If you’re reading this, you already know — I only write about films I love. And oh, boy, did I love Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra.
Let’s start with this: Lokah is ambitious. The kind of ambition that makes a producer both terrified and deeply impressed. It’s one of those “historic, colossal, echoing commercial flop” risks that somehow didn’t flop — because every rupee of that ambition is right there on screen. Hats off to producer Dulquer Salmaan and director Dominic Arun. They didn’t just swing for the fences; they built an entirely new stadium out of folklore, neon, and sheer audacity.
For a Malayalam film, the technical brilliance isn’t just “good.” It’s jaw-dropping. Nimish Ravi’s cinematography turns Bengaluru into a rain-slicked cyberpunk fever dream. The VFX? Seamless. Jakes Bejoy’s score? An electrifying, myth-soaked pulse that doesn’t just accompany scenes — it devours them. It looks and sounds like a 100-crore film, and it feels like a benchmark for what Malayalam cinema can be.
Now, I’ve seen the hot takes. “It’s all setup.” “The plot’s thin.” “It’s just a Chapter One.”
As a screenwriter, I say: Exactly. That’s the brilliance.
We’ve been spoon-fed tidy, three-act comfort-food stories for so long that we’ve forgotten the thrill of a real saga beginning to unfold. Lokah isn’t incomplete; it’s deliberately patient. It’s the cinematic equivalent of the first hundred pages of a dense fantasy epic — a world-building overture that trusts the audience to lean in and connect the dots.
The organ-trafficking plot? That’s not the story — that’s the ignition. The simple thread that drags us into a dense, mythic world. It gives Chandra (Kalyani Priyadarshan) something to punch — and she does, with elegance and raw ferocity.
And speaking of her — what a performance. Kalyani’s quiet, internal portrayal is the definition of “less is more.” She’s not emotionless; she’s anciently tired. You can see the centuries in her silence. That’s a hard thing to play — and a harder thing to appreciate if you’re scrolling your phone between scenes. But for those of us who watch, it’s a treat.
As a filmmaker, I wasn’t just impressed by Lokah — I was envious. It’s bold, beautiful, and unapologetically itself.
Lokah Chapter 1 doesn’t just raise the bar — it redraws it with fire and neon. This is the kind of cinema that reminds me why I fell in love with movies in the first place.
A must-see.
PS. Turning those narrative moments into living comic panels, that wasn’t just style. That was storytelling evolution — smart, gutsy, and perfectly executed. More of that, please.
A personal recollection of the 1988 coup — and how it became a story I had to tell.
It started with a bang.
I was still half asleep in Colombo when my Sri Lankan landlady burst into my room and shouted,
“Maldives has been attacked!”
For a moment, I thought I was dreaming. But her voice had that tremor people get when the world suddenly tilts.
Back then, social media wasn’t even a dream, and the internet was just a rumor from another planet. Communication was fragile and expensive — one cut cable, one dead line, and a nation could vanish into silence.
That morning, the telephone lines to the Maldives went dead. Every few minutes, I twisted the dial on my FM radio, trying to catch Voice of Maldives — the station where my mother was an anchor.
Normally, even through weak signals, I could recognize the rhythm of home: the calm, familiar tone of the announcers — especially hers — and a song fading gently in and out.
But that day, there was only static. A haunting, endless static.
It felt like the country itself had been swallowed by it. That feeling — helplessness mixed with fear — stayed with me.
Fourteen years later, in 2002, I turned that memory into a story.
Representing the Ministry of Atolls Administration, I wrote and directed a TV drama for the TVM Office Teledrama Competition.
But I didn’t want to tell the story from the frontlines of Malé. I wanted to tell it from the edges — from a remote island where the only connection to the world was rumor and radio.
The story followed Arif (Ali Waheed), a banished drug addict from Malé, serving his term in that island. Beneath his rebellion and defiance lay a lifetime of unresolved pain — an unhealed wound from his father, Sattar (Mohamed Asif).
When the coup unfolds, and communication with Malé is cut off, Arif’s fear for his estranged father becomes the story’s emotional heartbeat. The thought that something might have happened to the man he both hated and missed forces him to confront what he’s been running from all along.
The drama opened the same way that morning had begun for me — Jameel (the late Mohamed Saleem), Arif’s caretaker, twisting the radio dial, searching for a voice in the static.
