Akam

Shalini Usha Nair : 2011

Srinivasan is a young and talented architect with a good job and a lovely girlfriend, Tara. But following a car accident in which Srini is seriously injured and scarred, Tara leaves him, and with his life shattered along with his confidence, Srini withdraws into a shell. Then he meets Ragini who is willing to accept him in spite of his physical disfigurement. They marry and spend a brief period of shared happiness, but after a while, doubts and confusion begin to creep into Srini's mind about her true identity and he is left with the suspicion that his beautiful wife is a yakshi. Examining the psyche of a man who is torn between bourgeois happiness, physical and mental pain and a rising delusional phobia, Shalini Usha Nair's first feature is a contemporary retelling of the 1967 psycho-thriller novel Yakshi by Malayattoor Ramakrishnan. Though embedded in the Malayalee psyche and firmly rooted in the culture of Kerala, the story is a glimpse into the universal phenomenon of the demonisation of female sexuality that is found in the myths of cultures around the world.