When the thieves broke into the nation house 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 gained in 2021 for certainly one of his movies.
With it was a quick word handwritten in Tamil, a regional language.
“Sir, please forgive us,” the word learn. “Your onerous work belongs to you alone.”
The housebreaking and partial return, with its small-town intrigue and big-hearted absurdity, might have figured within the sort 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 most adorable and artistic movies come from its various regional cinemas, in languages comparable to Tamil and Malayalam.
Mr. Manikandan broke by with a movie about two egg-stealing, slum-dwelling brothers with a single purpose — to do no matter it took to style pizza. The movie for which he gained 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 forms.
When an aged farmer refuses to surrender his plot of land, he’s falsely accused of against the law. 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 taking good care of 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 once I sleep?”
The thieves who got here for Mr. Manikandan’s nation house clearly had concepts about what to do with cash. But additionally a conscience, or possibly respect for artwork.
Sathish Kumar, a head constable who’s a part of the intelligence-gathering crew of the native police unit investigating, mentioned 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 foreign money, 40 grams of gold chains and silver ornaments with a complete weight of a couple of 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 mentioned.
Thefts are frequent within the city, although most have been solved with assist of CCTV footage, Mr. Kumar mentioned. 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 keeping with Mr. Kumar. Mr. Kumar and his crew 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.