As Jameel, Arif, and their co-workers debated over the silent radio, someone ran through the forest shouting,
“Malé has been taken over!”
The island erupted in fear.
That scene was the most logistically challenging I’ve ever shot. My cinematographer, Abdul Latheef, and I spent a week planning every frame — the crane shots, crowd movements, and pure, unfiltered chaos.
We shot on a Friday, when most islanders were home. We started wide and ended close, knowing our extras’ patience would fade before our energy did. By the time we wrapped, half the crowd had gone home — but the emotion stayed raw and real.
It remains one of my favorite sequences I’ve ever directed.
And I didn’t create it alone.
The late Mohamed Saleem was my compass. He wasn’t just an actor — he was part of that history. On the day of the coup, he was serving in the NSS (now MNDF) and had been taken captive by the mercenaries.
His firsthand memories shaped the script. He helped me understand the fear, the sound, the silence.
When Saleem looked at that radio, he wasn’t acting — he was remembering.
Before filming, I studied every account I could find. But what truly shaped the drama was a three-hour home video my brother-in-law had filmed in Malé during the coup.
He recorded everything — crowds, panic, prayers, and the pulse of a nation on edge. That tape became my time machine.
Later in the story, Arif rushes to a group of islanders gathered around a radio. He tunes until he catches a faint Voice of America broadcast. The crowd leans in as he translates:
“The capital is under attack. The President and his cabinet have been captured.”
That moment wasn’t fiction — it used real audio from that same tape. Every crackle of static, every tremble in the voice, untouched.
From that tape, I also recreated scenes of panic — islanders queuing at shops, buying rice and tinned food, preparing for an uncertain tomorrow.
The next morning, in real life, I was still in Colombo when the radio came alive again.
And then I heard it.
My mother’s voice.
Through that fragile frequency, she announced that the mercenaries had fled — that the country was safe. Her voice trembled with exhaustion and relief.
I’ll never forget that sound.
In the drama, Arif wakes to the same moment. The radio hums softly with a Qur’an recitation, the same surah that played before my mother’s real-life announcement. Then — the words of salvation.
What followed was a montage of joy — children running, flags raised, laughter through tears. My small tribute to the kind of humanity Michael Bay often captures after chaos.
But one voice was still missing.
I wanted to include the President’s full post-victory speech — the one broadcast right after calm returned. Finding it became a mission.
I searched archives, old offices, and friends — until my brother-in-law’s brother found a copy.
At first, I planned to use only a few seconds. But during post-production, I realized it wasn’t just a speech. It was the sound of a nation breathing again.
I used the entire address, layering it over visuals of people listening on radios — at communal spots, verandahs, and corners. Faces in awe. Faces in prayer. Faces in gratitude.
In the final scene, a worried Arif, unable to contact his family, watches locals playing football. Jameel calls out to him.
“Arif!”
Arif turns.
Jameel and his friends step aside.
And there — in the center of the frame — stands Sattar, his father.
No dialogue. No explanation. Just two men — broken, and finally whole.
It remains one of the most honest endings I’ve ever filmed.
The drama went on to win Best Director, and on most 3rd Novembers, TVM re-runs it.
For me, 3rd November is not just a celebration of triumph. It’s the sound of static turning into a heartbeat. It’s Saleem’s trembling hands on a radio dial. It’s the voice of a mother breaking through fear. It’s the moment a nation — terrified, disconnected, but unbroken — found its voice again.
Because sometimes, history doesn’t begin with silence. It begins with a bang.
Last night, Kan’bulo completedits historic run at Olympus — 52 housefull shows. The first Dhivehi film ever to achieve such a milestone. Sitting with that number, I don’t just feel pride, I feel a deep sense of gratitude. For me, this journey has never been about breaking records. It has always been about reaching hearts. And knowing that so many people stepped into Kan’bulo’s world, carried her pain, and walked out changed — that’s the real triumph.
When I began writing Kan’bulo, I told myself this couldn’t simply be another screenplay. It had to be a lived experience. I wanted everysilence, every breath, every hesitation on the page to pull the audience into Kan’bulo’s skin. I didn’t want them to merely watch her story unfold. I wanted them to breathe with her, to ache with her, to hold her fear as if it were their own.
