Autorsha 2018

In Kannur, Anitha makes her living as an auto driver, ferrying passengers through the busy streets and everyday corners of the city. Her day-to-day life around the auto stand is shown with a grounded, respectful pace, and her family background or home life remains out of view, keeping a quiet air of mystery about her past.

During a wedding, Anitha meets her school classmate, and the spark of a familiar connection begins to rekindle. A flashback later reveals that she is actually Haseena, a woman who grew up in a loving family. She falls in love with an auto driver named Manoj and longs to marry him. Her father resists the match, so the couple elopes to Mangalore, taking the gold he had saved for her future. In the new city, they rent a house and plan to sell the gold to start a bakery business.

Trouble follows quickly. On their return, they discover their house has been robbed, and the police offer little help. In a few days, the man deserts her, and neighbors reveal that he has cheated many women and orchestrated the robbery as part of his pattern.

Disheartened, she returns home to Kannur, where her sister is soon to be married. Fearing another scandal, the entire family dies by their own hands. The woman, unable to continue, contemplates suicide but holds back. She takes on a series of small jobs, saves enough money to buy an auto rickshaw, and rebrands herself as Anitha, starting a new chapter in life with renewed independence.

One day, at a party hosted by an acquaintance named Shyam, Anitha offers to cater the event. There she discovers that the man is a guest who also works as Shyam’s business partner. Through a photograph in Shyam’s office and a prior sighting at a toll booth, she realizes the man’s continued involvement with Shyam. She also learns that Manoj married a Kannur-native woman six years earlier and has a school-going son named Achu who has ridden in Anitha’s auto many times. Anitha confronts the man when they are alone, but he dismissively claims she is just a woman and that his current marriage is a sham, vowing to continue his pattern without fear of consequences.

In a final, calculating act, she secretly poisons his alcoholic drink, the one he was about to drink. He dies the next day. The story closes with Anitha, content, driving off in her auto rickshaw and singing to herself.