Kaaka Muttai [Crow's egg] - 2014

‘I shall forever be this little girl with her face pressed against the fence wanting to be taken into the game ‘

I wrote this a few years ago, when reflecting on what aspect of my childhood I have forever retained into my adulthood. If I could have added spunk, a certain bohemian lawlessness that is so essential to childhood dosed with some healthy mix of dirt, humour, unquestioned freedom to roam the streets and realism ( as it was with mine), you can say I just relived a large slice of my own childhood through watching ‘Kaaka Muttai’ [The Crow’s egg].

Childhood at least to any slightly adventurous soul, who has grown up less on resources and high on resourcefulness is a period of perpetual inventiveness replete with undying optimism. If your childhood is largely a time where you had to deal with problems at your own level, with very minimal adult intervention or help (because adults are busy fighting their own battles in any case), then you take charge of your own dreams, desires and working your way towards them.

That is exactly what two boys growing up in the slums do. When a pizza shop opens up in their neighborhood, it becomes a dream and a drool to work towards. Busy adult lives surround the boys - a mother battling her way trying to free her husband from prison, an old grandmother who tries to feel useful around the place and various people who go about their lives amidst the squalor and cramped spaces. The two boys grow up amidst all this, being forced to drop out of school to help their mother run the home. They pick up coal blocks from the railway tracks that they sell at the local shop.

One word that springs to my mind if one sought to put a pin on to the film is spunk. It is real, raw and human with absolutely no trace of sentiment or judgement. Life is what it is and what you get to see is a slice of glorious childhood replete with longing, disappointment, laughter and piss. The film starts with a child pissing in the night and having to hide that fact, and you are caught up with the fear, the shame, and the utter vulnerability of what it is being a child, all over again. Come morning, and they are up and about and running off to explore another day and that is exactly what childhood is all about.

The film is about how they long to taste a pizza from the shop, the price of which is at an unreachable price for them at rupees 299/-. And even when they do work their way towards getting the money, they are turned away because they are not dressed right. They earn their way into buying the right clothes to wear but are still thrown out. They are the perpetual outsiders of the system. The invisible people on the fringe. They do not even have a name in the film. Just nicknames. Chinna Kaaka Muttai [ Small Crow’s egg] and Periya Kaaka Muttai [ Big Crow’s egg]. In fact, their house has no address. They live in Sudden Street.

This film is a social commentary. The lone child who plays with the helicopter looks on wistfully at the carefree boys eager for their friendship, the rich boys who long for roadside pani puri who complain to their father that he never gets them what they actually want - all these makes one wonder if we ever give our children what they long for or if we actually give them what we think we missed in our own childhood?

Most of our children are the boys and girls at the pizza shop. We are the ones arriving in the car while the others look on. How you watch this film or relate to it, will depend largely on how your own childhood has been.  How you have raised your child would largely depend on which child he or she relates most to - the boy in the pizza shop or the child looking longingly at it through the window?

A large part of the film is about a real divide, but it is the invisible divides that are so effortlessly articulated that impress. The fence that comes up and separates to keep the boys out of the construction or the fence that separates them from the boy in the apartment, the gate that blocks them at the Pizza shop – the divide is real, social and fantastic cinematic visualization. And, the boys understand life the way only children can. When they take one look at the City Centre in breathless awe, arriving there to buy new clothes, the younger boy comments ‘I am dead sure that they would never allow us in’. He is stating an absolute fact that he knows as truth very early in life.

The relationship that the boys share with the grandmother reminds one of Satyajit’s Ray’s – Pather Panchali. There is the ganging up of the boys with her against the mother, the secret smiles and the whispers and the promise of daily conspiracy. The scene where she tries to replicate the Pizza by making a dosa that looks like Pizza but fails to satisfy them, is exactly how it feels when one is longing for the real thing and nothing else will do.

The seamless weaving in of the arrival of the television sets through a government scheme, where the television arrives but the rice is delayed, where the picture is grainy as it is a stolen cable connection that they are viewing – all these lend a great authenticity to the narration and to the social commentary. The easy but everyday influence of films, film stars and the hero worship in Tamil Nadu is also sprinkled throughout the film. The fact that local bums trying to blackmail the pizza owners seem knowledgeable about CDs and smart phones reflect the complex times we live in amidst the divides.

The burgeoning maturity of the older boy, his sense of pride in not taking the pizza piece offered by the rich boy near the fence, his battle with his sense of ethics in not hitting the guys on the train to grab their mobiles is fascinating. His moment of truth into adulthood comes with his defeated acceptance about the futility of their desire for pizza when his grandmother dies. The flushing away of the dreams into the gutter is stark visual poetry. He literally grows up at this point. To give up is to grow up. He only retains his childhood again at the end with a return to innocence and truth.

Laced throughout the film are power and survival struggles, the manipulation and desires of people trying to hang on to a hard life in their own ways and their continuous conflicts with ethics. There is no moral judgment made at any point throughout the nuanced story telling. The mother fighting to save her family, the local bums trying to earn a quick buck, the Pizza owners trying to protect their interests, the local MLA, the media, the police, the people working in the Pizza shop – life is hard and real. The humour hard-hitting, scathing and yet matter of fact.

But what does a child care? If you could still float on a slimy dirty river, drink from a crow’s eggs and long for a Pizza?

And finally, childhood is also a reminder of truth. While an adult would fake an  emotion on realizing a dream, a child speaks the truth. When the children finally conclude that the dosa that their grandmother made was better than the Pizza they finally manage to taste, you grin. You know you are watching good stuff that you rarely come by.

If you want to experience a movie replete with humor, some absolute spunk and brilliant performances do not miss this one. The editing is brilliant in most places, the dialogues extremely witty and the cuts are sharp. The music blends. What you may find missing is some ambient sounds to the extent it should have. The scenes with the Pizza owners is a tad weak, but in spite of that, ‘Kaaka Muttai’ is a uncompromised film making, a celebration of glorious, riotous childhood and so do see the movie if you can. This is extremely good world cinema with a local flavour!

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Directed by	M. Manikandan
Produced by	Dhanush Vetrimaaran
Written by	Manikandan
Starring	Vignesh Ramesh Iyshwarya Rajesh
Music by	G. V. Prakash Kumar
Cinematography	Manikandan
Edited by	Kishore Te.
Production company	Wunderbar Films Grass Root Film Company
Distributed by	Fox Star Studios
Release dates	September 5, 2014 (Toronto International Film Festival)[1] June 5, 2015 (Worldwide)
Running time	109 minutes
Country	India
Language	Tamil with subtitles in all releases.