As a Tamil, as someone who writes regularly on cinema, I’m asking Bollywood, on humanitarian grounds at least, to stop making movies about us. The few who know me well enough are aware I can happily digest huge helpings of cringe-content, but Meenakshi Sundareshwar has me struggling to keep my lunch and temper down. It’s only been 9 minutes into the movie when I write these lines. Madurai has seen few worse insults than this hapless film. Also, vazhakkai bajji is made with raw plantains. It is quite popular all over Tamil Nadu, not specific to Madurai. It is a savoury dish. However, the dessert served to the potential groom’s family with an extended comic sequence thrown in? It’s called pazham pori. It happens to be from the neighbouring state of Kerala, but that’s okay, we don’t expect most north Indians to even be able to name all five states in the south. Correctly identifying each state on a map or more complicated tasks like knowing the cuisines of individual states, is beyond Bollywood, I understand.
By the way, it’s pronounced Meen-aak-shee here, oh filmmaker (Vivek Soni) supposedly so fascinated by Madurai’s famous temple that he’s named his female lead after the same. No Tamil and certainly no one in Madurai says “Min-akshi.”
The film, once the wedding is fixed, intensifies its mission to strip away the actual culture of the state for a Brahminical imagination of Tamils. Even the adaptation of the Chetan Baghat novel Two States would at this point be ruing its missed opportunities at cultural misrepresentation.
Time stamp 47.09: In the Silapathikaram story, all of Madurai is said to have burned. Right now, my stomach is burning on behalf of the city that half my relatives call home.
What is this Brahminical, vegetarian version of the city that seems to have been filmed mainly inside Dakshinachitra outside of Chennai city limits instead of Madurai? Where is the real Madurai – the land of seeraga samba biriyani, brotta, varieties of meat dishes? I’m strongly reminded at this point of Suresh Raina’s reply to the question, “How do you like Tamil Nadu?”The famed cricketer said, “I like it a lot because I’m also Brahmin,” about a state where the Brahmin population is barely 2% and historic movements have taken place to break their hegemony.
Again and again, we see that a non-meat eating, agraharmesque version of Tamil Nadu is all that has registered in the collective north Indian memory.
That excruciating sequence of “Min-akshi” and another character telling each other they don’t eat meat before secretly ordering kari dosai (nobody in the scene seems sure how to even pronounce it) is really, really not representative of most Madurai folks, I assure you. At 58.16, I’m questioning my career choice itself. My job is the only reason I’ve made it this far into the movie without cancelling my Netflix account or seriously considering an early afternoon drink to help erase the memory of the last one hour. Friendly advice: Googling “how to make a long distance relationship work”, even if you are in the IT industry, is perhaps not the ideal way to keep the romance alive. Have you considered, I don’t know, just getting to understand your partner(s)?
I made it to 02.09.20. This itself is an accomplishment. The flood of relief that the film is almost over has however stuttered to a halt. Inside Madurai’s Sri Meenakshi (groan) Theatre is playing the AR Murugadoss-directed Rajini film Darbar (2020). One filmmaker and writer from Tamil Nadu commented on their social media after watching Meenakshi Sundareshwar that the protagonist’s delight watching Darbar defies believability. Darbar was so bad that even Rajini fans had trouble stomaching it.
Unlike “Min-akshi”, I’m a true Superstar fan and the only reason I hadn’t run away during the interval break of Darbar was because I was too shell-shocked by how awful the film was to even move from my seat. Clearly, Vivek Soni has zero idea of Rajini’s hits and misses among his fan base.
I doubt this aspect mattered to him, since the stereotype of Rajini-loving Tamils was all he was aiming for.