Abhijit Speaks :

Dear Mr. Aamir Khan,

I am an admirer of your works and must admit was beyond impressed by Taare Zameen Par. However, your recent flick ‘Ghajini’ has left me completely disappointed.  In what follows – I have attempted to rewrite the story so as to make it slightly better than a South Indian Masala movie – which unfortunately what Ghajini is. In the current form, it might still appeal to a large audience, but the movie is in my opinion truly truly below par. I agreree that – It is easier to critisize a work under the disguise of ‘review’, but not just as easy to actually come up with a suggestion as to how to go about doing it right. In what ensues – I have attempted to the best of my limited abilities the same about Ghajini using the same storyline but presenting it a bit differently, so as to make it somewhat better in my humble and honest opinion.

This is a first cut draft copy of  “How I would go about writing Ghajini”. Having seen memento, it is but obvious that few ideas are based on that, some are blatantly stolen.

Basic theme around which I have written this is – I wanted to get rid of the extra non-sense that I have described here and make a movie around rougly the same plot. Some of the details of the plots are not covered here, especially the first part (Romance between Sanjay and Kalpana), which I believe does not need a lot of rework except deleting a few songs. The other main story is re-written. This is a draft version and there might be a few loose ends (just written in a couple of hours) – I’d try to address those subsequently.

Thanks.

Sincerely

-abhijit

Scene 1

Sanjay is sitting on a bed in hospital – With a polaroid photo of a man and a caption ‘I have killed him’ – perplexed,
doesn’t have a clue – what it is about (on the back of the photo, it is written, Ghajini is dead – Don’t show this to
anybody’. Unaware, Sanjay is staring at nowhere through the window of the hospital. A nurse enters the room ‘Good Morning Sir’ – He promptly hides the photo – She gives him medicine and goes away.

Scene 2

Sanjay is taken to the hospital – But not in the same condition as he’s found in the hospital in the previous scene. He’s treated in the hospital and returns home, to find out, he finds something odd with him.

Scene 3
He soon realizes that he suffers from a certain kind of disorder – Cannot exactly figure out what it is – His attendand nurse tells the doctor odd things she finds about him, a doctor realizes he’s suffering from Blah Blah amnesia. He’s effectively turned into a vegetable, doesn’t have a clue about what is happening, what is he about, he’s spending his days watching TV aimlesslely, changing channels. He doesn’t even have a clue what he’s watching on TV?  As it happens one day the wall clock in his room runs out of battery, he’s been given a prescription to take medicines regularly he soon finds out that he’s not been given the medicine, calls for the nurse who’s off the duty asks someone to give him medicine. He’s infact taking it second time. Another 15-20 mins go away, again looks at the wall clock, finds out its morning gets angry, asks the same maid to give the medicine, she tells him ’she’s given him the medicine he shouts at her asks her to give the medicine.. He takes the medicine and subsequently realizes that its already 10am in the morning when his personal assistant calls on him as is the usual practise at 10am. The personal assistant finds him vomiting and Sanjay starts developing odd symptoms and soon falls unconcious. A doctor is called upon, he’s saved  eventually. But he develops a fear that people around want to hurt him. He receives a phone call – “A man  llegedly calling himself Cop is telling him, he wants to talk somethinb about the night of 10th july”. The assistant promptly takes the phonecall tells the guy, he cannot take the phone call now and cuts the phone. Sanjay is taken aback by this incidence and starts disbelieiving people around him. He thinks that – They want to kill him. He decides to run away – Open’s a Drawer, finds a note – Visit Mom’s house and there’s an address on that. Gathers his stuff and runs away to go to that address. Enters there to find out he’s no clue why he’s there? Starts taking things out of his bag one by one to  find out he’s got a bundle wrapped up. Opens it to find that there’s a lot of cash in it. Eventually figures out that he’s got this problem of short term memory loss. (Remember he’s out of town to Nalasopara)

Scene 4

Suneeta – a final year medicinal student is studying the topic of – ‘Anterograde amnesia’ and finds out there indeed exists one patient in Mumbai who’s suffering from this disease and wants to figure out where he’s? Visits Sanjay’s house only to find out that she cannot meet him.

