There are many, many Indian movies about respecting your parents. Punnagai Desam
(2002) suggests that your parents need to respect you as well. The
movie teaches us that anyone can achieve their dreams, as long as they
have a friend willing to sacrifice everything in order to make that
happen.
Selvam (Hamsavardhan), Raja (Kunal), and Vijay (Dhamu) are all struggling with varying levels of parental scorn. Selvam, quite sensibly, wants to finish college and work for the government as a collector, but his wicked stepmother refuses to pay the college fees. Raja wants to be a singer, but his father intends to marry him off to an ugly girl so that he can collect a big dowry. Vijay plans to win the Guinness world record for mimicry; he’s a talented ventriloquist, but hasn’t given any thought at all to the idea of making a living, and his parents are sick of it. The final straw comes when the boys get into a scuffle with a group of local rowdies; the rowdies called them freeloaders, and as Raja explains, “Our parents can call us that, but no one else.” The rowdies’ parents come down to the police station to bail their children out. Our heroes’ parents refuse, and tell the police to just lock the boys up for a few years. After this treatment Raja and friends run away to the big city to pursue their dreams, and promptly fail.
Ganesh (Tharun) is an extremely nice young man from the same village. Years ago, his widowed mother signed everything over to her brother, who solemnly promised to take care of Ganesh, and to see him married to his own daughter Bomma when the kids come of age. After his mother’s death, Ganesh comes to the city to reunite with his uncle’s family, but when he arrives the family are not home so he is put up for the night by a kindly servant. He wakes up just in time to overhear his newly returned uncle declaring that he must be thrown out immediately, before he tries to marry anyone. Ganesh has no money, and is therefore not a suitable match for his daughter. (Of course, criticizing someone for having no money when you took it is a lot like stealing someone’s shoes and then laughing at their bare feet. Only, you know, much worse.)
Gamesh is very nice, so he leaves quietly rather than cause any trouble for the kindly servant. He also refuses to try and catch a glimpse of the adult Bomma, declaring that he’ll only see her face when he is a success. And here I must digress - since this is an Indian movie, we get the occasional song or fantasy sequence in which Ganesh imagines life with Bomma. Since he doesn’t know what the adult Bomma looks like, she is played in these scenes by the same child actress that played her in the earlier flashback. There’s nothing sexual or even particularly romantic about these scenes, but they do depict an adult happily married to a four year old, and to my jaded American eyes the effect is enormously creepy. I understand what the filmmakers were trying to do; they wanted to show Ganesh’s love for his childhood playmate while keeping the adult Bomma’s identity a mystery to him, but they could have accomplished the same thing by using an adult actress and keeping her face hidden, or by using the child Ganesh along with the child Bomma.
Ganesh plans to go straight back to the village, but before he leaves, an old family friend agrees to put him up in an apartment that he’d rented out to a trio of knuckleheads from the village. To Ganesh’s delight, the knuckleheads in question turn out to be his old friends Selvam, Vijay, and Raja. They all lie to one another about how well they’re doing, and the boys skip a couple of meals in order to feed Ganesh. When he finds out, he decides to repay their kindness by putting his own dreams and life completely on hold in order to remove the obstacles in their path.
Ganesh has a necklace, given to him by his mother on her deathbed, which he is under strict instructions to preserve until he can place it around Bomma’s neck. He sells it, and uses the money to pay the rent and Selvam’s college fees. he uses the rest of the money to start a business as a street food vendor. He claims that his rich uncle is supporting them, and when his deception is discovered, he convinces the others to keep taking the money. To their credit, they do at least recognize the sacrifice he’s making.
Selvam’s college friend Priya (Sneha) is smitten with Ganesh’s extreme niceness, but she realizes that he has put all his own desires on hold until after he has helped his friends achieve theirs, and she is willing to wait. She doesn’t know that he will only marry Bomma. Neither of them know that she is Bomma; you’d think she would have some memory of her childhood playmate Ganesh, or of having once had another name, but apparently not.
This is a movie with a very clear and deliberate message: parents don’t always know what’s best for their children, and, given proper support and encouragement, young people can make their own dreams come true. The problem with that is that Raja, Selvam, and Vijay don’t achieve their own dreams; at the end of the film the three have everything they ever wanted, and they owe it all to Ganesh. I’d be more impressed with the potential of the youth if they went out and got their own jobs.
