The camera follows a high-end model car. An energetic, yet mysterious music from AR Rahman swells the scene. The camera angle shifts from bottom to top angle and the car door opens in a slightly forced manner. Enter: Ramya Krishnan as Neelambari in a black jacket and short white dress. The camera comes back down to the ground, signifying the first time she looks at a man who can match her ego. In front of the screens, the audience are seen hooting and screaming, for a female icon had for the first time, challenged a superstar, the man of the masses, and stood at the glorious reception of fans even after 26 years.
The legend of Neelambari has surprisingly been passed down with pride and spoken about in high regard even after two decades. With Padayappa’s re-release ruling over the box office once again, gen-Z is looking up to their mother who slayed with her fashion choices and hairstyles that have served as lookbooks for crafting the ideal femme fatale. Commanding screen presence aside, she was the ‘It Girl’ of Tamil cinema before it even became a trend—the woman who had it all before her Id decided to take over. She makes no bones about revealing her innate primal desires, sensuality included, to Padayappa and goes one step further to remark, “Enakke unna pidichurukku, you’re very lucky.” Neelambari doesn’t believe in grounding herself and has both her legs up in the air, demanding that she needs him for “poovukkum thevaikkum sevaikkum”. In Freudian terms, she is a complete fascinating overlap of ego and id where the superego has no chatter in the picture.
Tamil cinema and its fans are currently yearning for a supervillain to beat Neelambari, but decades of efforts have gone down in vain. The tempestuous storm cloud is bedazzling pop culture devouts with her rage in 2025. Some might call it unapologetic aura farming, but for Neelambari, 2025 is just another calendar year to throw away trends to the wind and reclaim her lost spirits.
Theatres are currently in a festive fervour, celebrating two figures driven by starkly different ideals and ideologies, locked in a battle of pride and ego. Yet Neelambari cannot be read purely through the lens of idealism—nor would the present generation be willing to. She set the benchmark for a brave woman, wielding her unapologetic ego in the face of entrenched patriarchy. But in the end, it was her desperation, more precisely, the consuming fire to claim Padayappa at any cost, that overtook her entirely. Her independence came at the cost of her narcissism and her strength was built from stomping her foot on the working class. Most importantly, she used her self-awareness to continue seeking revenge rather than peace. According to her, no man was a match for her beauty and talent and would shame them for not upholding gendered roles and ideals of a man. Yet, she herself did not hold the same yardstick for her character. She constantly defied patriarchal notions and rules, but that also doesn’t make her a feminist or an icon for heralding feminist ideas. Neelambari’s regressiveness is also rooted in her image as an oppressor to put Vasundhara (Soundarya), a maid, “in her place”. Neelambari’s privilege and classism blinds her from seeing Vasundhara as a fellow woman who is just as stuck in a patriarchal set-up as her. In fact, all the women in Padayappa are cause and effect of the same issues. Besides Vasundhara and Neelambari, Savithri (Lakshmi) is constantly instructed by Dharmalingam (Sivaji Ganesan) while Meena (Lavanya) agrees to Ramalingam’s (Manivannan) decision of getting her married to Surya Prakash (Nassar). Also, Neelambari’s toxic need to avenge her miseries refuses to leave her till the very end, extending even to her nephew Chandru (Abbas) and Padayappa’s daughter Anitha (Preetha), making her the last person to root for.
Rage is beautiful, as Bharathiyar once said, “Rowthiram Pazhagu” (Practice Righteous Anger) and one can throw kilos of confetti on Ramya Krishnan for her gloriously unhinged, if I can say, portrayal as Neelambari. Yet, her rage stems from deeply ingrained insecurities, shaped by societal expectations and perhaps her own internalised standards. Instead of addressing these layered conflicts, the narrative is “enriched” by pitting one woman against another—a fiery, dominant lady against a meek and submissive woman, a classic internalised misogyny move. The latter was presented as an “ideal” green saree, while the former becomes the red saree (IYKYK) that comes with multiple warning signs. While the red-saree metaphor may hold some truth, reducing women to such extremes only confuses audiences into believing one version is morally superior to the other. In reality, women are flawed, complex individuals, often a blend of both Vasundhara and Neelambari, sometimes even within the same breath.
However, like many others, Neelambari was a product of her time and era — where men wrote and showcased the definition and repercussions of being a strong woman in a male-dominated, morality-driven patriarchal society. A Gen-Z Neelambari—let’s call her Neelu—might have simply walked away after Padayappa rejected her proposal. A woman secure in herself would have prioritised choosing herself, practising self-love instead of waiting for a man to “serve” her. She may have sought therapy after her plans were repeatedly thwarted by the male hero. Perhaps—just perhaps—Rajarathnam (Radha Ravi) wouldn’t have rushed to Padayappa to “fix” his daughter after she has a rage-filled episode of throwing and breaking things.
May be, in another world, Neelambari and Vasundhara might have been best of buddies, chasing Padayappa away, while audiences watched them build a life together, Netflix-and-chill included.