We go back in time with her, to 1939 and her ancestral home at Punnayurkulam in Kerala’s Thrissur district. The film reminds us that little Kamala — Aami to her relatives — is from a literary family. Her mother, for one, is the renowned writer Nalapat Balamani Amma. She asks a lot of questions, this girl who might have been silenced elsewhere, but not in this home frequented by cultural stalwarts, where questioning minds and progressive thoughts co-exist with several gender, caste and class status quos.

The guilelessness and quiet rebellion reflected in what Aami asks remain an intrinsic part of her personality into her adulthood, as it is presented to us by award-winning writer-director Kamal. Through his eyes, we follow Aami from Punnayurkulam to Calcutta where her Anglophile father works, to her husband’s home in Bombay, on her travels with him, Thiruvananthapuram after his retirement and her death in a Pune hospital in 2009 — all factually accurate. We follow Aami when, at 15, soon after India wins Independence, she is married to Madhav Das, 20 years her senior, and becomes Kamala Das. Later, she assumes the pseudonym Madhavikutty for her Malayalam works. In her twilight years, when she converts to Islam, she calls herself Kamala Surayya.