Mahdi Ahmed

She came to me dejected. She was jilted. A stranger at first. She had nowhere to go. She was crying. I couldn’t deny her. I gave her a place to stay, gave her food. I even gave her new clothes. She was dazed, and she was confused. A useless life she was living, she thought. She also tried suicide. I tried my best to comfort her, yet I had reservations. I was married.

She started coming out of her shell gradually and each day, revealing a new layer of her complex character. I was fascinated. I was hypnotised. She moved me. She made me cry. She made me laugh.

Finally, I managed to make her smile. After that, she started laughing. Then we laughed together. She started talking, at first, a few words, then in full sentences. We became friends. Her metamorphosis was beautiful. As she was about to come out of her cocoon, something happened.

One cold October night, her boyfriend appeared before her. They fought. She cried. I stood motionless. All I could do was watch. He apologized to her. She forgave him. I was happy for her, yet I couldn’t bear the thought she was going to disappear from my life, forever. Never understood why I had a sinking feeling until she was gone.

Something shattered inside me. It was my heart. Only then I realised I was in love with her… still.

It’s been five months since RAANIYAA left. She was the title of the screenplay which I wrote for DASH STUDIO last year. It was a project DASH STUDIO started under the direction of SEMI MUSTAPHA many years ago. With more than 90% of the principal photography completed, it was shelved abruptly.

At the start of the final quarter of last year, DASH STUDIO decided to complete RAANIYAA and appointed director FATTHAAH to helm the project. Since RAANIYAA was written by AISHATH NEENA several years ago, long before cell phones were introduced to the Maldives, completing the production to her screenplay now, FATTHAAH thought it would be unwise both commercially and critically. That’s when I came into the equation.

FATTHAAH commissioned me to reboot the screenplay of AISHATH NEENA as a fast-tracked project of DASH STUDIO. It took me a month to write a complete re-imagining of RAANIYA. I submitted the draft on October last year. Since then, the hype of RAANIYAA slowly subsided. I am yet to receive feedback of RAANIYAA from director FATTHAAH even though I have already rewritten RAANIYAA once.

The main reason for the hold up this time, according to FATTHAAH was the delay in composing the much-needed songs for RAANIYAA. Five months later, he has resumed work on RAANIYAA. He has met with music composer THITTHI on speeding up the song compositions. In the meantime, location scouting for the Male’ part started last week. FATTHAAH has already chosen HA. KELAI for the island part and then there’s a part in a resort too. He hasn’t decided on that yet.

More updates later…