I have watched this movie in its entirety only once. I cannot rewatch it because it is a slow and tragic drama (I hate tragedies). It really is drawn out and absolutely depressing from the get-go. I personally don’t recommend watching the whole thing at all but watching this movie did change my life – not in an exaggerated I-am-a-different-person-now life-changing, but a small-shift-in-perspective life-changing. A mood shift that occurs when you watch a great movie or read a great book. A small shift that moves the tectonic plates of your pre-conceived beliefs just slightly, causing a new, fresh tide to wash over your mildly agitated day-to-day. I can never rewatch this movie in its entirety (I honestly thought it was boring overall), but I have rewatched (and sobbed over) two scenes from this movie at least 20 times. Don’t worry the sobbing doesn’t happen every time.

That’s how we got down to watching this movie and like I said, it was sad from the very beginning. It is vaguely reminiscent of a book/movie which more people might be familiar with – The Fault in Our Stars. The male protagonist Prakash (played by Nagarjuna) finds out he is terminally ill and moves to Ooty to be away from his family’s constant despair, and to live out the rest of his days peacefully but in a place where no one knows him. There, he meets our female protagonist Geethanjali (played by Girija Shettar) who is this childish, full-of-life character who doesn’t take life seriously, evident from the several pranks she plays on everyone. After they initially lock horns for a while mostly due to Geethanjali’s mischievous nature, Prakash is shocked to find out that Geethanjali is also very seriously ill and will not live for very long.

Here comes the first of the two scenes I mentioned (you can check it out by going to the full movie on YouTube and watching from 1:02:34 to 1:03:51). I realized the video does not have subtitles, so let me break down the scene here. We see Prakash coming to Geethanjali’s house where she is cooking with her sisters. He has just found out from her father that she has a terminal disease that has rendered her heart very weak – it sounds like she has a hole in her heart. Prakash comes and asks her – how is she so calm about this, how is she so happy and content going about life as per usual knowing that this looming tragedy could end it all at any moment. Her youngest sister even explains the rare heart condition to him very nonchalantly, increasing his confusion as to why they are all so normalized to this terrifying information. Geethanjali very simply explains to him saying, “You are going to die”, she points to her sisters, “Chitra is going to die, Sharada is going to die, my youngest sister is going to die, those trees are going to die, the flame of that lamp is going to die, even I am going to die – the only difference is that I’ll die a few days earlier. I don’t have any angst for tomorrow, only today is important to me. I will stay the way I am – if you are okay with that then stay, otherwise, you can leave.”

I have always feared death, and the idea of it not only being painful but also it being the definitive end of this gift that is life. I was always dissatisfied by people’s assurances that “death is a part of life” and “oh it will come someday why worry about it now”. It amazed me that this was not a constant worry for people everywhere – this unchangeable fact that each one of us is extremely mortal. However, something about this scene gave me a lot of relief, it made me understand a little bit more about how being present in the now is important – how enjoying whatever today brings, whatever the circumstances may be, is the true meaning of being fully alive and not fearing death. If Geethanjali could see reason in practicing that mindset while being on the brink of death, why do we struggle to live largely and in the moment, while being our fully healthy selves? It is so, so hard to practice that in this chaotic world, especially being part of a generation that mostly lives in the anxiety of the past, and the whims of the future. I am realizing that trying to figure out the point of being mortal beings comes with countless epiphanies that occur over a long period of time, because these epiphanies don’t stay with us – they just don’t seem to last long in our psyche unless consciously internalized. This was one such epiphany that I am reminded of whenever I rewatch this scene – it always makes that particular day more meaningful and full of life.

This scene no. 1 occurs in the middle of the movie after which I skip to my next favorite scene – one of the first climax scenes (1:43:10 to 1:45:41). In the second half of the film, Geethanjali and Prakash have fallen in love with each other. This scene no. 2 is intensely poignant and dramatically romantic, and it is kind of a perfect complement to scene no. 1. To set the scene which takes place at a railway station, there is a heavy downpour of rain and Geethanjali has come to see Prakash so urgently that she does not bring an umbrella, upon seeing which Prakash immediately discards his umbrella too – both getting completely drenched in the rain sets the mood for the impassioned conversation that follows.

In contrast to scene no. 1 where Prakash discovered Geethanjali’s shocking truth, here, Geethanjali has just found out that Prakash is also terminally ill (I forget how and why he kept it a secret) and she is angrily asking him why he never told her. He replies with a laugh, “What is there to tell, we are all going to die, that station master is going to die, that porter is going to die, this little boy is going to die, I am going to die – that’s all! Isn’t that what you had told me?” She retorts that those people are different and he is different. She orders him to get out of her sight and that they should not be together anymore. When he vehemently enquires BUT WHY? – she says she cannot live each day without knowing whether he will make it out alive the next day. He says when death approaches her, she has no concern, but when it approaches him, she cannot reconcile with the inevitable. He aggressively asks WHY again, to which she gives up and says that it is because he is more important to her than her own life. She is so helpless in the scene, losing all the willpower and strength she has shown throughout the movie, because from her perspective, until now, the only life on the line had been her own. She begs him to leave saying it is easier for her to live with the thought that he is alive elsewhere, so that she can die in peace without the possibility of learning that he has died before her.

Spoiler Alert: he does not leave and they spend the rest of their days together. But this scene speaks hugely about how love or romantic attachment to someone can add a dimension to life that alters its meaning completely. It throws all sense to the wind, and can leave the strongest of willpowers completely in shambles. It raises a lot of other questions that are maybe a discussion for another day, for example, about whether one is capable of considering another’s life more important than one’s own, which leads to another question about whether love like that is highly romanticized by mainstream movies like this and is just not the way regular people do it – either back in 1989 or even in 2023 today.