Neelathamara 2009

Beena, Amala Paul, a program producer with NDTV 24x7, travels to her ancestral village for a television program and to introduce her fiancé Anand to her grandmother. Beena’s mother Ratnam, Samvrutha Sunil, arrives at the same time, and old tensions about Beena’s second marriage surface as Ratnam navigates family expectations.

There she meets Kunjimalu, Maala Parvathi, a middle-aged woman who was once a housemaid in her teenage days. The grandmother greets Kunjimalu with warmth, the same warmth that shaped her youth, and Ratnam grows affectionate toward the woman who had once shared Haridas’s attention. It’s hinted that Kunjimalu had an affair with Haridas, setting up the delicate web of past connections that threads through the present.

In the night, while Ratnam sorts through Haridas’s old books, she discovers photographs of Kunjimalu from his college days, a memento that pulls a memory thread taut and pulls the past back into focus. Haridas, [Kailash], a final-year law student, enters the scene and his presence brightens Kunjimalu’s world. The two begin a romance, and she believes Haridas truly loves her, a belief amplified when she hears the village myth of Neelathamara—a blue lotus that is said to bloom if a prayers are whispered near the temple pond after offering a small token.

As the relationship deepens, news arrives that Haridas is engaged to Ratnam, a revelation that shatters Kunjimalu’s stance and sense of belonging. She grapples with heartbreak while quietly continuing to serve Ratnam in the house that once seemed like a shared future. When Ratnam confronts Haridas about the affair, his casual reply pushes her toward anger, and she is ultimately told to leave the home. She leaves with Appukuttan, [Suresh Nair], whom she later marries, beginning a new chapter away from the life she had hoped for with Haridas.

Years pass and Haridas is no longer alive, leaving both women to navigate life with the wisdom of experience. The story ends on a quiet, resolute note as Kunjimalu contemplates the care she will provide for Haridas’s octogenarian mother, a testament to endurance, memory, and the enduring ties that connect generations.