Gulabi Talkies

Umasree is Gulabi, the effervescent, politically-naive mid-wife whose love for the cinema can only be matched by her innocence. Deserted by her husband, her dreams of every day begins and flourishes in the cinemas. After performing an emergency pregnancy she receives as gift a colour TV and a dish antenna.

She suddenly becomes the focal point of her small fishing village. Woman folk and children flock to her hut while their men discuss if it is good or bad. Even her husband returns to her for a while lured by her new acquisition. The TV plays serials, movies and cartoons. In one of these channels, the news keeps reporting the Kargil war and Gulabi is blissfully immune to any growing communal friction in the village.

The growing discontent over fishing waters and the religious tension feed off each other and Gulabi gets caught in the crossfire. For a significant latter part of this story, the "Gulabi Talkies" gets lost in the commotion.

Kasaravalli's film begins as a quiet, interesting story about dreams, but embraces more universal issues as religious tolerance and globalisation. As if a toy snatched from a child, the idyllic setting for a good story is shattered by the focus on these issues. In another storyteller's hands this might have strangled the film entirely. But Vaidehi, Kasaravalli and Gulabi herself lend a credibility to it and it lives OK.