Suzhal: The Vortex, Pushkar-Gayatri’s superhit thriller, is back with another season with a mystery as gripping as the first season’s—I would say even better. We’re going to have a detailed discussion of the story, themes, and mythology explored in the second season in this article. If you haven’t watched the show yet, this is where you stop reading this piece.
Spoilers Ahead
What is this season about?
Following the conclusion of last season, Nandini is now in jail, awaiting the verdict of her case. Sakkarai is also forced to be on leave because of the ongoing case of negligence of service revolver (with which Nandini killed Guna) against him. Things are looking good for Nandini, though, as she has a great lawyer, Chellalppa, on her side. Chellalppa is a well-respected man from the coastal town of Kaalipattanam (fictional), who’s also a social activist. He is also the man who practically raised Sakkarai after his father’s death. With the verdict of Nandini’s case on hold, Sakkarai travels to Kaalipattanam to stay with Chellalppa’s family—his wife, Malati; his son, Sundar, who works at the local lighthouse; and driver Dhamu, who’s no less than a family member—during the Asthakali festival. I should address the fact that Dhamu is actually Chellalppa’s son with another woman. For the entirety of the show, Sundar doesn’t speak with his father, thinking he’s deliberately making his own son work as a driver for him. But the truth is, Chellalppa was never aware of it; Dhamu also never told anyone about it (Sundar figured it out on his own). However, this entire subplot has nothing to do with the main story.
As the townsfolk gear up for the festival, a dispute over the possession of a bridge breaks out between fisherman Fernandez, businessman Marappan, and political leader Thiruvengadam, aka Thiru. Chellalppa takes care of that, but his decision of the possession being distributed equally among the three is not taken well. Thiru and Chellalppa also happen to go way back—they’re related and used to be great friends. But different ideologies have turned them into adversaries (although it is eventually revealed that the friendship is still alive as we see the two drink together). Another key figure of the town who plays an important part in the narrative is Prayamvatha, proprietress of a local private school—the Seafort Academy. Prayamvatha and Chellalppa don’t share a good rapport, due to a case he’s been pursuing against her for over a decade.
The show doesn’t take much time to get into the central mystery—Chellalppa goes to spend the night working alone in his cottage (which he uses as an office). When Sakkarai goes to see him the next morning, he finds the lawyer dead on the couch. With the main door of the cottage as well as all the windows shut from inside, it seems like a suicide at first—except no one is aware of any reason for Chellalppa to have taken his life. Sakkarai also doesn’t seem to be convinced with the suicide theory and concludes this is a murder, given there was no gun in sight—meaning someone else shot him in the head. Thanks to his past expertise, Sakkarai is unofficially put in charge of the investigation by the DIG. Local police inspector Moorthy doesn’t take that too well, although we see him and Sakkarai getting along eventually. The first big break in the case comes when Sakkarai discovers a young woman hiding inside a cupboard with a gun—which has to be the one use to kill Chellalppa—pointed outside. That practically solves the case, except the issue here is the cupboard was also locked from the outside, which the girl couldn’t have done by herself. The other problem is the woman refusing to utter a single word, no matter how much Sakkarai and Moorthy try with her. Despite the police wanting to keep the news under wraps as it might cause chaos during the festival given the stature of Chellalppa in the community, it gets leaked by a constable at the station. Following that, seven different women surrender themselves at different police stations, all claiming to be the killer of Chellalppa.
Which of the eight suspects is not lying?
Let us start with Muthu—the one who’s already in custody. After running an investigation, Sakkarai finds out she used to be an erotic dancer. Chellalppa, however, played an instrumental role in putting a ban on such erotic dancing during festivals—he and Thiru even had a tussle over it. This also means Muthu’s livelihood was at stake thanks to the lawyer, which is a clear motive, but is that good enough to murder the man over (and then surrender)?
The other suspects—Naachi, Muppi, Ulagu Gaandhari, Veera, Senbagam, and Sandhanam—come from different backgrounds and are in different professions. There’s no link between any of them, except the fact that all of them are claiming to have taken the life of Chellalppa, and their version of events of the fateful night also happen to be exactly the same—knocking on the door, Chellalppa opening it, and meeting his doom. On top of that, none of them actually reveals the reason behind them killing Chellalppa. Only after a whole lot of research does Sakkarai find out that none of these girls have any immediate family. What’s more important than that is all of them were admitted to different schools in the month of September—which is unusual as the school year starts from June. A bit more digging reveals that the Uplight Society Foundation trust was behind all the admissions, and the trustee happens to be none other than Priyamvatha. Even though the proprietress initially denied knowing any of the eight girls, after being pressed by Sakkarai, she spills the truth. She indeed was the person who took care of all those girls, but the reason she did so was a deal she had to make to make a sin—the death of a boy in her school due to food poisoning—go away. And the person who asked her to take care of the girls in exchange for guarding her truth was none other than our Chellalppa.
Was Chellalppa a sinner or savior?
