By Kavitha Shanmugam
Interestingly, after her miraculous escape, the police and Neha, with her supportive parents by her side, arrive at her husband’s house with India’s by-now familiar symbol of destruction – the bulldozer.
The scene has an almost absurd touch to it, as a crowd chanting “Har Har Shambho” walks alongside the bulldozer, which appears to have a character and a life of its own. Neha watches as the bulldozer’s claws rip through the house. In that destruction lies her revenge. The audience, too, probably feels a sense of satisfaction as though justice has been delivered.
Rape as a tool in Part 1
In the first version of the series, The Kerala Storytoo, the principal character, Shalini Unnikrishnan, an innocent Keralite nursing student, is brainwashed, converted to Islam and recruited into the Islamic State militant group. She suffers a similar harsh fate. She is first raped by a man who initially portrays himself as her saviour after she becomes pregnant by her Muslim boyfriend who abandons her. He brings her to Syria, promising to take care of her, but shows his true face by raping her despite her being heavily pregnant. “I don’t care what happens to the baby since it is not mine,” he says.
Later, she is raped by terrorists at the Iran-Afghan border after her baby is cruelly snatched from her. These scenes are shot crudely, leaving no doubt in the audience’s mind regarding the sheer horror heaped on her. Subsequently, she never finds her baby.
The warning is dire in both films: this is the outcome when Hindu girls stray from the fold. Unnikrishnan’s Hindu friend at her nursing college, too, is dealt a cruel hand by a Muslim man introduced to her by their Muslim roommate. He spikes her drink and he and his friends take turns to rape her. Meanwhile, another girl is threatened by her Muslim boyfriend that he will release her naked photographs on the internet.
The Kerala Story 2 goes beyond
The Kerala Story 2 Goes Beyond tracks the lives of three girls who fall in love with Muslim men and the terrible things that happen to them.
This story was originally published in thefederal.com. Read the full story here.
