Aami

... Fit in. Oh
Belong, cried the categorizers. Don't sit
On walls or peep in through our lace-draped windows,
By Amy, or be Kamala. Or better
Still, be Madhavikutty. It is time to
Choose a name, a role.
... wrote Kamala Das in The Old Playhouse and Other Poems with an introduction by V.C. Harris.

And in The Old Playhouse, she weaves:....

There is
No more singing, no more a dance, my mind is an old
Playhouse with all its lights put out.

Kamaluddin Mohammed Majeed or Kamal searches for Aami in his more than satisfying film Aami with candour and colour. He says the film is not based on Ente Katha (My Story) of Kamala Das. Kamal would have read the book and also A Childhood in Malabar, a memoir as the film has glimpses of the memoir. Kamal, like many, is trying to learn the poet .. as a human, as a female, as a mother, as a convert to Islam and being always, always a Krishna lover, in a harsh society ever the same from early 1930s to 2018 and beyond. Is the Krishna in film Aami the Lord Byron the poet refers to in the memoir ... 'I carried around with me a picture as my constant companion a portrait of the poet Lord Byron... What if that poet, whose religion was different from ours, arrived in Calcutta and led me astray.' If she had lovers, so what? Have not wedded men desired more than their wives? Me has. Was Aami keen on sex or was the search for an interesting, a warm human?  If she exchanged religion, so what? Thats her business not of the public. She was uneasy with Hinduism and Islam as for all religions women are cooks and chefs... or better still male, birthing machines. Certainly, religions did not satisfy her. Today not many are prepared to accept Aami the poet, the human. For them her sex matters most and the smirks and giggles follow...Am not sure about Kamal as he searches for 150 minutes with camera in hand. He does it more than well... markers being the Neermathalam tree and the sarpa kavu with oil lamps in a Malabar village of 1930s... they do walk the film and when Aami in a wheel chair makes the last trip to her home after turning a Muslim, there are protests. She refuses to go away. A top shot of Aami in a wheel chair under the Neermathalam tree ... ah .. a verse in camera, a glimpse of a long ago caught and displayed for todays and tomorrws... is a Cadbury 5 Star.  Ammamma (maternal grandmother), dearest to Aami, remarks in the memoir: 'Let her grow up like that, not knowing fear.' Yes, Aami has no fear and Manju Warrier is a fairy act, her best she may admit in private. Close ups throw up the pinches and pleasures. Her mother a famous poet Nalapat Balamani Amma wrote on motherhood, never cuddled Aami, but I hugged my kids, wryly notes Aami. Age transitions, the laughs and grims, Manju Warrier, Rama and me enjoyed her. Yes, you have the intensity of Smita Patil and Shabna Azmi plus the subtlety of Deepti Naval. Kamal misses out on a star falling into a pond, the funness of Aami childhood, the memoir elaborates. The search is well reported but missing is the essential poesy in the poet as that defines her .... perhaps, Aami drowns the director Kamal. Someone like Ray or Adoor could have microscoped and binoculared the many messages, easily and simply. Film shuts down and the lights at Carnival with Aami lines ....wished I had been less of a poet, and more a woman  But will Malayalis accept her warmly, affectionately ..... this blogger knew her well for a few months in 1974, me called her Amme and her affection cushioned .... that Aami me missed in Aami.... Aami missed it her entire life ... Yes, it is a two humans film --- Manju Warrier and Kamal. Manju overwhelms. Thanks, Kamal.