Unchain thyself!

The Girlfriend (Telugu, 2025)

Director: Rahul Ravindran

At first glance, I thought it would be another dull Indian college movie. Based on my previous experiences, I believed it was a superficial, illogical love story. The typical tug-of-war in this genre would be between eternal love and an unashamed, ego-driven opposition.

 

It started with a generic script about a girl with innocent eyes, whose mother died in her childhood, who joins a university to study for a Master's in English Literature. She is smitten by her and is pursued relentlessly by a senior, a handsome man doing his Master’s in Computer Science. The girl resists but eventually succumbs after constant wooing.

 

Things change after he gains 'vacant possession'. He becomes possessive, controlling, and a lover reminiscent of 'Fatal Attraction' or Sting's character in the 1983 Billboard No. 1 hit song 'Every Breath You Take'.

The story drags on until the heroine has her realisation. She boldly takes control and asserts her legitimate rights as a thinking human being, standing up for herself and refusing to be shamed for being a woman. She understands that in a game involving two parties, it is illogical to shame only one while the other walks free. Once she frees herself from those shackles, she is free to climb the ladder of progress. The sky is the limit. 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Memories are made of these...

Suckling piglet, anyone?

Just the other day, yours truly happened to gate crash into my cousin's friends' farewell party. The crowd had known each other for, like forever, ever since they were siphoned to a foreign land at an impressionable age to do good with their future. Just out of the confusing age of teenage years, shuffled into the turmoil era of the twenties, they had the scary sight of their whole future laid bare for them to mold. With the grace of the divine powers and help from some friends of the same boat, they sailed the rough seas. Amid the choppy waters and howling winds, they got across in one piece, shaken but not beaten. And boy, did they have heap of tall tales to tell of the journey.
I came to understand that that is what apparently happened every time they meet up. All their university days' stories will be told and re-told and they would have a good laugh at it as if they are hearing it for the first time. And the free flow of booze helped in the process of loosening up the heavy burden and the inhibitions that wear them down.
After the jam session of the same story, the similar minded comrades would go on to their respective lives, do their day-time jobs that they endeavoured so hard for with the belief that the gang would meet up again to laugh at their antics of a time of innocence when the world was the oyster when they were kings.
This is how brotherly bonds stronger than Spiderman's web shooters are made!