Pavithram, purity in love as a ritual

After a long, long time, I saw Pavithram again today. Just like the pavithram modiram (finger ring made of kusa grass worn during rituals in Kerala) is pure/purifying in nature, so is chetacha's love for his sister/daughter.

An ahead-of-time concept, wherein an old couple (played beautifully by Thilakan and Srividya) give birth to a daughter when they already have an elder son (Sreenivasan), a doctor, who is married, and a younger son (Mohanlal) who is of marriageable age. Sreenivasan has been married for sometime now and does not have kids yet. And his wife does not get along well with his family; being henpecked, he also lets things be.

Now, the mother dies during child birth and the father leaves the family out of frustration and guilt. This leaves only Mohanlal to look after his infant sister! He sacrifices his love and his career to look after her. In a way, he becomes almost obsessed with her. 

There are brilliant scenes in the movie where Chetacha (loosely translated to bro-father, which is what she calls him)... plays a dual role of being both a father and an elder brother to his sister! In some scenes, he reacts as a father first and then as a brother... And then, there are some more... 

His over-protective love and concern for his sister becomes his all-consuming love... Ever since she was born, she was the center of his existence... But he forgot that with time, even love should change its form and appearance. That love needs to transform into freedom. She moves to the city for studies and that brings new possibilities and life choices in her life. Which he does not approve of as a bro-father... To add to that, he gets angry very quickly due to lot of factors... His sacrifices, his old age, his unmarried life...

The movie shows us a kind of love, which is becoming rarer nowadays. Most people don't want to be loved like this anymore. This is an old-school movie for old-school romantics like me. And it belongs to that elite club of classic Malayalam movies made in the late 80s and throughout the 90s.

After watching Pavithram, I long for a daughter who would call me chetacha! :-)