From Surveillance to Sovereignty - A Story of Homecoming

It was during last year’s festival season. It had been about six or seven years since I moved away from Chittur. Back then, I didn’t really have a circle of friends here. My school friends had all drifted apart. And while I occasionally visited my college friends from Victoria, I never expected to have a social life in my own hometown. Given the environment I grew up in, such a thing felt completely foreign to me. Chittur, for me, had never been a place where friendships flourished.

I had lived in a few different cities by then. And those were places where friendships formed easily, where hanging out, traveling together, and occupying public spaces felt so natural and unremarkable. But doing those very same things in my hometown felt deeply transgressive for me. As a girl, to exist publicly with friends, especially male friends, in Chittur felt almost unnatural. As though I was violating an unspoken code written long before I understood it.

                                        

For as long as I can remember, my relationship with my hometown and with my home itself had been shaped by surveillance masked as morality. Every aspect of my identity was watched. The way I spoke, dressed, the friendships I formed, the places I hung out, my desire for independence, everything. Back then, even groups of girls hanging out together were judged. So, simply talking to a male friend was a huge deal in Chittur. Over time, I internalized that I could never fully be myself in Kerala, especially in my own town. Going home meant submission to a routine that left little room for my own agency. If I wanted to step out, I needed a ‘convincing’ reason articulated like an official application, verbally signed by my dad. A brief and timed visit to Palakkad, a rushed meeting with my college friends, and then a return to the confinement. Once home, I simply did not go out. Because for me, staying at home was easier than asking for permission.

Last year’s film festival cracked that script open.

For the first time, I found a circle of friends within my own town. And with them came a freedom I had never known on that soil. For seven days, I did breathe without accounting for myself to anybody. I existed without constantly explaining where I was going, with whom, and why. I knew achan was chill because he knows Panchajanyam is a safe space. For us, Panchajanyam is a family. Everyone known, everyone connected. But what he saw as safety, I experienced as possibility. I did not hand over my agency to my family or to the invisible moral police of the town. I lived as an adult in my hometown.

I don't know how many people can relate to this. But I still remember, one evening after an Open Forum, Prashanth and I went out for tea. We sat at a local tea shop and talked. What’s the big deal, right? Exactly, nothing at all. In Hyderabad, Bangalore, or Pondicherry, this had always been my everyday life. But in Chittur, sitting at a public tea shop with a male friend felt like crossing an invisible boundary I had once believed was permanent.

That same day, I entered a bar in my hometown for the first time. When I mentioned casually that I had never been inside ‘Cee Dee’, Appu and Prashanth responded saying “Then let’s go now.” And we did. What surprised me the most was not that we went, but the absence of fear. I did not scan the room for familiar faces. I did not worry about someone reporting back to my dad, or about stories circulating through the town. For the first time, I felt certain that I could narrate the this myself to my dad, nothing terrible would follow. We moved between the AC bar and the local one. I didn’t drink; the point was not me drinking. I existed there, unquestioned. No one stared. Or perhaps I had finally stopped looking if someone is judging. Either way, it marked a beginning.

That sense of ease stayed with me. On my next visit to Chittur, I went to the railway station with the same friends to pick up Rajashree for our program. On another day, Brijesh and Prashanth brought beef and porotta for me after their PSC exam, they picked me up from home and we ate together in the library. When we were just sitting and talking after that, we decided on a whim to hike the hills of Muthalamada, though it was pouring down heavily. It was fun. No permissions sought. No explanations prepared.

                                        

By this year’s festival, the transformation felt complete. For two weeks, my family barely saw me. I left home in the mornings and returned at night, my movements cushioned by friendships that felt steady and unquestioned. Someone was always there to pick me up or drop me back, nobody questioned. One evening, while Prashanth and I went for tea after work, we ran into achan and Ramesh Uncle. Nothing collapsed. Nothing needed repairing. We all had tea together. I spent the festival working, wandering, and resting at my own pace, without burdening anyone and without being burdened. I went on morning runs with Prashanth and hit the gym with Appu. I walked back from the library with Chinnu at eight in the evening. Brijesh dropped me back often after the second shows. The week before the festival, we even travelled to Attappadi together.

Well, let me be clear. This is not a list of outings or cups of tea that I had. It is a record of something far more intimate; the slow and steady win of agency. It is the evidence of change in me, in my home, and in the town that once felt hostile to my becoming. Moreover, at its core, this is the fulfilment of a teenage girl’s dream. A girl who once longed for the simple authority over her own friendships, interpersonal relationships and the spaces she occupied. To see that dream materialize decades later in the very place it once seemed impossible, feels like a profound and deeply personal victory. There is still much to change, but I hope that these small steps will become the fuel for the greater changes.