Pariyerum means “riding atop a horse” as the protagonist explains in the movie. “it’s a deity's name” he continues, self-effacingly and quickly. It sounds almost as if he dares not associate himself with anything as grand as riding atop a horse! This dear reader is the crux of the movie. The downtrodden and the oppressed are expected to remain the same, generation after generation just so that the entitled remain so!The story begins with a gruesome murder of a dog called Karupi and ends with an assassin killing himself in the very same way that Karupi was killed. While Karupi was tied to rail tracks by faceless people, the assassin too was weirdly helpless, tethered to the misguided sense of honor dictated by the faceless society! As expected in Mari’s movie Karupi doubles up as a metaphor. She represents the helpless souls who are nothing more than tools or weapons. They are but a product of dysfunctional social systems, ingrained so deep that the system is believed to be more important than the people it was built for! Perumal, the representation of the downtrodden section, steps into the threshold of the real world, when he gets admitted into law college. Perumal's first brush the reality starts on day one when he finds that the medium of teaching is in English. Hailing from a remote village, Perumal, like most of his classmates can't understand a word. Though it is dealt with humorously, this problem is a stark reality existing and gnawing into the future of the major chunk of the students who pass out of government or state syllabi schools. Perumal unlike his classmates voices out the problem and requests the teachers to teach in Tamil. The response of the college teachers and the management reminds us of the “naked king who wore a dress only the wise could see”. JO or Jothi, a classmate of Perumal who offers to help him in his English lessons, is a wonderfully scripted but horribly delivered character. The characterization is almost charred to death by the actress playing it with total lackluster performance. The pace of the story quickens when people start noticing the friendship of Perumal hailing lower strata, blooming with Jo, a girl belonging to the upper strata of the society. The rest of the story is all about how the upper-class masculine “we will handle it” patriarchal mindset jumps into action by making Perumal’s life miserable at every turn and how the privileged naivety of Jo is protected by both her family and Perumal. While the “men” of her family, hide their animosity towards her attraction towards Perumal, he too hides all the infliction caused by her family. He does his best to maintain the distance from Jo as commanded by her family but fate and Jo keep chasing him incessantly. All through the story, the oppressed protagonist makes his mark with a high head and dignity intact while Jo’s cousin and father fall to the lowest level in an attempt to thwart an imagined affair. The movie ends with Jo’s father realizing his mistakes and yet not ready to let go of his ingrained caste snobbery.The movie is a must-watch for all movie lovers, and though JO irks it's not more than a fly on the hot jalebi on the roadside Dabba- definitely ignorable!!