‘Idli Kadai’: A recipe that is half-cooked

Director-actor Dhanush’s ‘Idli Kadai’ is an oddly tender protest. South cinema, after all, has long been an altar of audacity, serving up stories with all their jagged, glorious edges.

‘Idli’ carries the stillness of a house locked for summer vacation — when you return, everything feels familiar, yet somehow ‘emptier’. Fittingly, Dhanush tells us the film is inspired by real people he met on childhood visits to his ancestral village.

The story centres on Murugan (Dhanush), son of idli shop owner Sivanesan (Rajkiran), whose craft is religion. He wakes up at 3 am, ferments his batter with near-biblical devotion, and scoffs at machines that “help” but never make the idli quite right.

Years later, Murugan, a culinary graduate, moves to Chennai and then Bangkok. The once-innocent boy becomes a top chef at a swanky hotel run by his boss-turned-future-father-in-law, Vishnu Vardhan (Sathyaraj). He’s engaged to Vishnu’s daughter, Meera (Shalini Pandey), while her brother Ashwin (Arun Vijay) despises him for being their father’s new trophy son.

The script thrives when it kneads simple flour: quiet mornings in Sankarapuram, the steam of an idli pot doubling as incense for grief. But it loses flavour when it shifts to its Bangkok chapter. Murugan’s cliched rich-man montage answers the question nobody asked: what if ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ was set in Chor Bazaar? He is supposedly a culinary genius, but his bland buffet of instructions to underlings — “Make sure you don’t burn it”; “Come on, get it done”; and the philosophical “Apply the right amount, not less, not more” — seems half-baked.

Vishnu is capitalism incarnate (calls Murugan an asset, and quips casually, “Hum jaise bade bade log”); Meera is sweet to Murugan but casually cruel to the staff; and Ashwin is a vape-wielding brat, armed with the dead-mother-spoilt-child troupe for good measure.

The family’s sole purpose seems to be to remind us that sincerity is a small-town virtue. Yet, somewhere in the midst of over-fermented moralising, Dhanush still finds time for a heartbreaking core.

When Murugran returns home after his father’s demise, the film returns home too. Sivanesan’s death delivers a gut punch. Murugan walking past the shuttered shop; and his mother, Kasturi (Geeta Kailasam, devastatingly spectacular), waking up before dawn to call a man no longer there are ache distilled. As the pyre burns, an old woman rejoices that a cow has birthed a calf; the calf becomes a symbol of renewal, the circle of smoke and sustenance.

When Murugan decides to sell the shop and leave, a lone night walk, a singing sadhu, and an apparition redirect him. He stays, calling off the wedding, seeking to perfect the idli that no longer tastes like his father’s. The secret, of course, was never in the recipe.

A budding affection with Kayal (Nithya Menen) — the neighbour who tended to his parents in his absence — is immemorable. Her serf-like, homely character’s contrast with the ambitious, ‘modern’ Meera feels regressive, a reminder that regional cinema has a lot of learning to do.

By the end, ‘Idli Kadai’ is like Murugan’s many attempts at Sankarapuram’s beloved idli — the recipe’s right, but somewhere in the process, the film batter fermented too long, or too little.