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T.P. Balagopalan (Mohanlal) is a low level employee at Falcon Products. He earns 800 rupees a month, and uses that money to support his eldest sister, Radha (K.P.A.C. Lalitha) and her family \u2013 her husband, Chandrankutty (Kuthiravattam Pappu) who is a bus conductor and largely absent, as well as their two daughters. Also part of Balagopalan\u2019s household is his younger sister, Devi (Uma Bharani) and their grandmother (Adoor Bhavani), a religious woman who believes that prayers and offerings to the gods will help the family prosper, so much so that she is worried that they\u2019ve never had the chance to build a proper temple in their native place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Balagopalan has worked hard and saved up enough to buy some land, on which he dreams of building a house. His salary is barely enough to keep the household running (especially as his brother-in-law makes little, if any, contribution to the finances), so one day he asks permission to switch to his company\u2019s door-to-door sales department, feeling that the commissions he could potentially earn would go far to solve his money woes. It\u2019s at one of the households he visits that he meets Anitha (Shobana), who tells her parents not to buy the wallpaper he\u2019s selling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Balagopalan meets Anitha by chance once more, when he goes to the KSEB substation to pay the electricity bill \u2013 when he arrives, there\u2019s a long line, and he tries to convince the other people to let him cut in front so he\u2019s not late for work, especially as his office is far away. Anitha \u2013 further back in the line \u2013 pipes up that she knows he works for Falcon Products, a few minutes walk away, and Balagopalan is forced to wait his turn in line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Balagopalan meets Anitha yet again, this time on the bus they both take to go to work, and without her knowing, he buys her ticket as well as his own.\u00a0 When she objects, he tells the other passengers that she\u2019s his wife and they had an argument that morning.\u00a0 Anitha, furious, gets off the bus \u2013 followed by Balagopalan.\u00a0 By this time Balagopalan is thoroughly smitten (I mean, who wouldn\u2019t be, because SHOBANA, here only sixteen but convincingly playing older as the teacher) with Anitha \u2013 who, it turns out, is a teacher at the English Medium school his nieces attend.\u00a0 And although Anitha bickers with Balgopalan, it\u2019s clear she\u2019s interested in him, too.\u00a0 When her father (Balan K. Nair) suffers a heart attack and ends up in hospital, it\u2019s to Balagopalan that Anitha turns to for emotional support, and although she does not want him to help her family financially (Anitha is unhappy that her father has been engaged in a lengthy lawsuit that has taken all the family\u2019s money, leaving them to rely on Anitha\u2019s salary), Balagopalan does whatever he can to help them, seeming to endear himself to her parents, who come to look on him as a son.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Everything seems to be going well for Balagopalan, despite his challenges and responsibilities.\u00a0 But before he even begins to construct his house, his world starts crumbling around him, brick by brick.\u00a0 Balagopalan loses his land after mortgaging it to help Anitha\u2019s father pay for another lawyer to argue his fraud case.\u00a0 Anitha\u2019s father finally wins the case and the settlement he\u2019s earned turns his family\u2019s fortunes.\u00a0 Now wealthy again, Anitha\u2019s father decides to arrange her marriage to Advocate Ramakrishnan (Sreenivasan, who also wrote the film).\u00a0 As for Balagopalan, Anitha\u2019s father returns the money he borrowed, and her mother (Sukumari) requests that he not come back to their house, in case neighbours will talk. \u00a0Worse still, Balagopalan loses his job, and with no income and no land, his sister and brother-in-law and their children move out.\u00a0 Devi is married to Balagopalan\u2019s friend, Narayankutty (Maniyanpilla Raju). Balagopalan visits Anitha\u2019s house one last time, gazing at her in the window from outside the gate, and in the end, tired of the constant slogging and worrying about how to make ends meet, he decides to move with his grandmother back to their village.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sreenivasan\u2019s writing (based on Sathyan Anthikkad\u2019s story) is charming and witty. He allows us to learn much about Balagopalan\u2019s life and his character in just a few dialogues in the film\u2019s opening, when Balagopalan wakes up, offers a prayer, and strikes up a conversation with his god about how his life is going. He has a lot of responsibilities, and he hopes the deity can allow Balagopalan win the lottery on the tickets he\u2019s bought. And when that<\/em> doesn\u2019t go as planned, he asks for help so that he will be able to make all the payments he will need to on his meagre salary. There\u2019s less of the sharp political or sociological commentary that dots other Anthikkad\/Sreenivasan collaborations, and yet, it\u2019s still there at times. Balagopalan has a degree (hence the “M.A.” in the film’s title), but it doesn’t help him getting a good, well-paying job. He resists joining the union being formed at the company, but loses his job because the union prevails. When Balagopalan tries to get a building loan for his property, he\u2019s refused, and is told it might work better if he knew a famous minister or politician to help him, or if he could come up with a bribe. If he were a member of a backward caste, there would be some kind of loan available to him, causing Balagopalan to retort, in a rare flash of annoyance, \u201cI can\u2019t change my caste now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it\u2019s Mohanlal who sets the tone right from the moment we meet his character: Balagopalan is upbeat and hopeful, doing his best to manage all his responsibilities, and spending his time looking after his piece of land and dreaming of the house he\u2019ll one day build on it. Mohanlal infuses him with charm and sincerity \u2013 it\u2019s no surprise he won the Kerala State Film Award for Best Actor for this role, and it\u2019s the kind of effortless portrayal of a common man that Mohanlal is just so good at. He\u2019s rarely discouraged, and even when his life hits rock bottom he makes a decision to just move on. He\u2019s not prepared, however, for the twist Anitha brings in the film\u2019s final moments. And yet, perhaps we were not actually surprised to see her descend from the bus after Balagopalan and his grandmother do. After all, Balagopalan commented earlier that he and Anitha are both members of the same club: working hard to support their families. Anitha is the \u201cunderstanding partner\u201d Balagopalan speaks about earlier in the film, the one who will, in the end, learn to adjust with him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" T.P. Balagopalan (Mohanlal) is a low level employee at Falcon Products. He earns 800 rupees a month, and uses that money to support his eldest sister, Radha (K.P.A.C. Lalitha) and her family \u2013 her husband, Chandrankutty (Kuthiravattam Pappu) who is a bus conductor and largely absent, as well as their…<\/p>\n