Ayali - Narrates a sensitive tale in the most mature way. Compelling and empowering!

Story about: In a village highly superstitious, a deity is worshipped who only allows girls who haven’t attained puberty in her temple. Everybody else including men are not supposed to cross her boundary. A haunting folklore advices these people to marry off their daughters the very year they hit puberty as a measure to conserve their culture. A girl rises in such a landscape and tries to kill the stories woven by men to keep women under them always.

Ayali is all about an aspiring young girl named Tamil Selvi (Abi Nakshatra) who struggles to reform the patriarchy and misogyny in her village Veerapannai. Set in 1990, women in the village are forced to discontinue school education and marry off to someone as soon as they attain puberty. People practice these toxic customs due to superstitious folklore about their deity, Ayali. No female child in Veerapannai has completed SSLC because of this tradition and no male child has passed the 10th board exams. The protagonist, Tamil Selvi, fights against ancient beliefs and practices by hiding the truth about her puberty to achieve her goal of becoming a doctor. The rest of the story is about whether Tamil won in her dream and if the village was freed from oppression.

The best thing about Ayali is how the makers handled sensitive social issues with the utmost maturity. It is not an easy thing to do. More importantly, the show wasn't preachy and turned out to be great edutainment.

It is a very simple and straightforward story. The protagonist Thamizhselvi wants to pursue her studies. But as per the traditions of her village, any girl who attains puberty should not study further and has to be married off at the earliest. How Thamizhselvi overcomes the odds and tries to infuse some sanity in those around her is Ayali in a nutshell. Writer and director Muthukumar, spaces out things quite well. Each episode runs around 30 minutes, and this really works. It is neither too long nor too short. The initial episodes that set up the conflicts and introduce the characters work a lot better in comparison to the closure that feels rushed and simplistic. The bond between ThamizhSelvi and her mother is the best part of Ayali. It might come across as a little cutesy at times, but it really works. Ayali is a very simple and straightforward story. The protagonist Thamizhselvi wants to pursue her studies. But as per the traditions of her village, any girl who attains puberty should not study further and has to be married off at the earliest. How Thamizhselvi overcomes the odds and tries to infuse some sanity in those around her is Ayali in a nutshell.

Writer and director Muthukumar, spaces out things quite well. Each episode runs around 30 minutes, and this really works. It is neither too long nor too short. The initial episodes that set up the conflicts and introduce the characters work a lot better in comparison to the closure that feels rushed and simplistic. The bond between ThamizhSelvi and her mother is the best part of Ayali. It might come across as a little cutesy at times, but it really works. Abi Nakshatra as ThamizhSelvi and Anumol as her mother are really good. Anumol balancer her act quite beautifully. She plays someone who needs to be mature in handling her daughter, but she is also innocent at heart. In fact, in a way, the mother daughter equation in Ayali is kind of a role reversal. It is the daughter who holds her mother’s hand and leads her out of darkness. Their scenes together work like a charm. The portions where Anumol accompanies her daughter out of town to write her exams is the best part of Ayali for me. A grown-up woman gets to experience outside world, and it brings out the child in her. These are the portions that work visually as well without much emphasis on dialogues. Otherwise, almost always the message is stressed through dialogues. I did not mind it though.

The final few episodes are a mixed bag. The bad guys aren’t those complete caricatures that you usually see in our films, but they still stick out in Ayali. The sudden change of heart of important characters isn’t really convincing either.

But Ayali does it a lot better than our average message movies. Ayali may be dialogue heavy and have certain other limitations. But it is endearing for its intentions, is packed with nice little moments and succeeds in delivering what it intended to.

Ayali Details:

Ayali is a 2023 Indian Tamil-language streaming television series written and directed by Muthukumar for ZEE5 which focuses on the patriarchal aspects of Tamil society and Indian society in general. The principal characters of the series include Abi Nakshatra, Anumol,[1] Madhan, Linga and Singampuli. The eight episodic series.