The characters Umesh Pillai and Prabhu Shetty in Killer Soup have been played by Manoj Bajpayee, and once again, the actor does not fail to impress the audience with his nuances and details. It could be said that Umesh was a rather timid guy, as opposed to the husband of Swathi, Prabhu. The only thing that was similar about them was the way they looked, and that became a game changer in the scheme of things. Swathi used the uncanny resemblances between the two men in her life to her advantage, and she was almost nearing the finish line when something bizarre happened. So, let’s find out what happened with Umesh and what motivated him to confess to his crimes in the end.
Spoiler Alert
What kind of relationship was Umesh craving?
Umesh worked together with Swathi in a hospital as a nurse for the longest time, and nobody knew about that until senior police inspector Hassan and his subordinate Asha accidentally found out about it. Asha was distracting the doctor to buy Hassan some time so that he could go and interrogate Arvind Shetty, who was in the ICU when she saw a photo hanging on his wall, and she figured out that Swathi and Umesh knew each other from before. Umesh was addicted to gambling, and he often took money from Swathi to support his habit. Some might have felt that Umesh was using Swathi and that he was also blackmailing her husband Prabhu without her knowledge, but that was only one aspect of his personality, and there were other, more noble sides to him. He was in love with Swathi, and he had an urge to legitimize his relationship, though whenever he asked Swathi, she ignored the question and told him that it was not possible until her husband was there.
Not being financially stable was one of the main reasons why Swathi did not opt for Umesh at the beginning of Killer Soup. There was no doubt about the fact that it pinched Umesh, but he also did not force her, as he knew that probably she wouldn’t be happy living with him. The pictures on his wall, the way he looked at Swathi, and the way he longed for her made it very clear that he wanted to live his life with her. But things didn’t materialize for him until the day Prabhu found them red-handed. Umesh had an uncanny resemblance to Prabhu, and he never knew that it would come in handy at some point in his life. In fact, he often got insecure thinking about the fact that Swathi was with him only because he looked like her husband. Umesh was in desperate need of money, and for a very long time, he was trying to blackmail Prabhu and scare him so that he could get some money and improve his living conditions. He knew that if and when Swathi got to know about it, she would be disappointed in him, but he felt helpless at times, and he thought that when the time arrived, he would explain to her why he did so.
How did Umesh’s face get disfigured?
When Prabhu died in front of Umesh, he felt petrified, and he didn’t know in that state of panic what he should do. It told a lot about the kind of man he was. He was not a schemer or a plotter like Swathi, and he was scared of the consequences of his actions. The only plan that came to his mind was to escape from that place and start a new life elsewhere, but it was Swathi who realized at the very last moment that sooner or later, the authorities would catch hold of them, and so it was imperative that they fabricated the truth. The plan was to slightly disfigure Umesh’s face so that they could make a defense when the authorities came knocking at their door. But Umesh got intoxicated, and he ended up burning the entire left side of his face. He endured excruciating pain only because he knew that he would be able to live with Swathi and have the life he always craved. There is no denying that there was a desire for money, but still, his love for Swathi was unadulterated and unparalleled.
What made Umesh accept his crimes?
Umesh found out a lot of things about Swathi, and he realized that she probably loved money more than him. She had gone to great lengths to cover their tracks, and Umesh was shocked when, through Inspector Hassan, he got to know that she was behind the murder of Thupalli and even Kirtima. Umesh shared intimate moments with Kirtima because, at that time, he needed somebody who could understand his state of mind and express their love for him. I am nowhere trying to legitimize his disloyalty, but at that juncture, he just couldn’t hold himself back, as only Kirtima seemed like a genuine person, and it felt that the rest of them were just playing the game for their own vested interests. Umesh was shaken after he realized that Kirtima had been killed so brutally when all she wanted was to be with him, as she considered him to be Prabhu. Umesh faced an existential crisis at the end, and he also felt like he had lost himself in the process. The world considered him Prabhu, but all he wanted to do was shout at the top of his lungs that he was Umesh Mahto. He felt as if the entire conspiracy was eating up his identity, and he no longer existed for the people because it had been so long since he had been himself. That led to an outburst, and not only did he take a lot of that special ingredient that Swathi put in her soup, but he went on stage in front of everybody and accepted his crimes. The urge to tell the world his own name and his own identity overpowered everything else, and he ended up spoiling Swathi’s plan when she was just about to reach the finishing line.
Is Umesh dead or alive?
Umesh, at the end of the Killer Soup, spat blood and fell unconscious as the poison from that ingredient started spreading throughout his entire body. Hassan and others immediately put him in a vehicle and decided to take him to the nearest hospital, but suddenly, he disappeared. Hassan and others present at the scene didn’t know what exactly happened or where he vanished all of a sudden when he was not even standing. In the end, we saw him sitting on a bus and probably going out of town together with Swathi, with Thupalli sitting on top and commenting on the absurdities of life. Though it is quite intriguing to entertain the fact that Umesh and Swathi had made the perfect plan to fake their deaths and escape from the town, I am more inclined to believe that they met their fateful end and that it was just a dream sequence crafted by the makers to show that they probably met in a parallel realm where their love story was not unfinished.