Selvam (Hamsavardhan), Raja (Kunal), and Vijay (Dhamu) are all struggling with varying levels of parental scorn. Selvam, quite sensibly, wants to finish college and work for the government as a collector, but his wicked stepmother refuses to pay the college fees. Raja wants to be a singer, but his father intends to marry him off to an ugly girl so that he can collect a big dowry. Vijay plans to win the Guinness world record for mimicry; he’s a talented ventriloquist, but hasn’t given any thought at all to the idea of making a living, and his parents are sick of it. The final straw comes when the boys get into a scuffle with a group of local rowdies; the rowdies called them freeloaders, and as Raja explains, “Our parents can call us that, but no one else.” The rowdies’ parents come down to the police station to bail their children out. Our heroes’ parents refuse, and tell the police to just lock the boys up for a few years. After this treatment Raja and friends run away to the big city to pursue their dreams, and promptly fail.
Ganesh (Tharun) is an extremely nice young man from the same village. Years ago, his widowed mother signed everything over to her brother, who solemnly promised to take care of Ganesh, and to see him married to his own daughter Bomma when the kids come of age. After his mother’s death, Ganesh comes to the city to reunite with his uncle’s family, but when he arrives the family are not home so he is put up for the night by a kindly servant. He wakes up just in time to overhear his newly returned uncle declaring that he must be thrown out immediately, before he tries to marry anyone. Ganesh has no money, and is therefore not a suitable match for his daughter. (Of course, criticizing someone for having no money when you took it is a lot like stealing someone’s shoes and then laughing at their bare feet. Only, you know, much worse.)
Gamesh is very nice, so he leaves quietly rather than cause any trouble for the kindly servant. He also refuses to try and catch a glimpse of the adult Bomma, declaring that he’ll only see her face when he is a success. And here I must digress - since this is an Indian movie, we get the occasional song or fantasy sequence in which Ganesh imagines life with Bomma. Since he doesn’t know what the adult Bomma looks like, she is played in these scenes by the same child actress that played her in the earlier flashback. There’s nothing sexual or even particularly romantic about these scenes, but they do depict an adult happily married to a four year old, and to my jaded American eyes the effect is enormously creepy. I understand what the filmmakers were trying to do; they wanted to show Ganesh’s love for his childhood playmate while keeping the adult Bomma’s identity a mystery to him, but they could have accomplished the same thing by using an adult actress and keeping her face hidden, or by using the child Ganesh along with the child Bomma.
Ganesh plans to go straight back to the village, but before he leaves, an old family friend agrees to put him up in an apartment that he’d rented out to a trio of knuckleheads from the village. To Ganesh’s delight, the knuckleheads in question turn out to be his old friends Selvam, Vijay, and Raja. They all lie to one another about how well they’re doing, and the boys skip a couple of meals in order to feed Ganesh. When he finds out, he decides to repay their kindness by putting his own dreams and life completely on hold in order to remove the obstacles in their path.
Ganesh has a necklace, given to him by his mother on her deathbed, which he is under strict instructions to preserve until he can place it around Bomma’s neck. He sells it, and uses the money to pay the rent and Selvam’s college fees. he uses the rest of the money to start a business as a street food vendor. He claims that his rich uncle is supporting them, and when his deception is discovered, he convinces the others to keep taking the money. To their credit, they do at least recognize the sacrifice he’s making.
Selvam’s college friend Priya (Sneha) is smitten with Ganesh’s extreme niceness, but she realizes that he has put all his own desires on hold until after he has helped his friends achieve theirs, and she is willing to wait. She doesn’t know that he will only marry Bomma. Neither of them know that she is Bomma; you’d think she would have some memory of her childhood playmate Ganesh, or of having once had another name, but apparently not.
This is a movie with a very clear and deliberate message: parents don’t always know what’s best for their children, and, given proper support and encouragement, young people can make their own dreams come true. The problem with that is that Raja, Selvam, and Vijay don’t achieve their own dreams; at the end of the film the three have everything they ever wanted, and they owe it all to Ganesh. I’d be more impressed with the potential of the youth if they went out and got their own jobs.
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