Ayali (2023) S01

Young Tamizhselvi dreams of becoming a doctor. But her village, Veerappannai, has fearsome age-old customs and traditions which inadvertently suppress women of the village. Will she be able to overcome them? We live in a world where even God, who is supposed to be all-good and all-powerful, is used by Man to dictate his terms and gain power. People who are on the lower rungs of the hierarchy — whether concerning caste, creed, religion, or gender — have to abide by Man and faith plays a vital role in ensuring that the oppressed stay in the dark about the bigger machine. It’s a narrative that is very relevant, and in ZEE5’s web series Ayali, writer-director Muthu Kumar explores how such socio-religious factors oppress women through a unique story.

The eight-episode series begins with an animated sequence that tells the fable of how the village of Veerapannai came to be. As per the legend, when a young girl from the village of Pannaiyur eloped with a man from a neighbouring village, the folk were subjected to the wrath of their deity, Ayali, leading to the entire village relocating to a new place in Pudukottai district that later came to be known as Veerapannai. In the new village, they built a temple for Ayali and decided that from thereon, all girls from the village would have to get married immediately after she attains puberty. Jump to 1990, and we see how this custom is used to oppress women. The kaalachaaram and kattupaadu now state that girls who attain puberty can neither enter the Ayali temple nor go to school. Both faith and education are stripped away from them and they are married away. Protecting this sanctimonious practice, controlling their women, and ensuring the purity of the caste are of utmost priority to the men of the village, who follow their local MLA (Singampuli) and his son (Lingaa, in a very promising role).

Thamizh (Abi Natchatra), a young ninth-grader who questions the lack of sense in these practices, is our protagonist. Thamizh desires to become a doctor, but fear grips her when she sees her classmates get married off one by one, only to suffer later. So when she attains puberty, she hatches a plan to keep her dreams alive — she hides it from literally everyone. Much of the initial episodes revolve around how Thamizh goes ahead with her plan and becomes the only girl child in the village to enter a tenth-grade classroom.