Even though most of us are aware of the common trope of mystery shows tricking the audience into believing something, Suzhal: The Vortex really gets to us—at least in my case. It actually makes you, as well as Sakkarai (and everyone else), think of Chellalppa as not being a good man. While the show really does well here, the logical flaw would be Chellalppa not telling Prayamvatha why she had to do what she had to do. So she concluded he might be their abuser who was trying to cover up his wrongdoing. If we consider that he did tell Priyamvatha, then it doesn’t make any sense for her to not tell that to Sakkarai.
Anyway, it’s the girls who finally offer some clarity in the matter to Sakkarai. That has a lot to do with Nandini; I liked how her character is brought into the narrative—by putting the girls in the same prison where she’s in and making her Sakkarai’s eyes and ears inside. Now coming to the backstory that is both harrowing and inspiring. We meet Nagamma and Ravi, a fisherman couple, so in love. Sadly, he’s idiot enough to be part of a child trafficking ring run by someone who goes by “Owner”—no one has seen him, though, including many who work for him. When Nagamma discovers what her husband really does, she ends up decapitating him (this was shocking and totally worth it) and rescuing these eight girls. For quite some time, she takes care of them and practically becomes their mother. But it becomes increasingly difficult for her to keep the girls safe from Owner and his goons. Fortunately, though, she comes across a really good lawyer—who else but our Chellalppa? After Nagamma is mercilessly stabbed to death by Owner’s henchmen, it’s Chellalppa who makes sure the girls stay safe. The rest is as we all know—he takes them to Prayamvatha and orders her to do the rest. Chellalppa was not the sinner; he was, in fact, their savior.
The significance of the Asthakali Festival
The Asthakali festival and the folklore around it—eight kalis teaming up together to take care of a demon—play a major role in shaping the story. While taking the girls to leave them one by one at the boarding school, Chellalppa tells them the story of ‘Asthakali’ and also names each one of them with the names of eight goddesses. The reason for him renaming them is, of course, to ensure they’re never found by the trafficking ring. Chellalppa then asks them to never forget the face of their demon—the person who abused them, aka Owner—and promises to bring them justice one day. In the next ten years, Chellalppa keeps investigating on his own to find out who Owner is. When he finally does, he calls upon the girls to meet him at his cottage—the same one the traffickers used back in the day before Chellalppa bought it. The same house has a butler tunnel through the cupboard that leads straight to the beach, which the traffickers used to take the girls discreetly and put them on the boats. Thanks to Chellalppa buying the property, that had to stop. But that was never enough to put a complete halt to the whole operation.
Who killed Chellalppa?
It had to be someone who was aware of that butler tunnel, meaning it was either the girls—who would never harm him—or the traffickers, who had every reason in the world to murder him. Inspector Moorthy being the person actually doing it is a surprise, though. Not that Moorthy was ever an honest man; we all know he helped Prayamvatha buy illegal land, for which Chellalppa got him suspended years ago, but he did that only to make sure his son received proper education. Child trafficking is still too much for him, but the man admits to Chellalppa that being an unattractive man with a job that doesn’t pay much, he failed to resist validation from attractive women—be it Prayamvatha or Owner, aka Saroja. That practically makes Moorthy the biggest loser with no honor—I feel a little bad because I’d actually started to like the guy (guess it’s the same for you all too).
Saroja, on the other hand, was manipulative enough to make men like Moorthy do anything for her. She’s a model prisoner at Nandini’s prison, by the way. Apparently she went to jail thanks to a political conspiracy, but we find out that it was only a setup to make her a viable candidate for the upcoming election. She also has police constable Bhanu—an unnecessarily mean woman who’s always busy humiliating the prisoners—in her pocket. Her appearance, that of a gentle, helpful woman who truly cares, is very deceiving. The facade does wear off, though, when Saroja realizes the eight girls Chellalppa saved from her have arrived in the same prison. The show’s explanation of bringing the eight kalis (the girls) and their demon (Saroja) together is a bit muddled, narrative-wise, but we can let that slide, I suppose. That said, I wish the show had taken a different route instead of going for a stretched, overly dramatic climatic prison battle between Saroja and the girls where Nadini stops them from murdering their demon. Considering she herself once did the same, Nandini knows this is something the girls could never come back from. Hence, she takes it upon herself to stop them and let the law handle Saroja. Meanwhile, Sakkarai is finally able to solve the ‘who closed the cupboard from outside’ mystery—it was Moorthy, of course. Thanks to this, he also manages to protect two more little girls from being trafficked just in time. With Saroja taken care of, the entire organization is going to crumble anyway.
Will there be another season?
Unlike the first season, Suzhal: The Vortex closes the current one with a more definitive ending, without a major (or even minor) cliffhanger. The girls can now finally live their lives; Nandini is also out of prison, and she and Sakkarai are (most likely) going to be together. So this can be taken as a fitting closure, and another season of it doesn’t seem likely after it. That said, the world is never short of evil, and good people like Sakkarai and Nandini always have the tendency to cleanse those, so Pushkar and Gayatri can always come up with another installment. Let’s hope for the best.
