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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 outdoors 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 observe handwritten in Tamil, a regional language.
“Sir, please forgive us,” the observe learn. “Your exhausting 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 outdoors 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 way of 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 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 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 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 workforce of the native police unit investigating, mentioned the home, within the city of Usilampatti, was damaged into through 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 sometimes, residing largely 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 aspect of the property 4 days after the housebreaking, he referred to 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.
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