“Its simple…two friends…..loved the same girl but this time they try and get rid of one another rather than sacrificing their love for a friend….howz that sound?” said Preetam Kumar, an upcoming writer who had just lost a meeting with the great film maker Sooraj Pratap Singh.
“Well, Mr. Preetam, please hand the script to my assistant, will look into it and let you know later, Thank You,” said Sooraj, he was just being generous in speech.
“Oh..oh.. I have some twists and..and…a villain..ofcourse.. and..and..”
“Get him outta here.”
“Oh…oh..this will make a good story, one of the BEST ever and….yes…please… please..” shouted Preetam while being dragged by two men by his arm and was thrown through the door. And when he fell from the bed it hurt him a little. He got up, saw the clock grin a three at him, drank a glass of water and went back to bed hoping to dream a better dream.
He dreamt it.
Preetam entered through the same door he was thrown out and walked straight. At the end of the room he could see the great family entertainer Soraj Pratap Singh sitting on a sofa and sipping coffee from a cup. This was the man that Preetam idolized since a decade. Sooraj had a bright personality and his face, under the spotlights, was shining like a sun. Sooraj went through some papers lying on the coffee table and said without looking at Preetam, who was standing on a specially made dais and bearing a number on his chest, “So, you are?”
“Pr..Preetam Kumar.”
“PREETAM. So, where are you from?”
“Basically from
“Good,” said he and after a moment of silence he continued, “So, you know why you are here. You have ten minutes and the stage is yours.”
An anxious and an excited Preetam raised his hands in air and with both the thumbs and index fingers he formed a rectangular border through which he saw Sooraj , smiled and said, “It is simple, yet it is not. This is story of love ....and hate. Of Vijay…of Raghu…and of Veda. It starts with an old Vijay, dreesed in a tee and jeans with a backpack and a traveller’s hat, moving around small villages in
Then suddenly he turned his hands in opposite direction to his present position while maintaining ‘the imaginative square’ and said, “Then the story moves to flashback….28 years ago…there were two friends…very good friends…infact they were like brothers…”
“Aa..nnh..,” Pritam dropped his hands and said to Sooraj, “ Is it ok if I just present the concept of the story rather than going into ‘scene by scene’ description?”
“It’s your ten minutes,” said Sooraj and immediately corrected himself, “Now, nine minutes,” and smiled.
Pritam went back to his ‘story-telling’ pose and continued, “People gave examples of their friendship ….they trusted each other very much. I have few ideas of depicting their friendship on-screen which I will tell if I am selected because I think the concept of story is important now.”
“So,” he continued, “Enters in the scene the ex-girlfriend of Raghu, Veda, a very beautiful girl..so beautiful that if flowers could speak they would have sung praises of her. She enters their life but with repentance for her behaviour towards Raghu. A hazy, vague past they had…a past of love, of ego and of pain. But she insists that she had forgotten the past and just want to be friends. Raghu finds no harm in it but he vows never to fall in love with her again.”
Preetam, now dropped his hands, closed his eyes for a while and opened it suddenly, simultaneously shouting, “But.” He stopped using ‘the director’s angle’ pose and started gesturing like an old man narrating stories to children. He raised his right hand, showing his palms and bringing it to a stop with a jerk he said, “But. A betrayed woman is as dangerous as a broken piece of mirror. Betrayed! Who betrayed her? Of course Raghu, at least that’s what she thought. There had been continual frictions between them just after six months of seeing each other. Belief, the first foundation of love, was absent between them. Raghu loved her but she never listened, one fine day they decided to break up. Raghu, on one hand, decided to move on in life, Veda, on the other hand, moved in a complete unexpected direction. Ooof, Women!”
He now tried to search that ‘interested’ streak on Sooraj’s face. He couldn’t accept that there was none, he saw nothing but a poker face who was more keeping the time rather than listening. Anxiety grew in his heart and appeared on his face. He continued, “Vijay fell in love with her or rather I should say she somehow made Vijay fall for her. She aimed at killing their friendship…and to annihilate such relationship will cost her to spend her life with a man she doesn’t love. She married Vijay and like arsenic, she started inflicting his mind against Raghu. Again...how she does it is a part of the story which I think can be explained once I am selected. Raghu, on the other hand, tries to reason with Vijay, but he never listened. Blinded by his lady love, Vijay questioned loyalty of his friend…or to say his brother. And one day when the discussion was at its summit, Vijay proscribes Raghu to interfere in his life. Since then Raghu never did.”
He saw the same expressionless face still. That face said, “One and half minutes more.”
“But now,” he continued, “After 28 years of traveling around the world, he found an old man singing poems on stage in a small village. He moved towards him, on the dais, with eyes filled with tears. He climbed the dias resisting some of the men and said,
‘Raghu.’ The voice refused to come out loud. He repeated, ‘Raghu.’
Raghu turned, got up from his place while the other people on the dais continued singing, and said, ‘V..Vijay. Is that you?’
He got a nod as an answer. Raghu smiled and leaned forward to hug him when he suddenly stopped and started turning back.
‘Please don’t turn away, not any more.’
‘I am doing what u asked me to.’
‘I made a mistake. And I paid for it. I lost you, my brother.’
Raghu was silent.
Vijay continued, ‘I lost you. That was my punishment, my price.’
Raghu hugged him and gave out a cry. Vijay too cried. After a while when they controlled their emotions, Raghu asked, ‘Veda?’
‘I divorced her, long back, in fact just after a year when u left me.’ He stood quiet for a moment, looked down at the ground, then raised his head and said, ‘I have been searching you since then. For about a year I tried to find you among all the people we know but in vain. Then I started traveling only praying to God that one day I will find you. Where have you gone?’
‘I was here, but you were always with me, here,’ he touched his chest with his palm.”
“Ok, you can end it now,” said Sooraj with same enthusiasm that he had when the story had started, “And about the…”
“One more sentence to end my story, please let me tell.”
Nodded Sooraj. Preetam continued, “Then one of the man on the dias started a poem,
“Says Rahim of Threads of Love, never let it break,
Snips once it never joins, if joins a knot remains.”
The knot was of 28 years in their life. Thank you.”
Sooraj said, “Thank you, it was a nice narration, a very professional narration which as a director I could ‘see’ the movie. Now coming to the story, I felt that it was a monotonous story. You see, its simple, two best friends…enters a girl...ruins there friendship…sounds familiar. It won’t work.”
Preetam could see his dream shattered; could see his nightmare in reality. He had no time to react as Sooraj continued without pause, “But when you ended the story with the poem it made me think. Like others in the competition you did not concentrate on details of movie but emphasized on the idea, the thought; the thought of love and how important it is to preserve this love. Anyways you know the concept…its your concept actually. So I say…Congrats! You are selected for the next round,” he was smiling and continued, “but, if your screenplay ideas click only then I can think of selecting you among the finalists who will make short movies to compete among themselves. Am I clear.”
Preetam stood there, smiling and nodding.
A year later, a movie was released with title “Threads of Love”.
