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Ramya (Nandita Swetha) walks into a police station on a stormy night to file a report on her missing husband. Police officer Rahman (Vijay Prakash) listens to her story as the flashback on her relationship with Karthik (Havish) plays on screen. Then, in the middle of her storytelling, Rahman cuts her off to tell her a different story instead, of another woman named Jenny (Anisha Ambrose), who has filed a similar report. Strangely, her husband’s name is Karthik too and has all the same characteristics of Ramya’s husband.

The story of the bilingual film “Seven”—available in both Tamil and Telugu—is already intriguing before there is another plot twist, added by Abhinaya (Aditi Arya), a visually impaired woman, who files a missing case for her husband, Karthik! Rahman is bewildered to say the least and lodges a manhunt for Karthik, suspecting him of fraud and polygamy.

When Karthik is found and locked up, he strangely refuses to recognize any of the three women, while they seem to have live witnesses who can verify their relationships. He is then visited in the police station by Priya (Tridha Choudhury), who too claims to be his wife. But when she sees him in his cell, she snatches a gun from a police personnel and shoots, but only manages to injure him.

Up to this point, Seven is an enigmatic film that could go in any direction and surprise the audience out of their wits. The uncertainty and suspense in the plot keep it thrilling and interesting to watch. But as the movie progresses, it loses the plot, and goes haywire into improbability and absurdity by the time it reaches its climax. By the time the end credits roll, the film loses all its interesting traits to become just another false promise.

Director Nizar Shafi and writer Ramesh Varma combine their skills in starting this exciting thriller. But there seems to be a big confusion in production by the interval and it feels like someone else took over their jobs in the latter half.

There’s a terrible backstory of a couple of decades ago to explain Karthik’s current situation, and a psychotic killer pops up in the form of Saraswathi (Regina Cassandra). The revelation of her character was supposed to be the turning point of the film but it is so badly written, she ends up with the magnanimity for a villain behind all the confusion and carnage shown in the movie.

Strangely, we never know why the film is called Seven. Looking at the poster again tells us that it’s probably because there are seven ‘important’ characters in the story. To be honest, some of them don’t even deserve the weightage the film’s name gives them.

But what Nizar Shafi misses in direction, he somewhat makes up in cinematography. The camera work is not exactly extraordinary but considering how the film spirals in intensity, the consistency in creating thrilling visuals does manage to be a saving grace. The soundtrack by Chaitan Bharadwaj is also ordinary, but still good in the film’s context.

Meanwhile, the actors, none a big name in the industry, are also average. We know India’s southern belt is not short of acting talents, but not when you use Seven as the reference.

To sum it up, Seven starts as an extraordinary endeavor before it comes crashing down on mediocre grounds. With 1h 57-min runtime, it is like one of those over-zealous marathon runners who take a quick sprint at the start and then lose steam and fail to make it even to the Top 10.

Who should watch it?

Seven fares poorly because of our high expectations of South Indian thrillers. Otherwise, for audience who effortlessly enjoy Hindi-dubbed South Indian movies on YouTube, ‘Seven’ on Netflix can be an entertainer for sure.

Rating: 2.5 stars

Genre: Suspense/Thriller

Cast: Havis, Vijay Prakash, Regina Cassandra

Director: Nizar Shafi

Run time: 1h 57mins

I’m a little in love with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s short story collection, ‘The Thing Around Her Neck’, and her book-length essay, ‘We Should All Be Feminists’. On the other hand, I haven’t really connected with her novels on that level. It’s great writing but there is usually something about the story that feels a little off. Unrestrained by word-count, Adichie has a tendency to get carried away and that makes her novels a bit unstructured. Or maybe it’s just bad editing.

But I still enjoyed ‘Purple Hibiscus’, Adichie’s debut novel and winner of the 2005 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize. It’s a coming of age story that unravels as a military regime comes to power in Nigeria. Set against the backdrop of a coup, it is as much about the struggles of a politically troubled Nigeria as it is about a seemingly normal Nigerian family governed by abuse and control.

