: After getting estranged from his female companion in Baroda, artist Manu found himself in an emotional mess. To recover from that, he wanders along the fringes of the forest in Attappady and finds the location very soothing. In one of the lonely and desolate nights on the banks of a stream there, Manu meets a tribal woman, Cheely, who is a single mother.
They share their stories and find that they have already trodden similar paths in life. Estranged partners, solitude and indifference from society marked their lives.
Chelly tells him about Jyothi,who instilled a sense of empowerment and belonging in her. Childhood friends, Chelly and Jyothi aspired to become life partners. But Chelly’s marriage to someone else and Jyothi’s higher studies separated them for a while. Having escaped from an abusive marriage and a brief stint as a labourer in Coimbatore, Chelly returns home to Jyothi, who promises to marry her after a year.
With Manu and Chelly sharing each other’s agonies and joys, a new bonding develops. Chelly realises her growing dilemma. She cannot choose between Jyothi and Manu. She painfully longs for Jyothi not to turn up.
This is the plot of the film Velutha Rathrikal , an independent cinematic adaptation of the short story, White Nights by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
“It was in 1957, Italian filmmaker Luchino Visconti came out with a cinematic adaptation of the great literary work, which tells the tale of a man and woman suffering from loneliness. There were eight interpretations of the story since then and two of them were made in India by Manmohan Desai ( Chaliya , 1960) and Sanjay Leela Bansali ( Saavaria , 2007). I took the plot of tribal life in Attappady to approach its burning issues like infant mortality, malnutrition, land alienation and water issues apart from espousing the existing social and cultural backwardness of the aborigines there,” says artist-turned filmmaker Razi, who ventures into the world of feature films after several years in the field of documentary.
Apart from film stars Disney James, Smitha Ambu and Saritha Kukku, 12 tribals from Attappady are acting in the 128-minute film. For the first time, five traditional dance items of Irula tribals from Attappady are finding place in the cinema.
