Fiction: Separation

They were good friends. Absolutely no strings attached. He'd been observing her for sometime now. There was something strange about her. He didn't know what. She was smiling and sounded normal from the outside, but deep within, she had locked herself into the room of dark secrets.

He imagined there was pain. The good person in him didn't give away. There was an urge to help. He wanted to help her break free and smile. He thought about it - really hard. It wasn't easy getting into someone else's life. There were risks. It could affect him as well.

He asked her. Told her that he felt strong about seeing her happy. She didn't respond. He was persistent. He was not the kind who would just walk away from anything. In him, he had already decided that he wanted to do this and he wasn't going to change his mind for the world. She suddenly sounded stronger than him. She wasn't giving him a chance to intrude and for a moment he felt that he was losing the battle. While this happened, he noticed her full eyes. He couldn't say more. He walked away.

 

Months passed and one fine day she had gone, untold. He looked terribly pained and there was no one to hear. As time passed he realized why she had hesitated, in the very beginning. It was the pain of SEPARATION she was afraid of.

PS: Something I had written years back and I don't even know if this makes sense but it was lying in the archives; so decided to give it a little polishing.

Mayakkam Enna

A group of friends are always fun to be with - drinking, gossip, dinners, lying around the house drunk, late nights at the beach. Your friends are your best judge and sometimes your worst enemy. Nevertheless, its only your friends who can forgive and forget because they have seen you every moment. They understand what you are going through; your toughest moments are easy when they are around. You can do what you want when you are with them and not bother about consequences.

Love happens. You don't know when it hits you. It could be your friend's girlfriend too but she doesn't care. 'She was never serious the first time' she says. You try to resist the feeling but this time, it hits you like a hurricane. And this is when life gets complicated. You are torn between the most cherished parts of your life - your true friends and your new love. The weirdness begins. You want to be lonely. Its not the loneliness but the fear that makes you run away from believing the truth. You don't want to accept. You tend to think that running away would solve all the problems, rather that creates the most uncomfortable situations.

Amidst all the chaos, life begins in a modest way. Being a part of the middle-class you have your own share of difficulties in life. There is pain, struggle, betrayal, frustration, alcohol, bruises, blood, tears and definitely lack of power. With so many negatives in your life, there is nothing much to look forward to except for that simple reason called hope which emanates from the love that you originally had, to begin that life. 

Selvaraghavan lets us walk into the life of an aspiring photographer Dhanush who neither has the education (atleast we don't know this part) or professional support to be successful. The meek and submissive character that he is, although he bosses around with his friends, he is mentally affected by failures. Success comes his way in a big way, but life has taken the toughest turns until then.

Mayakkam Enna is a true director's movie with the least "masala" elements available in the typical tamil movie package. The movie has Selvaraghavan written all over it without any doubt. The hilarious first half makes you wonder what's going to happen in the second and that's when he decides to give you a high voltage shock.

Overall: Fantastic movie. Would be a great script for a malayalam movie sans   the songs. Tamil cinema lovers may hate this.

Sadda Haq

The first time I walked into a movie hall in Bombay (mid September), I was totally floored by the trailer. Every movie I saw after that, I used to wish for the trailer to come back again.

Every musical note in this movie was magical and that is the only reason why no one other than AR Rahman could have done this. ROCKSTAR is all credit to ARR. If there is one thing that someone should talk about after seeing this movie is the power of Rahman's music. Music maketh the movie. Rahman got Orianthi Panagaris to play the lead guitar (she used to play for Michael Jackson). Orianthi breaks all barriers and strikes gold right from the first minute. Rockstar is character driven and guitar is the predominant portion of the whole movie. The smashing hit song "Sadda Haq is only proof to that. Not just this one, but every other song represents the mood the character moulds into; be it a fun song in Prague or the qawwali inside Hazra Nizamuddin.

Janardhan Jakhar aka Jordan, dreams of making it big in music while his family wants him to join their business. He idolises Jim Morrison and when we look at the posters and the graphics we get the same feeling as well. He is surprised that fans were so thrilled when JM walked into the crowd and showed a middle finger while he was being slapped by a police officer for making sensible music at the bus stop. His closest aide tells him that the power of music relies in feeling the pain of love, loneliness, betrayal and the journey begins there; but Jordan is simple, clueless and is always confused all the way.

 Ranbir Kapoor has proved himself all through the film. Right fron blending into the costumes, showing the serious attitude and making us feel that the voice lent by Mohit Chauhan (Dooba Dooba fame) is almost his; Ranbir pulls it off quite well. Of course, there are some problems with the guitar and serious guitarists would laugh at that, but we can forget it.

Nargis Fakhri as the Kashmiri lass Heer brings more beauty to the script. Frame after frame, she brings a ravishing touch to the screenplay. Although a lot of things that she does reminds us of Katrina Kaif in a good number of movies in the past, Nargis steals the show being happy-go-lucky. Performance needs a lot of boost and I hope she can do better in forthcoming films, if any. Bollywood is quite open to debuting women beyond 30, which is a really good sign.

Visuals are a treat - streets of Delhi, snow clad mountains and roads, lakes, locales of Prague, Rome, Hazrat Nizamuddin; the choices seem perfect. The film starts off with a concert in Rome - flashes back to Jordan's story and keeps coming back when required. Imtiaz Ali weaves the story aptly to make it interesting till the end.

Overall: Rockstar is a must watch. If not for the script, definitely for the music.