Love stories come in many shapes and sizes, but RS Prasanna's 2013 film planted itself right in the middle of an arranged marriage, that too within the TamBram milieu. The nature of this fix up results in a relationship that falls somewhere in between the traditional and the modern. In a sense, Raghu and Meera's love story begins with a cup of filter coffee, but the cappuccino is what these two prefer. Told in a signature comic fashion (the film even has a cameo by Crazy Mohan), the film also dealt with the topic of erectile dysfunction, perhaps for the first time, without diluting the seriousness of the topic.
RS Prasanna's first film went on to become a hit, and he went on to direct the Hindi version starring Ayushmann Khurrana and Bhumi Pednekar.
Apart from the script and the visual index cards Prasanna used to pitch the script of the film to producers, the writer-director also shares some trivia about the making of the film
The Visual Index Cards This is the format I presented the outline in to producers Ananth Govindan and Arun Vaidyanathan, so it would be easy to read and process, Act-wise and Scene-wise. Handmade by me personally across a full weekend.
The Script Took me 45 marathon days to write, fuelled by lemon tea and sheer panic. Performance anxiety, perhaps, may be more appropriate a word, given the film.
You will find Thamizh dialogues in English Text, as that is what I am comfortable writing in. However, you will find places where it is Thamizh font and text. These were translated from the original English in which I had initially written.
You will find that I had written a complete track for The NRI friend character of the hero, with his own arc and beginning-middle-end, to further the theme of "impotence" – in this case, that of financial impotence – of an NRI guy who loses his job, thereby losing all his "value". I removed it wholly from the first cut (a whole 15-minute segment, scattered through the second half), including an extended "Post-Credits" Scene playing off that track. The reason: It was one too many ideas in one film. (Maybe, I will use that in some other film, some other time.)
You will also see a Story Discussion Team credit to my wife Meenakshi, and my friends Praveen and Jithin, who were my bouncing board and gave valuable feedback. Arun Vaidyanathan helped with the Thamizh translation in some places (you see them marked in Thamizh text and font) adding his flair to it. Thus, the "Additional Dialogue" credit.