It’s been three days since I saw your recent film Yeto Vellipoyindhi Manasu and I have thought so much about your film that I couldn’t help but write this letter to express my anguish. It beats my imagination that a film so simple can stir up a myriad of emotions, some of which have not been rekindled for almost a decade, which have made me extremely restless. Finally, I have come to the conclusion that I hate you for making me feel so miserable and yearn for the past which had been shrouded under layers of memories and time.
Few years ago, I went through a similar feeling after I read Gabriel García Márquez’s novel ‘Love In the Time of Cholera’. The novel was so charming that I wished I had been part of the story. Great works of art especially literature and cinema have had this impact, but I was puzzled that your film, about a boy and a girl who fall in and out of love, not once but thrice, had a similar effect on me. I do not know whether it was the way you projected the characters – Varun and Nithya, in such a manner or whether my mind had already transported itself into my past while watching the film. I can’t find a reason why I absolutely fell in love with your film, despite its depressingly slow pace, but I do know for sure that you are way ahead of your contemporaries when it comes to making romantic films.
There was a scene in your film where Varun sees Nithya dancing on stage and for a moment it felt like time had frozen when I saw the expression in his eyes. That reminded me of what I had felt nine years ago when I saw someone walk into a class I was attending in college. Although my life differs a lot from the lives of Varun and Nithya, but I could relate so much to the little moments of joy which they share right through their school and college days. Few years later, I met someone else. I thought I had moved on from the joy that I had once experienced. But then, love is so transient and in that state we all try to find happiness. I still can’t decipher or explain what I feel when I am in that state of joy and I was stunned to find that you had captured that precise feeling in your film, especially the scene where Varun has a tinge of smile when Nithya proposes to him. At that moment, nothing else mattered.
Last year, while I was watching Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, I got hooked on to this conversation between Gil Pender and Ernest Hemmingway, where the latter talks about love and death.
“Ernest Hemmingway : I believe that love that is true and real, creates a respite from death. All cowardice comes from not loving or not loving well, which is the same thing. And then the man who is brave and true looks death squarely in the face, like some rhino-hunters I know or Belmonte, who is truly brave… It is because they make love with sufficient passion, to push death out of their minds… until it returns, as it does, to all men… and then you must make really good love again.”
I reckon that your film has got nothing to do with this quote, but in a way, the joy of watching a film like this made me forget everything else and just live in that moment. The plot was woven so well that I can’t pick out a scene and suggest that it was irrelevant. But the most amazing aspect of your film, which got me thinking, was the conversations between Nithya and Varun. Yes, they are madly in love and every single time they meet, after a gap, they are carrying an emotional baggage of their past. There’s so much to be said, yet words elude them when they meet. They forget about what had happened and crave to be with each other. If this isn’t love, then I don’t know what is. And then I got restless to confess a lot to someone I adore, but words continue to elude me. Like always.
As I continue to relentlessly pursue the state of happiness, watching your film was like floating in the ocean where every wave is a reminder of our existence. That someone somewhere is thinking about you. That it’s perhaps destiny that our lives are meant to be intertwined in mysterious ways. And I can’t help but thank you for rekindling this emotion in me. Whether I succeed or not is another debate, but the most important thing was that your film had put a smile on my face. Something which hasn’t happened in a long time. And I hate you for that. I hate you for the fact that you make life seem so abnormally beautiful that it makes me delve deep into my memories to relive the past. The moment this feeling of nostalgia pervades through my mind, I know that I have watched a film which has and will remain a part of my memory. That’s a good place to be, because that’s what has shaped my thoughts over the years. Thank you for the film and I hate you that you made me feel so restless, miserable and empty.
Thank You once again and I hate you….
By Hemanth Kumar C R @crhemanth