This demanded restraint. It is easy for a writer to fall into the trap of overexplaining, to wrap emotion in too many words. But Kan’bulo taught me the power of what remains unsaid. The silences became my dialogue. And in those silences, the audience leaned closer, feeling more than words could ever spell out.
The shell motif willalways remain the heart of my writing journey in this film. In that moment where Kan’bulo tries to cast her half of the shell into the sea, all hope gone — Ariz stops her, placing his half upon hers. That single gesture carried the weight of volumes of dialogue I could have written. But instead, silence filled the hall. A silence so profound that it became shared, collective, almost sacred. I remember sitting in the cinema, watching the audience hold their breath with me, and I knew then — the silence had spoken.
Structurally, the screenplay was written with a clear emotional trajectory: the simmer, the boil, and then the eruption. The pacing isn’t accidental. Every scene builds incrementally, creating pressure just beneath the surface until it inevitably breaks. That breaking point — the climax — is where craft and emotion converge. It’s not spectacle for the sake of shock, but catharsis in the truest Aristotelian sense: the purging of emotion, not only for Kan’bulo, but for the audience who has carried her burdens alongside her.
But none of this would have been possible if the words had stayed on paper. My deepest gratitude goes to Hussain Munavvar, who entrusted me with the chance to write this screenplay and then carried it to the screen with vision and courage. To every single member of the cast and crew — you gave my pages flesh, blood, and heartbeat. You transformed silence into cinema, and for that, I am forever thankful.
As I look back now, what stays with me isn’t just the record of 52 housefull shows. It’s the hope that every Kan’bulo out there — every girl who suffers in silence, every soul who feels unseen — will be given the protection, dignity, and safety they deserve. Stories can open eyes, but it is our duty as a society to open our arms.
To me, Kan’bulo will never just be a film. It will always be a promise — that no girl should ever have to carry such burdens alone.
I arrived in Thoddoo this evening for a very different reason than my first visit here. My son’s academy is playing in a football tournament, and I came as a parent in the stands, cheering for him. But my mind can’t help but travel back 26 years to 1999, when I first set foot on this island.
Back then, I wasn’t here for sports. I had just been transferred to the Ministry of Atolls Administration, and that year the Ministry decided to take part in TVM’s Office Teledrama competition—a Ramadan tradition that was quite popular. The previous year’s entry from the Atolls didn’t land well, so the responsibility fell on me to write and direct the new one. That’s how Thauba (Atonement) was born.
It was the story of a simple island girl whose one mistake spirals her life into chaos, drowning her in shame and straining her bond with her father. A straightforward tale, but with enough emotional weight to test TVM’s broadcasting codes. Thankfully, it aired the way I envisioned, though years later I saw a re-run that had been chopped mercilessly.
Since the drama was set on an island, choosing a location was easy—after all, the Ministry oversaw them all. But fate pointed me toward Thoddoo. One of my colleagues was from here, and he became my guide, suggesting locations as I wrote and later serving as project manager. That was how I first arrived in Thoddoo.
I don’t recall all the exact places we filmed, but certain images stay vivid. A rainy-night scene where the girl wakes from a nightmare, stepping out into the downpour as if to cleanse her sins—it was shot in the backyard of a local house.
Another unforgettable shoot was the nightmare sequence surrounded by fire. We staged it in a wide open ground, taking every safety precaution. Even so, the smoke was too much—the actress, who suffered from asthma, fainted and had to be rushed to the health center. I sometimes wonder if that ground was the football field I now walk past.
Despite these challenges, Thauba went on to win Best Drama that year. The late Hajja Mohamed, who played the girl, won Best Actress runner-up. Many of the cast and crew who made that teledrama possible are no longer with us—Hajja, Mohamed Saleem (Umbe), Ahmed Saeed. They were the backbone of the Atolls dramas. May they all rest in peace.
So yes, being here again feels oddly comforting. I may not remember every street or backyard, but I do remember that a story we shot here once carried weight, stirred emotions, and even made history in its own little way. Today, I return as a father, with different emotions but the same sense of gratitude to Thoddoo.
Some films don’t rush to dazzle you; they quietly earn your trust, then break your heart—gently. Saiyaara is that kind of romance. Structurally, it’s a clean three-act glide, anchored by an early motif—a diary—that threads private feeling into shared experience. Without giving anything away, the film treats time and memory like tides: always moving, sometimes generous, sometimes unforgiving. You sense it more than you “spot” it.