Narrated in the first person by 15-year-old Kambili Achike, living in an affluent household with her brother, Jaja; her mother, Beatrice; and her father, Eugene, Purple Hibiscus will have you contemplating about life and your beliefs while reinforcing the fact that abuse is never acceptable and that it can’t ever be a sign of love.

To the world, Eugene is a good man. He is the publisher of the newspaper ‘Standard’ in Enugu, goes to mass regularly, and doesn’t hesitate to help others, often without taking any credit for it. But at home, it’s a different matter altogether. Kambili and Jaja live in constant fear of his beatings, which Eugene views as “lessons” on becoming more pious Catholics. Beatrice has had many miscarriages because of Eugene’s violent nature but she never stands up to him. Instead, she is always trying to please him, and she ends up at the hospital when she can’t do that.

But the family doesn’t know any other way of life and thinks whatever is happening is all for their benefit. Eugene’s actions are never met with any resistance. However, things change when Kambili and Jaja go to visit their aunt, Ifeoma, who is a university professor in Nsukka. Here, in a house way smaller than theirs, the siblings encounter a new way of life that allows them to speak, laugh, and not worry about being punished because of someone’s mood swings. For the first time, Kambili realizes that she is free to have opinions and ideas of her own.

Purple Hibiscus is a beautiful story of a girl blossoming and coming into her own, though the narrative is a tad slow at times. The story also heartbreaking and beautifully captures the tension between oppression and our innate desire to be free. The only problem I had with Purple Hibiscus is that there are many things happening but they all feel a bit underdeveloped. That’s perhaps why none of the characters stay with you when you are done. I would still recommend it to those in want of an introspective read, for it definitely gives you some food for thought.

Fiction

Purple Hibiscus

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Published: 2004

Publisher: 4th Estate

Language: English

Pages: 307, Paperback

“Choked: Paisa Bolta Hai” is literally a metaphor about the power of money to put a gag on someone’s life. Money troubles choke the best of people from every walk of life. Bearing the brunt of monetary pressure in the film is a lower-middle class family from Mumbai. At the same time, the whole of India is choked by the 2106 Indian banknote demonetization. If only metaphors and symbolisms could make a movie interesting, Anurag Kashyap’s “Choked” would have taken home the cake.

“Choked” was a great opportunity to document an event that is guaranteed to make it into history books. Featuring a lower-middle class family, its lower-middle class neighborhood, and a lower-middle class society, the film could have used them to showcase the chaos created by the sudden demonetization. But overemphasis on establishing characters strangles life out of the film.

Sarita (Saiyami Kher) and Sushant Pillai (Roshan Mathew) live with their pre-teen son Sameer (Parthvir Shukla) in a crowded Mumbai neighborhood. Sarita is a teller at a government bank while Sushant, a former musician, has given up music and is currently unemployed after switching between multiple jobs and failed attempts at different careers. For a family of three, survival on the meager salary of a bank teller is difficult in expensive Mumbai. Making things worse, the couple does not share a healthy relationship, as a past incident keeps coming between them.

The family struggles to live respectably on Sarita’s income when, one day, by sheer luck, she comes across plastic-wrapped bundles of bank notes in the clogged drain of her kitchen sink. Apparently the tenant above her flat is laundering money for a politician. The event is repeated again and again, as the money keeps flowing. Sarita’s conscience is getting corrupted by the day as well. 

Then, suddenly, everything and everyone is thrown into a frenzy when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announces that bank notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denominations would be invalid from the very next day. Sarita’s life is turned upside down as she starts being blackmailed by a goon, her husband starts doubting her, and work stress more than doubles for Sarita as people start piling in to have their notes exchanged.

To justify its name, panic and chaos should have been at the heart of Choked, but they are rare and thus the movie’s tempo is never raised. Director Kashyap spends much time establishing Sarita’s character. The pressure felt by the wife of an unemployed man who does not even help at home and is instead making things difficult for her is definitely strangling Sarita. Along with this, she also has to deal with bad memories from an incident that keeps gnawing on her mental health. But all this takes too much time to establish and by the time we see the bigger scheme of things, we start believing the film is about Sarita and everything else is sideshow.

