When the thieves broke into the nation dwelling of a famend movie director in southern India, taking gold, silver and money, they made a clear getaway. However days later, a small plastic bag appeared exterior the home’s gates, stitched shut with skinny sticks and containing one thing wrapped in a white handkerchief.
Inside was a medal for a prestigious nationwide award that the director, M. Manikandan, had received in 2021 for one among his movies.
With it was a quick word handwritten in Tamil, a regional language.
“Sir, please forgive us,” the word learn. “Your exhausting work belongs to you alone.”
The housebreaking and partial return, with its small-town intrigue and big-hearted absurdity, may have figured within the type of motion pictures Mr. Manikandan and different filmmakers in India’s south make.
Whereas Bollywood will get a lot consideration and recognition exterior the nation, a few of India’s loveliest and inventive movies come from its various regional cinemas, in languages reminiscent of Tamil and Malayalam.
Mr. Manikandan broke via with a movie about two egg-stealing, slum-dwelling brothers with a single aim — to do no matter it took to style pizza. The movie for which he received the purloined medal, “Kadaisi Vivasayi” or “The Final Farmer,” was a commentary on the difficulties of farming in India. However its surreal twists additionally laid naked the absurdities of the nation’s paperwork.
When an aged farmer refuses to surrender his plot of land, he’s falsely accused of a criminal offense. The courts acknowledge his innocence, however he should nonetheless stay behind bars for weeks for the bureaucratic course of to run its course, so a police officer is tasked with caring for his small plot.
“What’s going to I do with the cash?” the farmer says within the movie, rejecting any notions of giving up farming or promoting his land. “Use it as a pillow after I sleep?”
The thieves who got here for Mr. Manikandan’s nation dwelling clearly had concepts about what to do with cash. But additionally a conscience, or perhaps respect for artwork.
Sathish Kumar, a head constable who’s a part of the intelligence-gathering workforce of the native police unit investigating, stated the home, within the city of Usilampatti, was damaged into by way of the entrance door final week. Taken was about $1,200 in native forex, 40 grams of gold chains and silver ornaments with a complete weight of a few kilogram.
It’s a one-bedroom property, with an workplace and a backyard. Mr. Manikandan is there solely often, dwelling principally in Chennai, the state capital, about 300 miles away.
“A pug guards the place whereas servants come out and in to feed him and clear the place,” Mr. Kumar stated.
Thefts are frequent within the city, although most have been solved with assist of CCTV footage, Mr. Kumar stated. However within the housebreaking at Mr. Manikandan’s place, there have been no clues.
When the movie director’s supervisor discovered the plastic bag with the medal on the east facet of the property 4 days after the housebreaking, he known as the police without delay, in line with Mr. Kumar. Mr. Kumar and his workforce took the bag and the medal into police custody, hoping they lastly had a lead on the culprits. However the fingerprints collected have resulted in no matches.
