‘Director Gomtesh Upadhye’s Telugu web series Kumari Srimathi, headlined by Nithya Menen, introduces us to a side of East Godavari that mainstream Telugu cinema, with its box office constraints, would hesitate to explore. The seven-episode series written by Srinivas Avasarala and produced by Early Monsoon Tales, a web division of Vyjayanthi Movies, raises a toast to rural entrepreneurship and shatters stereotypes with an easy dose of humour. Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Kumari Srimathi is a story of a dysfunctional family in which the gutsy yet vulnerable women deal with the mess created by two men, one who is irresponsible and the other, an opportunist consumed by greed.
A spacious house with old-world charm shown in the first episode of Kumari Srimathi becomes the moot point for Srinivas Avasarala to weave a story of three generations of women, portrayed by Talluri Rameshwari, Gowtami, Nithya Menen and Praneeta Pattanaik, each rising to challenging situations in their own way. A mainstream Telugu film of the late 1990s or early 2000s would have spun a familiar tale of a large family where the patriarch held sway and the women moved around the house with the rustle of finest silks.
We are introduced to the protagonist, Srimathi (Nithya Menen), who has the courage to take on all the odds stacked against her, beginning with her name. In Telugu, the word ‘srimathi’ denotes a married woman but here she is, 30 and single, and forever drawing curious remarks regarding her name and asserting that she is kumari or miss Srimathi! The grandmother understands where Srimathi gets her dogged determination from to take on her uncle in a court battle to win the ancestral house. The mother, Devika (Gowtami), may come across as a regular on-screen mother who chides Srimathi for taking on too many battles rather than being pragmatic and get married and lead a normal life. But hers, too, is a story of grit and determination, which we learn eventually.