What gives the film its beating heart is not perfection, but fracture. Vaani enters the story carrying the sting of betrayal—her trust shattered at the very moment she expected stability. Krish, on the other hand, is marked by angst and distance, shaped by an uneasy relationship with his father. They meet carrying these quiet wounds, and the romance doesn’t erase them; it begins with healing. Their brokenness is the foundation, their small acts of mending the mortar. That’s why their love feels earned rather than scripted.
Casting fresh faces in a big-hearted romance is a risk that pays off. Ahaan Panday as Krish and Aneet Padda as Vaani bring unvarnished innocence, chemistry that feels observed rather than engineered. Their performances turn first love into something lived-in rather than lab-grown. This feels like the true launchpad of their careers, and you can see why.
Director Mohit Suri shoots the film with an ear for music and an eye for youth. His grammar has always been songs as story, not interruptions, and Saiyaara leans into this conviction. You don’t wait for the music here—you ride it. The lyrics often function as dialogue, filling spaces that words alone can’t.
From a writer’s chair, what impresses most is the use of plot devices with quiet precision. A personal belonging becomes an emotional compass. A chance encounter propels the story without feeling contrived. Minor misplacements and slips are gentle foreshadowing, never telegraphed. And a parallel family subplot mirrors the central romance, echoing bigger questions of love, silence, and expression. These devices never draw attention to themselves; they act as invisible scaffolding, holding up the emotional architecture.
Last night, I watched Saiyaara on Netflix with my wife—my muse, my first reader, my fiercest critic. And here’s the thing: we didn’t just tear up at the end. No, we cried almost through the entire duration of the movie. We turned into two people locked in a tear-wiping competition. If a tissue box had been nearby, dozens wouldn’t have been enough—we’d have needed wholesale cartons. It’s not our usual style, but then again, it’s very us. That’s this film’s trick: it makes crying together feel less like defeat and more like a strange, soggy victory lap.
As a title, Saiyaara belongs exactly where it points—up there with the brightest of stars. Yes, among the Bollywood, Hollywood, or any-wood constellations. And it gets there the honest way: with feeling, craft, and faces you’ll believe in.
A must-see.
P.S. The editing by Rohit Makwana and Devendra Murdeshwar is crisp and potent, never indulgent, with many sequences that had me grinning ear to ear, even when I was crying.
It takes a certain kind of producer to make a blockbuster. But it takes a braver one to follow it up with something as raw, unsettling, and emotionally demanding as Kan’bulo.
Ali Shaniz, the producer behind Kamanaa—the biggest Dhivehi blockbuster of 2024—could have played it safe. He had every reason to. After delivering one of the most commercially successful films in recent memory, most would steer toward lighter waters. But Shaniz chose the storm. He chose Kan’bulo.
This isn’t just a film. It’s a cinematic reckoning. A story laced with silence, trauma, and emotional violence—territory most producers would instinctively avoid. But not Shaniz. When director Hussain Munavvaru handed him the screenplay, Shaniz didn’t hesitate. He understood what the story was asking of him—not just financially, but morally. And he said yes.
Producing a film like Kan’bulo is not just about funding—it’s about backing the emotional and social weight of the story. Shaniz never once tried to soften the edges. He never once asked, “Can this be toned down?” Instead, he leaned in. He created the space for this film to be what it needed to be: unflinching and honest.
It’s also worth noting that this was the very same team that made Kamanaa what it was. From post-production to performances, Shaniz believed in bringing everyone back—not for familiarity’s sake, but because he understood that a story this delicate needed people who could hold it with care.
As a writer, it’s rare to find a producer who not only respects the page but also protects it. Shaniz is that kind of producer. He doesn’t just produce movies—he shoulders them. With grit. With grace. And most of all, with guts.
Producer Ali Shaniz is once again at the helm, this time navigating far rougher waters with Kan’bulo. But steady as ever, he’s steering this ship straight through the storm. And if there’s anyone I’d trust to sail a story this heavy into harbor—it’s him. Aye, Captain.
Kan’bulo is currently enjoying a successful run at Olympus.
One of the most rewarding experiences as a screenwriter is when a simple motif quietly transforms into the heartbeat of a story. In Kan’bulo, that motif was the shell.
