Directed by Ani. I.V. Sasi, Uppu Kappurambu is a lighthearted comedy starring Keerthy Suresh and Suhas in the lead roles. The story is about a village where people faced a crisis when the graveyard ran out of space. Nobody knew how to tackle such a peculiar problem, and the village chieftain, who had just assumed office, also found herself in a fix. So let’s discover whether the villagers found a solution and what challenges they faced during the process.
Spoiler Alert
What was the issue with the village cemetery land?
Chitti Jayapuram had a rather fascinating history, and it played a key role in the lives of the village folks. Once upon a time, the ruler of the area faced a great conflict when his kingdom was hit by a deadly famine. The priest back then told him that, in order to appease the gods, they all should offer something. The king thought that he could use his material wealth and save his own people, but he was wrong. The priest came up with a solution: he said that in order to stop the famine, they would have to bury the dead in a specific area on the northern side of the kingdom. So from that day onwards, nobody in the entire kingdom was cremated, instead, everybody was buried in that graveyard. Another peculiar thing was that the cause of death was engraved on the gravestone. So if a person had died from alcohol abuse, it was mentioned, quite blatantly, why the person lost their lives.
Years passed, and the people of the village still followed that tradition. They believed that if anybody cremated their dead, then the village would once again be hit by a famine. The funny thing was that the village folks were so particular about it that it felt like they looked forward to the day when they would take their last breath. There was a lot of debate about what kind of gravestone would be used by the people, what would be engraved on it, and so on and so forth. It was the year 1992 when the chief of the village, Subbaraju, passed away, and his gravestone was carved out of an expensive, shiny marble, which made the other people a bit jealous. The graveyard land had been given to the village by the family of Bheemayya, one of the richest people in the village, and the man took a lot of pride in it. Apart from Bheemayya, there was another person named Madhubabu who had aspirations of becoming the village leader one day. Madhubabu ran a cinema hall in the village, and though he wasn’t as rich as Bheemayya, of late he had made a lot of profits and built his own empire. There was an unspoken rivalry between these two, and they both just wanted to establish their own supremacy in the village. They were not happy when Subbaraju’s daughter, Apoorva, was chosen to be the next chief of the village. But they had no choice in the matter, as it was not a democratic setup, and the child of the leader took his position after his death. Madhubabu and Bheemayya decided to make Apoorva’s life difficult so that they could prove to the villagers that she was not competent enough to lead them. They underestimated Apoorva, and they hadn’t imagined that she would actually be up for the challenge.
What challenges did Apoorva face as the chief of the village?
Apoorva didn’t want to become the chief, as she felt that she was not qualified enough. She didn’t know how to find a solution when the villagers would come up to her with their problems. Also, at least to some degree, the people didn’t have any trust in her since she was a woman, and people’s egos were hurt by accepting that they would be led by a woman. During the first community meeting, both Bheemayya and Madhubabu tried to put Apporva in a difficult spot, but she somehow managed to tackle the situation. But then Chinna, the gravedigger, asked her a question to which she had no answer. Chinna informed her that there were only 4 places left in the graveyard, and soon they would run out of space. Apoorva didn’t have any clue what to do in that situation, and so she told everybody that she would need a couple of days to come up with a workable solution. Apoorva, together with Chinna, went to the nearby villages to ask their respective chiefs if they could sell her some acres of land so that the dead could be buried there. The chiefs either mocked her or blatantly refused to give her any land. There was one person, though, who told her that he could give her some land for a sum of one lakh rupees. Apoorva knew she didn’t have that sort of money, and the chief was just not ready to negotiate. Apoorva decided to conduct a lucky draw and allocate those 4 graves to the people whose names came up in it. She believed that that would buy her some time, as she didn’t expect that 4 people would die together. Madhubabu’s name came up in the lucky draw, and he got so happy about it that he threw a party for the entire village. In that party, 4 people ended up meeting their fateful end due to consumption of poisonous alcohol. So, instantly, those 4 graves were used for their burial, and Apoorva once again found herself in a mess.
Apoorva came up with another solution; she got to know that there were a lot of unmarked graves that were 100-200 years old and that they could reuse them for the purpose of burying the dead. But that created a strong problem as people started digging into their past, and chaos erupted in the entire village when they started fighting with each other as they got to know about their ancestral rivalries. So disputes that did not transcend time, that were forgotten, were once again brought to the forefront. Also, amidst all this, Chinna tried to save some space for his own mother, who wished to be buried in the village. But unfortunately, Bheemayya got to know about it, and he raised a huge fuss. Apoorva was accused of conspiring with Chinna and favoring him, and she was ultimately made to step down from her position. Bheemayya became the chief of the village, and he couldn’t be more satisfied.
Was Apoorva able to help Chinna out?
Chinna’s mother passed away, and he didn’t have a place to bury her. Chinna and Apoorva had attended school together, though the latter didn’t remember being in the same class as him. Chinna had to leave school after 4th grade as his father passed away and he started working as he needed to support his family. Apoorva quite evidently had a soft corner for him, and she decided to help his cause and end the problem once and for all. She organized a secret meeting with the villagers without informing Bheemayya about it, as she had a plan in mind. The villagers got very angry when they found Chinna also at the meeting. That’s when Apoorva took charge of things and told them that Chinna’s intention was not to hurt them or betray them. She said that he was just being a good son and he just wanted to give his mother the kind of burial she wanted. Bheemayya, just after becoming the chief, had declared that the empty spot in the graveyard where Chinna was wanting to bury his mother would be put up for auction. He was quite sure that nobody would be able to match his bid. But Apoorva had made some plans, and she knew that if things went right, she would get the better of him. We had seen that, earlier in the film, one of the Jats had asked Apoorva for a sum of one lakh in exchange for land. So Apoorva asked the villagers to keep increasing the bid until it reached one lakh rupees. She knew that Bheemayya’s ego was so huge that he would keep bidding until he got the land. The next day during the auction, the villagers did what they had been asked to. Bheemayaa won the bid, but he had to pay a hefty sum for procuring just a burial spot. Apoorva used that money to buy more land, and Chinna finally buried her mother there. Bheemayya felt like a fool as he knew that he had been outwitted.
In Uppu Kappurambu’s ending, the people made it very clear that they wanted Apoorva as their leader. In fact, people from other villages came with their problems to her since they too had heard about how she had innovatively found her way through. Apoorva never wanted such responsibilities on her shoulders, but I guess now she doesn’t have much of an option. The people trust her, and she knows she can’t let them down.
