Varane Avashyamund 2020

Neena Shobana is a divorced woman in Chennai trying to get hired as a French tutor and teaching classical dance, living with her daughter Nikhitha, aka Nikki Kalyani Priyadarshan. Her brother Manuel Lalu Alex also has a flat nearby, and their next‑door neighbors are Major Unnikrishnan Suresh Gopi, a retired Indian Army officer who keeps a brown doberman named Jimmy, and Bibeesh Dulquer Salmaan, who shares the space with his serial‑actress aunt Maami Meera Krishnan and his younger brother Kartik Naslen. The household atmosphere is lively, with a sense of shared space and small, everyday dramas that set the stage for what follows.

Nikki is actively searching for a groom through a matrimonial portal and is notoriously selective. She recalls once liking a guy named Aby Rahul Rajasekharan but never pursuing him after his mother joked about her looks. Her friends even sneakily message Aby from Nikki’s phone when she’s away, and the two begin to reconnect. Nikki also grows close to Aby’s mother, Dr. Sherly Urvashi, whose warmth and concern begin to blur the boundaries between family and romance. The tension between tradition, desire, and familial affection adds a quiet tension to Nikki’s quest for a perfect match, while her evolving bond with Aby’s mother hints at a broader sense of care that goes beyond marriage alone.

Major Unnikrishnan, meanwhile, grapples with anger management and starts seeing Dr. Bose Johny Antony to find balance. Neena also attends the same clinic for her dance instruction, and from these shared spaces a slow, mutual attraction begins to form between them. Their developing closeness becomes the subject of gossip among their flatmates, and the whispers reach Nikki as well. When Nikki confronts Neena about the situation, Neena does not deny it. The ensuing strain leads Nikki to break off her engagement with her fiancé, revealing a deeper ache: she misses his mother more than the fiancé himself, which adds a poignant layer to the reconciliation arc that follows.

Bibeesh’s own love life complicates matters further. He is in love with a colleague, but it turns out she has a boyfriend, forcing Bibeesh and his younger brother Kartik to temporarily move into Nikki’s home after their own flat is flooded. As Bibeesh and Nikki grow closer, a tender romance starts to take shape. A late-night quarrel between Bibeesh and Kartik is defused when Nikki intervenes and escorts Bibeesh to the terrace, where he finally opens up about his past. He recalls a difficult time in 11th grade when his younger brother was born and he faced mocking from friends because their mother was their class teacher. The memory deepens with the day his father died in an accident—an event Bibeesh describes as the worst day of his life. He recounts how his father forgot his helmet, how the ambulance arrived with his parents’ bodies instead of his father, and how Kartik had only a fracture after that Polio vaccination day in which their parents were involved. Bibeesh’s retelling is filled with vivid, lingering images—like the moment he almost believed his father might be inside the ambulance—yet it is the emotional aftertaste, the nausea from recalling it, that lingers. Nikki’s empathy grows as she understands the power and depth of maternal love, and this shared vulnerability brings them toward a genuine reconciliation. Amidst the emotional revelations, Major Unnikrishnan adds a light moment by joking that Neena bears a striking resemblance to Shobana, a wink that brings warmth to the film’s mood.

As the story moves toward its close, Bibeesh and Nikki plan a date, but their plans collide with a new disruption: Nikki’s ex‑fiancé, a dedicated traffic police officer, arrives unexpectedly and stirs tension during their outing. The film wraps with the two interwoven arcs of love and apology, memory and forgiveness, as the characters navigate the consequences of their choices and the enduring importance of family ties, while the everyday life of Chennai serves as a backdrop to their evolving relationships.