Azhiyatha Kolangal

<p>Gowrishankar, the managing director of a company in , receives a letter from his old friend Pattabi informing him about the death of their teacher, Indumathi. On reading the letter, Gowri becomes nostalgic and recollects his past. In childhood, Gowri, Pattabi and Raghupathy are close friends and study at a village school. The three friends try to explore sex through a prostitute, but run away immediately after reaching her house. Pattabi likes the girl who visits his house and starts spending time with her. Gowri likes the new teacher Indu and dreams of living with her, despite the wide age gap. Raghupathy looks for excitement through his friends. Gowri’s dreams are shattered when Indu’s fiance arrives. Indu spends more time with her fiancé, which upsets Gowri. Pattabi and Gowri fight on trivial issues, but stay united due to Raghupathy. The boys get influenced by the postmaster, who indulges in sexual activities outside the village. They also get tempted to smoke like Indu’s fiancé to experience it. All their excitement ends when Raghupathy drowns in the village pond when the three go swimming. When Gowri visits Indu, she is also in tears and shares her pain with him. In the present, Gowri is filled with tears in his eyes after recollecting his childhood, his friend and teacher’s demises and the time spent with his friends. After the critical and commercial success of his directorial debut , Balu Mahendra decided to make a film in Tamil, that was partly autobiographical according to him. It was during this time, he was approached by to shoot , the latter’s directorial debut. Initially hesitant to work in Tamil films, Balu Mahendra accepted the offer, thus entered the as a cinematographer. Because of his commitments with , he shelved his directorial venture. After the success of , he revived the project and named it . The film was produced by Devi Films of Devi Theatre Complex. The film was shot at Pettavaithalai, Sirugamani,Perugamani and Inungoor near Trichy in 27 days within the budget of 8 lakhs. Inspired from the 1971 American film , the central characters of the film are played by three adolescent boys, who are on the verge of sexuality. , played a small role as a school teacher. Kamal Haasan played a guest role as a token of friendship for Balu Mahendra and his portions were shot in a day at three locations. Apart from direction, Balu Mahendra assumed his usual responsibility of cinematography and wrote the screenplay, while D. Vasu edited the film. The music was composed by , with lyrics by . opened to critical acclaim and was commercially successful too. Ranga of wrote Balu turned a literary short story into a sweet new poem with his camera. Along with it was the only Tamil film to be shown at the in 1980. The film’s camera work was considered to be very innovative and was very different from other Tamil films that had come before. The film is widely considered to be one of Mahendra’s “masterpieces”.</p>