Ravanan Sequel - 1

I saw Ravanan yesterday night and ever since I came out of the movie hall, I had been wanting to write a sequel to the movie. But why a sequel to this movie? I was inspired by Mani Rathnam’s audacity in portraying traditionally accepted good characters with negative shades. Such multi-hued lead characters are typical of Mani ( Nayagan, Dalapathi are a few movies in the same league). Also, the show Prison Break had a big impact on me. The show lived on the kind of thing that I am attempting to do.

(I know it's really long for a blog post, but since the story is a known one, reading this shouldn't be a problem)

For the sake of interesting reading, I will name the characters as follow,

Aishwarya Rai – Aishwarya

Vikram – Veera

Prithviraj  – Dev

Prabhu – Prabhu

Karthik - Sanjeev

My adaptation starts from the scene where Veera falls from the cliff. He is hit by several bullets, but is smiling as he falls down. He is not yet dead and Prabhu is waiting at the bottom of the cliff with the villagers, all holding a well spread net to catch Veera.

Veera lands on the net, the fall made him unconscious. But Prabhu could sense pulse in Veera’s hands and took him for treatment. He could not believe that Aishwarya would come back just to kill Veera, and help her husband settle score. He vowed to strike back at her some day.

Aishwarya was devastated. She could not believe that Dev would use her like that and get back at Veera. She didn’t know if she had to feel happy for her husband or sad for Veera or feel disgusted for being used like a pawn. As the smoke from the gun shots cleared, Dev ran towards Aishwarya and hugged her. He whispered in her ears, “I came for you”. If I didn’t do this, he would come back and get you once again”. He looked into her eyes with all the love in the world, hoping to see at least some of it in her. What he saw was a plain and a bland reaction.

Aishwarya had been through a lot over the last few days. Her world changed from being snow white to shades of black and white, interspersed with no apparent meaning. She had strongly hated Veera till a few days back. But the side of the daredevil that she saw in the last few days, combined with Dev’s harsh words, changed her world for good. The experience made her see black on a white canvass and white in the dark night sky.

The villagers who rescued Veera gave their best in treating him. The bullets were no more in his body. But the bleeding didn’t stop. He needed a special herb located on the other end of the forest. Though he knew where to find the herb, Prabhu needed someone to bring them in a couple of hours else Veera would die of blood loss. Going to the hospital wasn’t an option, as that would only risk Veera’s life. So Prabhu walked to the forest officer’s building. He knew that the one man who could bring the herbs quickly was inside.

Officer Sanjeev, always had a liking for Veera. But he felt that Veera had crossed the line by kidnapping the wife of police officer Dev. So, it took Prabhu some time to convince Sanjeev to get the herbs. Sanjeev didn’t like helping Prabhu, but couldn’t go against the word of the head of the village, where he had to live. Reluctantly, he agreed. And in less than an hour, he fetched the herbs from the plant Sanjeevi and gave them to Prabhu. He knew that Veera would be alive with these herbs and so had to inform the developments to one other person.

Dev and Aishwarya had re-started their lives. The last two months were hard for them as a couple. But they fought their way through the travails. Aishwarya immersed herself in dance. And Dev encouraged her. He thought that dance was the ideal distraction for her to bury the past. But Dev, though he never followed Aishwarya’s dance, started noticing the increasingly dark themes that Aishwarya started to present. He got a feeling that he was losing her for good. He had come to know that Veera had survived the shoot-out, but couldn’t find him anywhere. To the outside world, Veera was dead. Only the villagers in the forest, Sanjeev and he knew that Veera was alive. He was wondering if Aishwarya also knew.

Enter Veera:

In a cave, deep inside the forest, Veera sat with Prabhu alongside him. Veera was recovering well but the gun-shots and the poor medical care made his body weak. But Veera fed on a new kind of strength, one that was previously unknown to him. The strength of conviction made Veera look more majestic than before. Previously he was just a soldier fighting for the down-trodden. Now he was a crusader; someone who had a purpose and a cause to fight for. The happiness that he derived when he saw Aishwarya before being shot, kept him going through all the pain and suffering. He remembered her saying that she wanted to stay with him before he set her free. Aishwarya’s presence on the cliff subsequently led him to conclude whatever he had in his mind. He was pretty sure that she would never be happy with Dev again, after the way he manipulated her. Veera was waiting to be up on his feet once again and bring Aishwarya back. To him, her life with Dev now, was the same as her life with him for those fourteen days. She lived under his captivity during that time. Now she lived in society’s captivity – a married woman had no choice but to live with her husband, even though it she didn’t like it. Veera was not the one to care much for society. He was waiting for the right time to strike. The hunter became the hunted and vice versa. The strange quirks of fate had made everyone circumstantial criminals.

(The plot is in the next post, click here)