TO WATCH OR NOT TO WATCH

Kothanodi was good! Why I say good is that here we have a story-teller, Bhaskar Hazarika, who has shown us that thoughts can be portrayed in a different way, not necessarily the way we want them. By we, I mean the listeners of the story. There was a time when Aita (Grandma) was telling us the stories from Lakhinath Bezbaruah's Burhi Aiyr Hadhu (Grandma's Tales) in a style we wished to hear them. Well, not anymore. Right now, we have a totally different genre of story-tellers who prefer to disrupt our thoughts and makes no qualms about it. Well, we love to go with the flow!
However, having said this, I would have preferred the film to have zero flaws, giving us no scope to discuss about the tiny loopholes the team over-looked. A film is never made by just one person, we all know that. So, the man or the men who should have a keen eye for details should concentrate only and only on those teeny-weeny bits, which a sharp audience can never overlook. For example, for the sake of continuity, the team could have used the same mekhela sador, which was initially shown by the step-mother to Tezeemola instead of the one sans the woven motifs, which Tezeemola carried home after it was gnawed by the rat.
And instead of Zerifa Wahid as the wicked step-mother, I would have preferred someone else. She has done a good job but somehow I would have liked someone who needn't have made great efforts to look and act cruel.
And Adil Hussain could have cut out all the accent for the sake of the film and pick up a local accent instead. Don't we know he has gone global? For an actor to really define his role for the audience, he/she has to come out of that halo of being someone else and be the character he is enacting. I mean, Adil Hussain could have done a better study of his character instead of putting forth an interestingly uninteresting act!
On the whole, a film worth watching, more so for the fact that it had a totally different flavour for movie-goers. Some people were critical about it and the cribbing is still on a high but hey, how critical are you when you watch a Harry Potter film or any of those Hollywood films based on folk-tales? Do you complain then that some of the scenes are not suitable for children? I will not point out just one movie in particular but are the children not watching a lot of cruelty, gore, et al in Hollywood movies everyday? And who is knocking the Censor Board down for that?
....And after all these years of reading Lakhinath Bezbaruah's stories in Assamese and English, we suddenly realise they have an element of cruelty and what have you in them? Why were there no protests since the time the stories were doing the rounds?
Well, we will probably have some answers soon in a debate on whether children should have been allowed to watch Kothanodi or not!

**Just an afterthought: The make-up artist of Kothanodi should have removed the endless number of rings from the fingers of the actor playing the Tawoi (soothsayer)!