Last updated on December 1, 2022
This post first appeared on Totally Filmi on January 1, 2021.
What a way to open the New Year than with a film about January remembrances? It’s the new year in Kodaikanal (in Tamil Nadu), and visitors arriving to the “Princess of the Hill Stations” are greeted upon arrival by Authorized Joseph (Jagathy Sreekumar) so called because he is one of the authorized guides of the region. But Joseph is perpetually drunk and incapable of securing a tour group (despite rhyming off the eighteen sites of the region visitors should see), so it falls to Rajan (Mohanlal), an unauthorized guide, to take visitors around. Rajan is an orphan who was raised in Kodaikanal by Father Fernandez (Prathapachandran), the priest who looks after the orphanage. Rajan is innocent and well-mannered, trying his best to make a living, though he’s constantly hassled by the local police inspector, Dinesh (Lalu Alex) for working without authorization.
Despite this, Rajan manages to pick up some work as a guide, and this is how he comes to make the acquaintance of Vishwanatha Menon (M.G. Soman), his wife Padmavathi (Jayabharathi) and their niece, Nimmy (Karthika). The Menons are looking to buy a house in the region, and while the deal is being worked out, they have Rajan show them around. Things are complicated by the arrival of Vinod (Suresh Gopi), the Menon’s son, who is supposed to marry Nimmy. Vinod drives around on his motorcycle like the privileged, wealthy man his is, despite having been raised by really lovely parents. He takes a fancy to Maina (Rohini), a local girl who sells flowers, and who, along with her father Ponnayyan (Karamana Janardanan Nair), consider Rajan part of their family.
There are also several pretty songs by Ouseppachan in the film, all sung by Yesudas.
Vinod is also upset that his fiancé goes touring around with Rajan on her own, and despite everyone’s objections that Rajan is an honourable man who would never cheat or harm them, he arranges to have Rajan charged with the theft of his mother’s ornaments. Rajan is released when the truth comes out, but he’s bereft at the thought that people will think he is a thief, and he distances himself from the Menons.
Vinod uses this as an opportunity to pursue Maina, who has no interest him, and his persistence ends up in a chase to Suicide Point, where Maina slips and falls to her death. Rajan decides it would be best if he left Kodaikanal, and Father Fernandez decides to send him to Dr. Jayadevan (K. P. A. C. Sunny), but not before he tells Rajan the story of how he came to be at the orphanage, and that his mother – named Padmavathi – is actually still alive (though his father, who was a pilot, died in a plane crash). Rajan opens the letter of introduction the priest gives him to give to Dr. Jayadevan, further revealing that there is a secret about Rajan that the priest has been keeping.
In the meantime, Vinod decides that the best way to deal with things is to have some local goondas toss Rajan off Suicide Point, but Nimmy overhears the conversation, and runs to Rajan’s house where she tells Ponnayyan what Vinod has planned. Padmavathi tells her husband that she has learned that Rajan is her son that she thought died at birth, and the Menons go to find Rajan. What they come upon is the end of a fight between Rajan and the goondas, and another fight between Vinod (who, realizing Rajan is his brother, rushes to try to help him, only to be stopped by Ponnayyan, who tries to kill him. Vinod manages to escape, rushes to Vinod, and as he does, Rajan sees Ponnayyan with his weapon ready to cut Vinod down. He pushes him out of the way, and is fatally injured in his place. The Menons manage to arrive just at this moment, and Rajan can die in his mother’s arms.
January Oru Orma is, perhaps, a sad way to start the new year, but writer Kaloor Dennis (who wrote many films for Joshiy) gives us a lovely little melodrama. I knew that Suicide Point would become important by the way it was dropped into the film, but I had no idea how key it would become to the fate of several characters. And the ending of the film completely surprised me – we are told Padmavathy is a heart patient, so I was bracing myself for Rajan to lose his mother just as he’s been reunited with her, and I was heartbroken when, in the end, he died in her arms. And Mohanlal was lovely as the sometimes shy, but always earnest guide trying to earn his living, a trait that endears him to the people he works for, but makes him vulnerable to a system that he isn’t formally part of. I was struck, too, because having seen Mohanlal try to play a somewhat similar innocent, naïve character in Big Brother, it was nice to see him at an age where that kind of role absolutely works for him (and yet makes me sad that he still tries to do that thirty years or so on). It’s also nice for me to discover a side to Joshiy that I hadn’t seen in films, because most of my experience is with his big, dramatic hero films (like Run Babby Run and Laila O Laila, both with Mohanlal, and both films that left me cold). Despite the sadness of its ending, January Oru Orma turned out to be a particularly good film to start the new year with after all.