This post first appeared on Totally Filmi on August 31, 2020.
“Dreams that one has at dawn come true, right?” asks Ashokan (Jacob Gregory) of his friend Ratheesh (Krishna Sankar), who wakes him out of his latest reverie, in which he is the married father of twins. Ashokan is surrounded by people living out his dream, from newly-married colleague Manoharan and his wife, who bring sweets to the government office where Ashokan is a clerk; to Ratheesh, about to be married to a local schoolteacher; to Shaiju (Shine Tom Chacko), who has a wife and child (although they are estranged for much of the film). Ashokan’s dream is simple: to get married, to have children, probably growing old in his government job in his village where, as the film’s opening narration tells us, love is in the air, as exemplified by the almost mythical story of Unnimaya (Anu Sithara), who attracted the attention of every man in the village, but who eventually eloped with the village postman. But for Ashokan, marriage seems elusive – he’s turned down (brutally) by the daughter of a family friend, who later tries to soften her words (she describes him as short and unattractive) by telling him she just didn’t want to have her marriage arranged because there was already someone else she liked – she assures Ashokan that there is someone out there for him.
And, indeed, it seems there *is* someone out there interested in Ashokan – Shyama (Anupama Parameswaran), who watches him from afar, and paints his portrait. When her sketchbook accidently ends up going out with the newspapers recycling, its contents eventually make their way to Ashokan’s friends, who arrange for the couple to meet. Shyama’s family doesn’t care for Ashokan, seeing him as a mere office clerk; they’d prefer a son-in-law with a good job in Dubai who would make more money. Shyama threatens to kill herself if she’s not allowed to marry Ashokan; her parents relent, and things look like they’re moving forward until they have the horoscopes examined, where it is revealed that Ashokan’s horoscope is problematic. His first marriage is destined to end in separation or possibly the death of his wife. As Ratheesh comments. Shyama was prepared to die to get the marriage to happen, but when faced with the possibility of actually dying, she ran away.
Ashokan visits another priest to get a second opinion on his ill-fated horoscope, where the assessment is re-affirmed. But Ashokan is given an “out” – if, say, he were to marry himself to a tree (and not just any tree, but a plantain tree), he would have the opportunity of ending that marriage, and then re-marrying an actual woman. Tree or proxy marriage was apparently widespread in India at one point – but the only real-life example I can think of is the possibly apocryphal story associated with Aishwarya Rai and her marriage to Abhishek Bachchan. In any event, the idea is to cut down the tree, symbolically ending the marriage, and removing any obstacles in the horoscope.
Ashokan, perhaps because he is growing more desperate, decides that this is the route he will take. The problem arises, of course, when what starts out as a ritual to simply remove the obstacle to marrying, becomes an obsession for Ashokan, as he takes the proxy marriage as seriously as he would real marriage, bringing sweets to work to celebrate it, caring for the plantain tree, and even caring for the twin offshoots of it that he considers his children – the twins of his earlier dreams. Ashokan’s friends, who are already planning his marriage to another woman, Indhu (another of the film’s charming cameos, this one that bookends the film, and which made me smile), begin to notice the change in him, as he becomes more obsessive about caring for the plantain, to the point of insisting he cannot get married because he already is married. Ratheesh is the one who decides to put a stop to what is increasingly seen as Ashokan’s madness, by taking him to a clinic so he can receive counselling. Ashokan becomes despondent, but if his dreams of marriage and twins are what led him to where he is, it’s his dreams that also allow him to escape from his obsession – in particular, he dreams of being a boy and being rescued from the local pond by his friend Arjun. As if it were a premonition, he gets a phone call from Arjun (Dulquer Salmaan in a cameo), who calls him to tell him he’s excited about Ashokan’s upcoming wedding to Indhu, and reminds him that his heart is so big that as a boy he thought he needed to rescue the moon from drowning (foreshadowing Ashokan’s “lunacy” – in the literal sense of being moonstruck). It’s this call that allows Ashokan to work through his obsession and eventually marry Indhu.
All this is not to say that I think Maniyarayile Ashokan is a perfect film. There are problems with it. For example, I questioned the decision to put two songs almost back to back at the beginning of the film. And although the story of Unnimaya allows for the running gag of all the village men who had been bashed by her father’s hiccup punch having the hiccups when they think of her, I do wonder if that could have served the story in a more meaningful way. I also question Ashokan’s need to have a “pretty” wife – so much so that he even needs to choose a pretty plantain plant for his proxy wedding, rejecting any that are too old, or too tall or too fat.
All that said, though, Maniyarayile Ashokan is like the semiya payasam that dots the film – served at a grandmother’s birthday, or when Ashokan’s newly married cousin Ajayan and his wife (Sunny Wayne in a cameo, along with his real-life wife Renjini Kunju) come to visit. It’s a simple dessert – usually made with milk, sugar, spices, and vermicelli noodles – but one that is served for celebrations. The same can be said of Maniyarayile Ashokan – it’s not fancy or ground-breaking, and it’s rooted in some simple, and perhaps at times dated ideas – but its simple ingredients mean that it’s what you want when you want to share a simple pleasure with people you’re close to mark a special occasion. Like Onam? Perhaps.