The shell begins its journey as a tender gesture — Ariz gifting half of it to Kan’bulo. On the surface, it feels like a token of affection, but beneath that lies a symbol of incompleteness, of two halves belonging together. It’s fragile, ordinary even, yet it carries the weight of connection and hope.
The true resonance of the shell revealed itself in the crucial scene where Kan’bulo, utterly broken and stripped of all hope, decides to throw away her half into the sea — as if to surrender everything she has left. On paper, this was the perfect place for dialogue, the kind of moment where one could write pages of desperate exchanges. But instead, I chose silence.
From a screenwriting perspective, this was an intentional technical decision. I let the motif do the storytelling. In screenwriting, dialogue often competes with action, but when a motif is planted and nurtured throughout the narrative, it earns the right to replace words. The act of Ariz stopping her hand and placing his half-shell over hers became a complete scene arc: setup (the decision to throw), conflict (his intervention), and resolution (the joining of the halves). No words needed.
The result was powerful. In the theatre that night, silence extended beyond the screen — the audience, too, fell into complete stillness. You could feel them breathing with Kan’bulo, watching two halves become whole. That shared silence was not emptiness but resonance. It was cinema at its purest: visual storytelling carrying emotion more strongly than dialogue ever could.
For me, that moment alone made the journey of writing Kan’bulo worthwhile. The shell was no longer just a prop — it became the soul of the film, binding the characters and the audience in one collective heartbeat. Sometimes, it is in the absence of words that cinema finds its truest voice.
Kan’bulo is currently enjoying a successful run at Olympus.
There are films that entertain, films that inspire, and then there are films like Kan’bulo — films that confront. Films that hold your gaze and refuse to blink first. Directed by Hussain Munawwaru, Kan’bulo is not a safe film. It’s a brave, emotionally volatile narrative that pulses with truth — sometimes uncomfortable, often heartbreaking, and always deeply human.
The story traces back to Yuktha, the award-winning long story by Yashfa Abdul Qani. Her delicate yet devastating writing carried the emotional weight that demanded adaptation. Reshaping it for the screen meant preserving its soul while finding a visual rhythm to match its intensity.
At the heart of the film is Mariyam Azza, delivering one of her strongest performances to date. Playing Kan’bulo demands range and endurance, and she handles every moment — from innocence to devastation to resilience — with precision. Even her silences carry meaning.
The ensemble brings depth and texture: Sheela Najeeb with quiet strength, Wasia Mohamed with loyal presence, Shakeela with protective resilience, Ahmed Easa with tenderness, Ahmed Nimal with chilling intensity, and Ismail Rasheed in a performance that feels like a powerful return. Together, they anchor the film’s emotional truth.
The makeup and costume work of Rishfa Abdul Samad and Hussain Hazim (Sandy) supports the characters with subtle authenticity, while Mohamed Faisal (Fai) shapes sound into an emotional undercurrent that lingers. Ahmed Imthiyaz (Inthi) adds music that mourns, observes, and uplifts without ever overwhelming.
Editor Abdulla Muaz, handling both edit and color grading, balances past and present with seamless precision, letting the story flow like fractured memory while keeping the emotions grounded. His work ensures the narrative is coherent yet haunting.
Producer Ali Shaniz deserves recognition for backing a film of such weight, reuniting the trusted team from Kamanaa and giving space for significance over safety.
And at the center, Munawwaru directs with restraint and conviction. He doesn’t exploit pain; he lets it speak. His choices give the film its raw honesty, making it less of a story told and more of an experience endured.
Kan’bulo is not an easy watch, nor was it an easy script to write. But it is necessary. It stares directly at what many would rather look away from — and by the end, neither can we.
Sholay turned 50 on 15th August 2025, and I couldn’t resist revisiting this cinematic phenomenon that first burned into my memory when I was a boy of 10 or 12, sitting wide-eyed in Olympus Cinema. The screen was larger than life, and so were the men and women who strode across it. That memory is still with me.
Half a century later, Sholay is still fire.
A Story Told Like a Folk Ballad
At its heart, Sholay is a story of friendship, revenge, and courage. But the beauty lies in how Ramesh Sippy crafted it — not just as a narrative, but as a ballad. Every frame feels soaked in dust, sweat, and echoes of Ramgarh. Screenwriter duo Salim–Javed wrote with such force that lines still roll off tongues like folk proverbs.
