‘Kandukondain Kandukondain’ at 25: An enduring charmer about losing and finding love and happiness

Two sisters: one reserved and fatalistic, the other feisty and impulsive. They lose their ancestral house, social status, romantic partners. Through courage and graceful compromise, they rediscover love and happiness. Of the many adaptations of Jane Austen’s 1811 novel Sense and Sensibility, Rajiv Menon’s Tamil-language Kandukondain Kandukondain (I Have Found It) is one of the most memorable.

Released 25 years ago, the beautifully performed drama balances ardour with heartbreak, poignancy with humour, wisdom with lightness. AR Rahman’s outstanding songs provide the necessary punctuation to the narrative, with Vairamuthu’s lyrics capturing the ebbs and flows of passion.

The movie follows the journeys of software programmer Somwya (Tabu) and singer Meenakshi (Aishwarya Rai). Bad timing and misunderstandings estrange Somwya from Manohar (Ajith). Meenakshi falls for the slippery Srikanth (Abbas), ignoring the better man Bala (Mammootty). When the siblings lose their inheritance, they move to Chennai with their mother (Srividya) and youngest sister (Shamili), where they reinvent themselves and find what they had been looking for.

Shot by Ravi K Chandran, with dialogue by the legendary writer Sujatha, Kandukondain Kandukondain smoothly transposes nineteenth-century England to millennial Tamil Nadu. The plot is driven by the actions and decisions of its heroines – both of whom are working women – which was rare in 2000 and unusual even now.

A reputed cinematographer,…

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