Mahdi Ahmed

I have started rewriting RAANIYA a day ago even though I am yet to receive any rewritable feedbacks from FATTHAAH. He is set to direct RAANIYA for DASH STUDIO. I handed him the screenplay two days after I had completed writing it. He went through the opening scene and thought the hook was bloody terrific. Before I began writing, I had informed him of the twist at the end. No sooner I gave him the screenplay; he was tempted to read the last page. But I warned him that reading the last page first would spoil the fun. He agreed.

The reason for his delay in reading is because presently he is busy shooting the last four episodes of HINITHUNVELAASHEY KALAA. I am estimating that he would wrap up the shooting within 7-10 days. However, I couldn’t wait for that long.

My current rewrites are based on the very constructive comments given by my beloved wife. She always has this opportunity to read all my screenplays before anyone else does, straight from the softcopy in my laptop. However, for RAANIYA, I had to make her a hardcopy as well because she was more comfortable reading while lying down than sitting near the laptop to read through 150 pages. She was having lower back pain at that time.

Her feedbacks made me wonder why not I had thought of what she had thought. As usual, she has made some improvements on the dialogues, but to her surprise this time around, they were few and far between. She felt the dialogues rock. She always urges me to make them simple and reminds me that less is more.

However, it was the comments she gave on one of the principal character’s inner self that made the difference. Those comments have made the character look three dimensional, and the scenes that character appears have become very intense and more believable. Wish I could reveal the character and those changes. But doing so would spoil the entire storyline. No lawsuits.

Regardless of some heated discussion we had, she loved the overall screenplay and the way it was structured. And the twist she thought was excellent. She rated RAANIYA being more dramatic and livelier than VAALOABI ENGEYNAMA…

Three cheers to her.

I will be doing more rewrites once FATTHAAH comes with his feedback. But that will not happen until 7-10 days later.