“Kitne aadmi the?”
Not just a question — but a line that has lived in film buffs’ bloodstream for 50 years.
Performances Etched in Fire
Every actor gave us something unforgettable.
Amitabh Bachchan’s Jai — quiet, brooding, carrying melancholy in his harmonica.
Dharmendra’s Veeru — mischievous and loud but golden-hearted.
Sanjeev Kumar’s Thakur — dignity wrapped in grief.
Amjad Khan’s Gabbar Singh — terror personified, redefining what a villain could be.
Hema Malini’s chatterbox Basanti added charm, and Jaya Bhaduri’s Radha reminded us that silence can sometimes be louder than words.
Scenes That Became Cinema Itself
Jai and Radha’s Silent Symphony
My personal favorite: Jai sits quietly on the veranda, playing his harmonica under the weight of night, while Radha moves through the opposite balcony, gently extinguishing the lanterns one by one. No words pass between them — none are needed. The sound of the harmonica and the dimming lights create a language of their own.
Each lantern Radha puts out is more than a simple act; it symbolizes the extinguishing of warmth and possibilities in her life. As a widow, bound by cultural expectations that deny her the chance of remarriage, those fading lights mirror the shadows she must live in — the quiet acceptance of a life dimmed by loss. In Jai’s music, there is empathy, perhaps even unspoken longing, but also the recognition of a love that cannot be voiced. The scene becomes both intimate and metaphoric — a communion of silence, where music and darkness carry the weight of connection, restraint, and yearning.
Veeru’s Drunken Proposal
On top of the water tank, Veeru — drunk as ever — threatening to end it all unless Basanti’s aunt agrees to their marriage. It’s comic, dramatic, and absurdly heartfelt — a reminder that Sholay knew how to balance intensity with levity.
The Final Showdown
The crippled Thakur taking on Gabbar — no hands, no guns. Just fury, pain, and justice. It’s one of the most cathartic climaxes ever staged in Indian cinema, where the hero isn’t Jai or Veeru anymore — it’s justice itself.
The Technical Brilliance
Sholay wasn’t just another film. It was a benchmark. Shot in 70mm with stereophonic sound — a first for Indian cinema — it was an event in itself. Dwarka Divecha’s cinematography turned Ramgarh into a mythic land, where dust, rock, and horizon became characters. R.D. Burman’s score — from the playful “Mehbooba” to the melancholic flute — didn’t just accompany the story, it told it.
MS Shinde’s editing kept the three-hour-plus film taut. And the action scenes? Bold, choreographed with raw energy, and still unmatched in their scale.
The Legacy of Friendship
If one thing outlives even Gabbar’s terror, it’s the bond of Jai and Veeru. The two of them, riding the motorbike with Basanti’s horse cart trailing behind, is an image of friendship so iconic that it practically became India’s shorthand for loyalty.
“Yeh dosti hum nahin todenge.”
It wasn’t just a song. It was a promise.
Why It Still Matters
For me, watching Sholay at 50 wasn’t nostalgia. It was recognition. That this film didn’t just entertain, it showed us that a film could be both masala and masterpiece. That dialogues could outlive generations. That silence could speak volumes.
A Personal Reflection
When I first watched Sholay, I didn’t understand the layers. The subtext, the motifs, the metaphors — they all flew past me.
But as I stepped into screenwriting, I began to see differently. I understood the way silence can carry a scene, how a lamp can symbolize love and status, how even a villain’s laugh can echo with meaning. Today, watching it again, I felt the film not just as a story, but as a revelation — timeless in every sense.
From the precision of Salim–Javed’s screenplay — where every scene builds character and tension without waste — to the balance of humor, tragedy, action, and romance, Sholay is a masterclass.
Its narrative arcs are clean yet layered, its use of silence is as deliberate as its dialogues, and its motifs flow seamlessly through character and story. The film doesn’t merely entertain; it demonstrates, frame by frame, what cinematic storytelling can achieve when all elements — writing, direction, performance, music, and craft — converge with purpose.
Sholay is not just a film we remember — it’s a film that continues to teach cinema how to be cinema.
“Jo darr gaya, samjho mar gaya.”