This is probably one reason the film feels much longer than its 1hr 54mins runtime. And despite generous screen-time, the screenplay lags in the first half, and then whirlwinds into a climax. The film wastes too time creating symbolisms around Sarita. Many scenes with ominous music and quirky montages around Sarita never escalate into anything.

Kashyap delivers a film that is uncharacteristic of his passionate filmmaking. But the lead actors do benefit from time in front of camera. Roshan Matthew, who has already made is mark in Malayalam movies, now gets the attention of Bollywood. And Saiyami Kher, who suffered one of the biggest duds in 2016, starring in the fantasy “Mirzya” opposite Harshvardhan Kapoor, now benefits from all the added attention her character gets. Showing more maturity in her acting, Saiyami finally makes a mark in as an actor who could survive in the industry.

Ratings: 2.5 stars

Director: Anurag Kashyap

Actors: Saiyami Kher, Roshan Matthews

Genre: Drama

Run time: 1hr 54mins

Short stories might not be as popular as long novels, one of the arguments being that there’s not much room for character development and thus you are never very invested in them. But for me, stories don’t always need a clear beginning, middle, and an end. Sometimes it can be just a chapter in someone’s life or talk about a particularly difficult or humorous situation. And it’s quite fun to let these little nuggets occupy your mind, especially during stressful times like these. Here I recommend three of my favorite short story collections if you want to dip into this wonderful world.

‘Revenge’ by Yoko Ogawa

Revenge is more of a Japanese literary short novel, with its stories interconnecting in overt and covert ways that remind you of Haruki Murakami. I could read Revenge by Yoko Ogawa a hundred times over and still not be bored. The book was initially published in 1998 but its popularity soared after its English edition came out. Translated by Stephen Snyder, the 11 dark tales in Revenge are macabre at their best.

The writing is simple yet gripping and the stories are eerily good. There’s a story where a woman buys strawberry cake for her son on her birthday, but he’s been dead for years. In another, the neighbor of a struggling novelist discovers a carrot in the shape of a human hand before her ex-husband’s handless body turns up in the same garden. Then there’s a bag maker who designs intricate bags for a woman whose heart is outside her chest. Revenge is full of these odd characters that send a chill down your spine.

The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I love the way Adichie writes. There’s something very raw and real about the emotions of her characters. I really enjoyed ‘Purple Hibiscus’, which was longlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize, and ‘We Should All Be Feminists’ and ‘Americanah’. But it is her short story collection, ‘The Thing Around Your Neck’, that is my all-time Adichie favorite.

A collection of 12 short stories, The Thing Around Your Neck focuses mainly on the lives and experiences of Nigerian women caught up in political or religious violence. Only one story has a male narrator.

In ‘The American Embassy’, a woman applies for asylum but can’t bring herself to talk about her son’s murder during the visa process. In ‘Tomorrow Is Too Far’, a woman reveals the secrets behind her brother’s death. Then there’s ‘On Monday of Last Week’ where a university educated Nigerian woman is forced to work as a house help in America to make ends meet.

These brilliant stories of women coping with change, loneliness and longing, and learning to survive the odds, are about what binds us as friends, lovers, and families. They are also, in trademark Adichie style, heavy with social and political comments that make you think.

‘The Awakening and Other Stories’ by Kate Chopin

Kate Chopin was one of the very few 19^th century American writers whose work explored new and startling territory. The Awakening caused much outrage and then went out of print for decades when it was first published in 1899.

Edna Pontellier is on holiday with her husband and two young children when she is pursued by the charming and unmarried Robert Lebrun. It leads to an affair that has Edna wanting to break away from her passionless marriage.

The story about a woman defying societal norms is among the boldest and earliest works of feminist fiction and regarded as a proto-feminist masterpiece today. Laced with humor but ultimately heartbreaking, Chopin’s transformative stories that emphasize women’s roles in society were all ahead of their times, but raise vital questions and concerns even today.