‘Mandhira Punnahai’ is an upcoming film produced by Nagarajan, Karthik Nagarajan under the banner Indhira Pictures. Karu. Palaniappan has written and directed the film.

This film was first called ‘Asokamithiran’ and Dhanush was to do the lead role. Later Dhanush was unable to do it and then it assumed the present status with some tweaking in the story to match the new credits. There was also a ‘Mandhira Punnahai’ in 1986 which starred Sathyaraj, Nadhiya, and Raghuvaran and Baby Shalini. The 80s film was a masala pot boiler and the new one is a meeting of minds.

Karu. Palaniappan is known for his deft handling of human emotions in his films. His previous films Parthiban Kanavu, Sivappathigaram, Pirivom Santhippom and Sadhurangam all had an intelligent emotional quotient. They were also very different from each other.        

The design of ‘Mandhira Punnahai’ is this. Every individual on this earth has the same fundamental feelings. Hunger, Anger, Tears, Laughter, Love, Lust, all these basic feelings of humans are same for every individual. But the reasons to emote these feelings differ from individual to individual. In that case, each individual lives in his own self-determining world.

It is a general feeling that love can change anyone in this world because it is believed to have a magic. But there are some people for whom love is not spontaneous and there are some others who are not bothered about it.

The story of this film is about a person who has a world unto himself and is unaffected by any thing, not even love. It is about the real feeling of the term love. There is no disconnecting villain in this film. All wars are fought with emotions and sentiments.

The hero in the film is a techie who leads a carefree life without any concern for others and the heroine is a modern girl with ethical values who works in an automobile showroom. When their different ideas on love and life try to converge it diverges from the core point.

The director Karu Palaniappan himself has played the hero role and ‘Karuppasamy Kuthagaitharar’ fame Meenakshi plays the lady love. Santhanam, Maheswari, Rishy and Thambi Ramaiah play other important roles. Director Nakulan Ponnusamy is also in a crucial role.

All the characters in the film are in black and white with all human vulnerabilities. Their negative traits also come across. So the choice of actors was crucial to make the story credible and Karu has managed it perfectly.

Karu said he turned a hero because regular heroes would have had reservations doing the character because it has shades of grey. Beautiful Meenakshi is deglamourised in this film and she expects this film to be a turning point in her career as she has got a plum role to perform.

The entire film was shot in just over 90 days. One song was shot in the lush green locales of Chickmagalur and the rest of the film, including the entire talkie part, was shot in Chennai.

The technical team of ‘Mandhira Punnahai’ comprises cinematographer ‘Pazhassi Raja’ Ramnath Shetty, art director Rajeevan and National Award winning editor Raja Mohammed, besides others.

Karu’s regular Vidyasagar has scored the music. There are six songs in the film, all melodies. Five of them are montage songs and one solo song picturised on the heroine. Lyricist Arivumadhi who was away from the scene for five years has returned to write lyrics with this film.

Sudha Raghunathan has sung a lovely number. Sudha is very happy because she missed out the super hit melody song “Aalankuyil...” from ‘Parthiban Kanavu’ but did not miss out this time to sing for Vidyasagar.

Te audio of the film was launched on October 20, 2010 at PVR cinemas in Chennai. The film is expected to be a Diwali treat.