But Sholay never feared time. And that’s why it never died.
Seventeen years ago, today—on August 25, 2008, at around 8:45 pm—I wrapped up the final episode (Episode 52) of Hinithunvelaashey Kalaa, a series from TVM that went on to win the hearts of the nation. I was sitting inside, wearing only shorts, with rain tapping a busy Morse code on the windows. My heart and body were warmed—not just by the embrace of my ever-loving wife, who helped me kiss goodbye to some corny lines—but by the sheer joy of finishing the journey.
It all began on February 21, 2006, one late morning, under a breezy sky at West Park. I sat with director Abdul Faththaah by the sea, scribbling notes in my worn-out, flower-covered notebook, sipping papaya juice (plus a squeeze of lime), while he sipped a milk coffee. He had a seed of a concept—a 52-episode serial called Hinithunvelaashey Kalaa—about two childhood friends whose lives were wildly different yet bound by a shared past.
From that meeting, characters sprang to life. Ina, the tomboyish farmer girl in Kelai, cap on her head, sun on her shoulders. Fazu, the diligent teacher with a quiet soul. Around them, layers of family, history, and society emerged. The story wasn’t just a drama—it was a slice of the Maldives, its struggles and hopes stitched into every scene.
I scripted the first 32 episodes in just over a month—obsessed and restless, averaging almost an episode a day, since production had already begun in Ha. Kelai and the scripts had to keep flowing to match the shoot. My mind was on fire—literally waking at odd hours, skull burning, yet never able to stop typing. That first arc, set entirely in Kelai, poured out in one feverish burst.
Then something unexpected happened.
Once filming wrapped on the 32 episodes and editing began, the material didn’t quite fit the boxes I had built. Each episode overflowed into the next. Before long, the original 32 had ballooned into 40 episodes.
What could have been a headache turned out to be a gift. Suddenly, I had 12 more episodes to write—episodes that would bring the story to Malé. It was a creative second wind. Instead of dragging my feet, I leaned in. Those episodes gave space for new twists, deeper arcs, and an ending that felt more earned. To my surprise, even Faththaah sighed in relief—the story had room to breathe.
The series first went on air on July 26, 2006—Independence Day in the Maldives. A proud date to begin a journey. But like all long journeys, life had its way of testing us. Around Episode 33, one of our actors ran into real-life trouble, and TVM had no choice but to pull him off the screen. Policy was policy.
The series came to a sudden halt. Weeks stretched into months. And then, more than a year later, re-started again—from Episode 1. Frustration, yes. Suspense, absolutely. But looking back, it was also a strange kind of gift. The audience got to live the story twice, and I found the space to refine the series finale.
By late August 2008, writing Episodes 51 and 52 felt bittersweet. On that rainy evening, August 25th, I typed the final words of Episode 52, closed my laptop, and hugged my wife. That hug—warm, knowing, and peaceful—was my personal wrap party. The final episode later aired on November 11, 2008—Republic Day in the Maldives.
If I could send a postcard to that former me, I’d say:
You did it. You wrangled 52 episodes—that’s equivalent to thirteen feature films worth of storytelling.
You wrestled with long nights, reruns, rewrites, cast drama, and even a mid-series collapse. You turned chaos into creation. And you gave Maldivian audiences a story that made them laugh, cry, debate, and remember.
Hinithunvelaashey Kalaa wasn’t just a TV series. It was a chapter of my life. A love letter to storytelling. A memory stitched forever into the fabric of Maldivian television.
And more than that—it sharpened my craft. Writing this series allowed me to experiment with rhythm, dialogue, symbolism, cliffhangers, and emotional pacing in ways I never had before. I discovered the power of layering subplots, weaving historical flashbacks, planting narrative traps, and using pauses and silences as deliberately as dialogue itself. Many of the screenwriting “tricks” I still use today—those playful double meanings, those quiet beats before an explosion of emotion—were born in those 52 episodes. It was the project that turned me from a writer into a screenwriter. And I will always be indebted to director Fathaah for giving me this opportunity of a lifetime.
Seventeen years on, I look back and realize: every page, every scene, every sleepless night was part of a greater script—the story of my own becoming. That rainy evening in August 2008 was not an ending, but the beginning of everything that followed.
Because sometimes, the greatest journeys are written between two words—
Mahdi Ahmed 