Khaddama- A Desert Journey is what it was expected to be, a poignant tale of a housemaid working in the gulf. We could see the good effort and hard work from the begin to end of the film.

Kamal trying to tell the story of Aswathy (Kavya Madhavan), who reaches the Gulf to work as a Khaddama (housemaid). It’s Usman (Suraaj Venjaramoodu) who had arranged her visa and she comes to work in the same house where Usman works as a driver. There is another Indonesian girl working there as a Khaddama. Aswathy’s life is quite difficult in the Gulf, but she endures it all as she has a family to support, back at home in Kerala. .

It was after the sudden death of her husband, shortly after her marriage, that she was forced to take to the Gulf. In the meantime, an affair between Usman and the Indonesian girl is discovered and problems started. Usman is sent away and the Indonesian girl locked up and beaten. On being requested by Usman over phone, Aswathy helps the girl to escape. Aswathy’s problems begin here and at a stage when it all becomes unbearable, she ran off the house. Then begins a new stage for the hopeless Khaddama.

Parallel to the main plot runs the story of a social worker Razack (Sreenivasan), who goes about helping Indians in the Gulf. When he comes to know of the story of Aswathy from a newspaper guy, he goes out searching for her, as she is missing after having reportedly fled her sponsor’s house with money and jewellery. There is also the story of Bharathan (Murali Gopy), who happens to meet Aswathy after she flees her employer. Bharathan has been in the Gulf for about 15 years and has reached nowhere. At a stage his fate gets linked with Aswathy’s. The film connected this in a sensitive manner.

Khaddama thus happens to be a good film enriched with a lot of emotions, and also the theme executed in a neat manner. But it’s not likely to be a big thing at the box office. Heroine-oriented films rarely make it big at the box office in Kerala. The subject is not really the same stuff that we have seen.