Arabikatha (An
Arabian Tale), directed by Laljose, is about
the anachronism that the local variety of communist
activism has become in the context of global economy.
The release of the film couldn't be at a more
opportune time, for the public in Kerala is agog
with heated and partisan discussions about two
rival groups within the ruling communist party,
one represented by the Chief Minister Achuthanandan
and the other by Party Secretary, Pinarayi Vijayan.
Even the names of the hero (Mukundan) and the
villain, his arch rival within the party (Karunan)
have been carefully chosen to rhyme with their
originals. All this of course has helped the film
tremendously from both sides thus adding to its
box office collections.
The film is centred around 'Cuba' Mukundan (Srinivasan),
a full-time communist party worker in Chemmannur
(literally 'the land of red soil'), a remote village
in Kerala. He is so called because of his dedication
to party work and because of a long family history
of activism.  His
father was also a party worker who has struggled
all his life for the party and the masses. But
in Mukundan's time, the 'movement' has now degenerated
into a 'party' with its eyes and hearts riveted
on power. He, however, is blissfully unaware of
all this and continues carrying out party orders
and living out its ideals. As time goes by and
his idealist politics gain popularity among the
masses, his local party-rival Karunan, who has
his eyes on party candidature in the next elections,
conspires with a local capitalist, to shunt Mukundan
out of the country. They trap Mukundan's father
in a case of embezzlement of public money, just
when he is admitted to the hospital in a critical
condition. Mukundan's father dies before he is
able to explain anything and the idealist Mukundan
readily takes the blame upon himself, agreeing
to settle the debt. Karunan, persuades the gullible
Mukundan to go to the Gulf to earn money to reclaim
his lost honour. Mukundan agrees to this. However,
the Gulf presents itself as a world totally alien
to him. He is at a loss and is forced to do various
manual jobs to survive. It is here that a Chinese
girl enters his life, bringing a ray of hope in
his otherwise humdrum existence. She is a hawker
selling pirated CDs of Malayalam films, and Mukundan
gradually begins to take a liking to her. But
his admiration is more for her country, for China
- the land of Communism and Mao Zedong, rather
than for her as a person. He wonders how she could
leave China and engage in such illegal activities!
Events take an ugly turn as Mukundan loses everything
- his job and his money. His enemies even manage
to implicate the Chinese girl. But he fights back
by labouring on the soil and thus realizing the
real value of labour. Eventually of course, all
the villains are exposed before the public, and
Mukundan is able to come back home.
The film is structured in three parts. The first
part deals with Mukundan's life and trials in
his idyllic village where he is immersed in his
politics. The second part begins when Mukundan
reaches gulf and deals with his encounters with
an alien 'capitalist' culture. The third part
is about his friends finding him again and the
final denouement where he is found and brought
back to Kerala.
Despite its many shortcomings, the film still
manages to engage the viewer as it deals with
some of the fundamental questions troubling the
malayalee mind, ones that we would rather avoid
than confront. They are questions relating to
the idea of a worker/labourer and the concept
of labour. Who for one is a labourer? What is
labour? These are questions that the film places
at the centre of the narrative. Blinded by 'classical'
notions about the proletariat, the communist party
has not been able to address the radical changes
this identity has undergone. As a result, the
party was often unable to address a 'citizen'
earlier and a 'consumer' now. Evidently, once
the movement turned into a party, it had no clue
as to the changing dimensions in the role of the
labourers, their relationship with various aspects
of labour, their desires, questions of identity
etc. Mukundan is confronted with these dillemas
once he is displaced from his 'natural' habitat
of local politics to the internationalised labour
economy of the Gulf. There his identity is that
of a proletariat for real toiling for global capital
whose sweat and toil is compensated by a few dirhams
that only multiples at the rate of exchange back
home. If his sexual desires are totally muted
at home ("there is no marital life for a
revolutionary party worker like me", he tells
his father), it flowers here at the sight of a
woman from his dreamland of revolution –
China. If Chinese communism was a faraway paradise
for the local communist worker in Kerala, the
reality of her life hits him hard as she hawks
pirated CDs to earn money to cure her brother
who was involved in anti-state activities. Mukundan's
agony is alleviated further by the manipulative
intervention of the interpreter-friend who uses
both of them.
 This
realisation about the abysmal rift between the
local dreams and global scenario, party politics
and ground reality, hazy ideals and real power,
life at home and abroad, working and talking about
it bring Mukundan back to the harsh reality of
life. He is found labouring in cognito on virgin
soil somewhere in the Gulf – where he is
stripped of all identities, citizenship, party
membership, family and society. But there, he
is also enjoying the all too real fruits of his
sweat and labour, producing something organic
for the first time in his life. This is a momentous
move from the narrow-local where everything is
defined and certain, to the expansive global,
where everything is constantly in a flux and topsy
turvy. But it is actually also a return to oneself.
Mukunda n even tells his admirer-follower Anwar
that he doesn't want to "return to a land
that doesn't honour labour . "
But unable to handle the complexities of issues
the Pandora Box has opened up, the film makes
a hasty retreat to a safe and more simplistic
end as all the forces of evil, personified by
Karunan and Kunjunni who stand for the the 'impure'
relationship between politics and business –
are exposed and destroyed. And the old order is
re-established – in the end, Mukundan is
back in Chemmannur, where nothing has changed
except the hero and the villain; him and his dethroned
rival.
Interestingly, though 'labour' – the bedrock
of the ideology he believed in - is realised in
the end by Mukundan, it is as something essentially
agrarian and physical; we find him contented and
happy in life after a few years of physical labour
in the farm. Obviously, the urban-technological
realm and the labour associated with it are not
‘Labour’ for him. He never manages
to find a foothold in the urban jungle, which
is portrayed as the natural habitat of the clever
and the cunning. As a result he turns out to be
a pre-industrial communist of the agrarian variety,
rather than an industrial proletariat. In that
sense the film is about local nostalgia vs. global
reality.
Dr C S Venkiteswaran, is a Kerala based
film critic who has won state and national awards
for film direction and film criticism. He is now
Director, School of Media Studies, Kochi, Kerala.
He writes regularly about film in various national
and international journals and handles a weekly
column 'Rumblestrip' in New Indian Express.
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