“The Exhibits” a beautiful, lyrical, poetic, moving docu-feature

Zinemya is bringing you ‘Kaazhchavasthukkal’ (Exhibits), a 59-minute docu-feature by Raj Nair, the great writer’s grandson, which tells the story of his ‘Ammoomma’ and ‘the realities of ageing, conflicts between the past and present, the depressing colour of loneliness, but, above all, the redeeming power of love and memory.’

Beautiful, lyrical, poetic, moving. That is the only way to describe this film by Raj Nair, grandson of the Indian writer, Thakazhy S. Pillai. The film is not explicitly about the late writer, but about his wife of 65 years, who lives a simple life in what used to be her residence but has now been made into a museum.

A good example of indirect being more powerful than direct. Because the writer’s presence is felt throughout. The sensuous views of the house. The fecund life surrounding it. The group of school girls who visit the museum on a field trip and have the rare pleasure of a meeting with the writer’s widow who, in a bizarre way, has herself become a living museum piece.

We also have the opportunity to hear about the life the writer and his wife lived, through a period of Indian, or more correctly, Kerala history that has seen drastic changes take place in the social fabric.

There is no voice-of-God narrator telling us about the period of history. Only the woman’s voice who has lived them, the voices of her friends and neighbors of many years.

Poignant flashbacks take us to the time a young girl broke with tradition and married a man introduced not by her uncle, as was expected, but by her brother. The man was to become one of the most noted writers in modern India. The girl now the 86-year-old woman we see going about her daily rituals, carrying with her all those memories.

If you’re the kind of person who is used to wolfing down your cheeseburger in three minutes, this is not the film for you. But if you’re one who prefers to let the finest delicacies melt in your mouth, then there is much to savor in this film. The beautifully choreographed moving shots of the widow going about her daily life evoke an emotion that necessarily takes more time than the Discovery Channel could ever afford.

The film documents the realities of aging, of past and current social issues and the colour of loneliness. Trying to (re)discover those milestones in the lives of Malayalee (people of Kerala) women, which made a sweet baby girl of the distant past just another grandmother, an exhibit of modernisation, one of the many silent victims of a much globalised face of Kerala increasingly being uprooted from its own tradition, ethos and milieux.

“Sankaramangalam” at Thakazhi in Allapuzha district, remains to be fulfilled even years after his death. The project to upgrade the Sankaramangalam house to a world-class museum was announced by the former Cultural Affairs Minister, Mr T.K. Ramakrishnan, two years after Thakazhi’s death. According to the master plan prepared by the State Government, the museum was to include an auditorium and halls where scenes from Thanazhi’s various novels would be enacted.

Following the announcement of the Minister, the Sankaramangalam house was acquired by the State Government on February 8, 2001.