Pride Month special: Revisiting heartbreaking 'Thangam' from anthology 'Paava Kadhaigal'

Paava Kadhaigal (Sinful Tales), an anthology film, features four different stories by noted South Indian directors: Sudha Kongara, Vignesh Shivan, Gautham Vasudev Menon, and Vetrimaaran. It arrived on Netflix in December 2020 and is streaming in multiple languages. In honor of the ongoing Pride Month, we revisit the first short, Thangam, directed by Kongara and featuring a transperson as the protagonist.

Thangam follows Sathar, a transperson who has been shunned all his life by his family, neighbors, and even by people who called him his "friends." A female trapped in a male body, he is saving up for his sex reassignment surgery and hopes to marry his best friend Saravanan (who he calls Thangam, which means gold). Saravanan, however, loves Sathar's sister, breaking his heart.

The film opens with an animated opening sequence that shows a girl's journey from her birth to the point she becomes a mother—her life comes full circle. The intent here seems to attack the regulations constructed by society, which make your decisions for you even before you can learn to make sense of the word. It is this straitjacketing that eventually claims Sathar's life.

Kalidas Jayaram breathes life into the role of a transperson, accentuating the troubled, conflicted emotions that trans people are subjected to their entire lives. Despite no fault of their own, they are othered, scolded, and alienated with no remorse. His impeccable portrayal also reminded me of the book The Truth About Me: A Hijra Life Story, which captures the insurmountable challenge of trans people.

Kongara has sketched Sathar's character in a way that, despite the short length, he doesn't come across as half-baked; instead, he's well-rounded and curated with precision, with just the right nuances. For instance, Sathar always has kohl-rimmed eyes, walks with a certain gait, holds his bag in a peculiar way, and religiously chews paan so that his lips can get a feminine pink glow!

In addition to demonstrating the way trans people are forced to cremate their feelings, Thangam also digs its claws into the way religion, class, and gender intersect with each other, often leading to disastrous consequences. Sathar's parents want him to die because if he lives, nobody will marry his sisters, and Saravanan and Sathar's sister's union is rejected because they belong to different religions.

Thangam is the perfect example of a film that can contribute to social change, and its most remarkable aspect is how it's never loud and doesn't shove its message down our throats. It's effective without being blunt and nuanced, without being overly complex. It looks at the trans community through a compassionate, not insulting gaze, and paints its protagonist with bright shades of humanity.