Visaranai: A Harsh Truth or Societal Error

Since the pandemic of Covid-19 has created an equilibrium in the society regarding its spread among different social classes, it is high time to write about ‘Visaranai- translation is interrogation’, a movie that jolted me for a long time. The movie directed by revenge saga boss Vetrimaran kept me at a loss for quite a long due to its harsh treatment on human Psyche.

The movie which was Indian submission to the Oscar in 2016 is deeply rooted in the class struggle incepted in the sub-continent by the Aryans more than 2000 years ago. How the formation of ethics and law is different for different stakeholders in society is shown with nuanced sublimity.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) passed in 1948 provided equal rights to all people but still, people are dying by Greek or Italian coastguards in the Mediterranean. So, from Aryans to the so-called elites of the 21st Century, the treatment of people in the society is still stratified. That’s where Vetrimaran showed his holocaust of shame in a very beautiful way.

The story of La Casa De Papel we want, and we receive the story of Visaranai. We deserve ‘Rio’ and we receive ‘Pandi’. There are 36.8 trillion dollars are now circulating across the world and four migrant workers from ‘Tamil Nadu’ are being tortured mercilessly by Police (partisans) while interrogating a trivial thievery. So, this class struggle rooted in the producer-labor dichotomy will create such bitter truth like ‘Visranai’ in the hand of a mastermind like Vetrimaran.

Visaranai is a story of four Tamil migrant workers named Pandi, Murugan, Afzal, and Kumar. They are friends working on daily basis in Guntur district of Andhra Prades. Their life took a downward turn when they are detained by the local police for a crime they did not commit. After they are thrown into a scenario where they were mercilessly tortured to make them confess the crime.

The Kafkaesque situation cannot be elaborated in words. Every scene when the four workers were being tortured created a question in my subconscious mind and that is what are the basic tenets of calling Homo Sapiens as humans. The authoritarian force tried its level best to make four vulnerable ‘low-class’ people confess the crime.

 All went in vain when they were produced before the court and denied committing any crime. Amid this altercation, a Tamilian police officer named Muthuvel told the court that the Andhra Police force fabricated the case and four migrant workers are innocent.

On the other hand, Muthuvel is also investigating a horrendous money embezzlement case where top government officials are also involved. He kidnapped an influential auditor named K.K and make him captive in a newly built police station. Muthuvel brought the four migrant workers in that very Police station and tell them to clean (renovate where necessary) the station and they will be released after.

Suddenly it is known that DCP is the mastermind behind the kidnapping of KK and killed KK during the interrogation. To Cover up, they make a fabricated story that KK committed suicide. The DCP fear the four workers eavesdrop their plan and ordered Muthuvel to encounter them. Muthuvel denied and along with Muthuvel, the DCP and other policemen killed all the migrant workers and falsified a case against them.

So, this is the story of the movie in a nutshell. After connecting the story with my above-mentioned argument, it seems the people with different social orders have different treatments in our society. The four migrant workers and the DCP belong to two different worlds where the conscience, ethics, cognition, economy formed in different ways.

It seems the industrial revolution has expanded its labor-producer relationship to different social classes. Movies like Visaranai still showcasing such holocaust to us so forth on.