a thunderous applause to a movie after the end credits start rolling (other than film festivals)? I am not talking about the stupid whistles and noise made in commercial movies please..

Aruvi is not a seasonal waterfall, it is an eternal emotion which we desperately yearn to get drenched in its beauty.