Bison Kaalamaadan (Tamil)
What does it cost for a Dalit man from one of Tamil Nadu’s southern districts to represent India in the Asian Games? Bison Kaalamadaan tells that story.
The film opens at the 1994 Asian Games, where the India-Pakistan kabaddi match is drawn due to a referee error. A rematch is awaited. Kittan (Dhruv Vikram), who was benched during the first match, may now get to play. With this introduction, director Mari Selvaraj whisks us a couple of years back to Thoothukudi district.
Here, caste supremacy, old feuds, and petty family squabbles keep Kittan from even entering the kabaddi grounds. Until, in the trend of many sports films, a mentor appears serendipitously to send Kittan chasing after his dreams.
Like all his previous works, Mari places Bison in the deeply casteist rural south of Tamil Nadu. While Karnan (2021), set in a similar time period, referred to the Kodiyankulam caste violence, netizens speculate if Bison draws parallels to the feud between Dalit leader Pasupathi Pandian and Subash Pannaiyar and Venkatesh Pannaiyar, the founder of a Nadar (Other Backwards Class) outfit.
The feud began in the early 1990s. Subash’s father was allegedly killed in retaliation for the caste abuse of Dalit daily wage earners on his lands. Pandian was among the prime accused. As violence escalated, Venkatesh was shot dead by police in an extrajudicial killing in 2003. Pandian was murdered in 2012, and several retaliatory killings have reportedly occurred since then.
Similar spiralling violence surrounds Kittan in Bison. Ameer plays Pandiaraja, a local Dalit hero who questions caste injustices. He is locked in a feud with a dominant caste landlord, Kandasamy (Lal). The feud bleeds into Kittan’s everyday life. Men from Kandasamy’s community repeatedly place hurdles in Kittan’s path, always reducing him to his caste identity when all he cares about is kabaddi.
Dhruv brings to the screen a young man with a singular dedication to his game. Each time Kittan breaks down from the violence done to him, whether it’s assault or exclusion despite his talents, Mari asks a poignant question through his hero: Who has the privilege to single-mindedly focus on their passion and who is forced to take on entrenched and imagined hierarchies of worth while fighting for their dreams?
Kittan doesn’t care about the sociopolitical storm whirling around him. He’s just honing his substantial skills in a sport he loves. And why shouldn’t he get to do only that? The confusion and world-weariness with which he looks to his father, Velusamy (Pasupathy), each time casteism drags him away from the kabaddi grounds, is the story of many Dalit sportspersons in India.
While Dhruv doesn’t dazzle in his role like Dhanush did in Karnan, he effuses Kittan with an earnestness and a vulnerability that easily wins our solidarity. Kittan may not want to get involved in the feud, but he’s deeply protective of his father.
Pasupathy, as Velusamy, offers a solid contrast to his sometimes hotheaded son. He is more cautious, often even fearful, in the same standoffs Kittan rushes into with fury.
But in other instances, it’s hard not to recall Pasupathy as Rangan Vathiyaar in director Pa Ranjith’s boxing film Sarpatta Parambarai (2021). Velusamy’s knowledge of and love for kabaddi is strikingly similar to Rangan Vathiyaar’s boxing expertise. Both men find themselves responsible for young men with exceptional talent and little patience to deal with an unjust world.
This isn’t to say that Mari is pigeonholing an actor of Pasupathy’s calibre. The similarities simply mirror the caste and class politics of sports. There is a moment when Velusamy recalls his kabaddi hero from his younger days. The player, a Dalit man, was murdered, and his luxurious moustache was brutally removed by his casteist killers. Velusamy’s anxieties represent the violent real-world reactions of supremacists to Dalit excellence. It highlights how Dalits in a caste society are damned both ways by dominant caste insecurities: If they excel, they are perceived as an affront. If they access social justice measures such as reservations, their merit is called into question.
And reminiscent of previous work, like Pariyerum Perumal (2018) and Karnan, Mari evokes the deeply personal relationship between marginalised communities and folk deities – vastly different from Brahmanical rituals. The eponymous kalaamadaan, whose shrine Velusamy presides over, and a black sacrificial goat recall the politics of faith and worship in the director’s earlier films. It’s within this backdrop that Kittan eventually claims the title of ‘Bison’.
But what the film falters with is its gender politics.
The women of Bison, like many of the director’s female characters, lack any presence beyond their relationship to the hero. Rajisha Vijayan, who also starred in Karnan, plays Kittan’s elder sister, Raji. Anupama Parameswaran as Rani is Kittan’s love interest and cousin. Raji is mostly around to argue with her father to let Kittan pursue kabaddi, and Rani has even less to do. The only striking element about Rani is that she is a little older than Kittan and is repeatedly shamed for her defiant interest in him.
Bison’s music is inseparable from the politics of the film. Unlike the exasperatingly generic and reel-ready tracks of most mainstream Kollywood fare, composer Nivas K Prasanna rises admirably to the task of adding layers to the storytelling itself through his music.
‘Rekka Rekka’ is a pivotal song. It speaks about fearlessness in the face of systemic injustice, which is also why the inclusion of Malayalam rapper Vedan in this song is jarring.
Meanwhile, the fact that Chinmayi Sripadaa has sung ‘Cheenikkallu’ is a statement against the shadow ban on her ever since she spoke out against lyricist Vairamuthu, who is accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women.
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the film. Neither TNM nor any of its reviewers have any sort of business relationship with the film’s producers or any other members of its cast and crew.