Scene 5
Sanjay develops a ’system’ to overcome his problem. First he starts with writing chits that help in do things. Second he takes to exercise very seriously for he believes somebody wants to hurt him may be even kill him and he’s got nobody to trust and gotta protect himself. He realizes, his system is ineffective still and needs to figure out a way to remember people and places. Finds out a tourist using a polaroid camera and decides to buy one and goes to a mall to buy a polaroid camera and starts with noting down places and people. Receives another phone call from a cop  – Asking him about the details of the night. He feels the same man wants to find him and kill him. Destroys his phone and decides to end this all by killing the man who’s calling him. He only remembers Kalpana calling Ghajini and the guy saying about a night when Kalpana was killed. He writes down – Ghajini killed Kalpana. He wants to kill me. Find him Kill him. This basically transforms the man who’s fear ridden into someone with a Revenge on his mind and wants to find Ghajini who killed his Girl friend. This finally gives him a purpose to live for “Find Ghajini and Kill Him” (Whether this is a fabrication of his mind or actually the fact he doesn’t know nor does he care)

Scene 6

During his research to find ghajini, he makes one such visit to a city and its during this visit that Dr. Suneeta finds Sanjay walking by. She decides to follow him and follows him to Nalasopara and finds out where he’s living.  She’s about to inform cops about his whereabouts but decides against it for she believes if Cops find him out he’d be taken away and she may not be able to find more about this guy. Sanjay actually realizes that he is being followed and manages to take a photograph of this girl and writes down – “Dangerous” on the photograph.

Scene 7

Hotel Scene where he finds out who Ghajini is and kills his assistant instead. Thats when Ghajini comes to know somebody is after him to kill him.

Scene 8
Decides to break into his house only to find out that the door is not locked at all, she searches around and finds all kind of weird stuff, photographs, his bag and diaries and the fact that he wants to kill Ghajini. Scared, she finds another book which she’s about to open when she listens to the door opening, tries to hide and run away. Manages to run away with two of his old diaries and a few photographs with him.

Scene 9
Sanjay decides not to stay at his place because its too dangerous he thinks, instead starts staying at a hotel closeby. Meanwhile Suneeta tells Ghajini, who is after his life with the photograph and a brief story about him. Ghajini thanks her and decides to outsmart Sanjay.

Scene 10
She returns home and starts reading about Sanjay. This is where the first half of the story begins. She figures out
about his life before this accident and searches more on the case of Murder of Kalpana, where she’s told that She was

killed by a thief who tried to rob her house and when she tried to stop him, she was killed. This is when Sanjay enters her house or hostel or whatever it is to kill her. With the photograph – “dangerous”. How he finds out her address? (she drops her wallet in his house when she had broken into, and in that address, there’s her ID card on which her Address is written) He’s eventually caught by police and kept by Cops for a span of few days.

Scene 11

Suneeta, in the meanwhile continues her search for the loose ends of the story and establishes that Sanjay was injured during the same robbery, though there is no evidence of his presence when Kalpana was killed (his company has managed to keep him out of this whole issue to save the company from any reasonable trouble). And finally finds out why Kalpana was actually killed and thats when she learns about Ghajini. But its already too late. When she visits his place at Nalasopara, she finds it completely destroyed into shambles and tatoos on his body wiped out. She’s devastated – Meanwhile she finds out his bag is intact and finds a gun in the bag. Written over it for your protection
- Use Sensibly. She calls the cops and informs one Mr. Sanjay is injured and destroys her phone.

Scene 12
Connects to Screen 1. When Suneeta Enters the room where Sanjay is – (Remember by now it is wiped out of his memory that she’s dangerous) She gives him his old diaries where after the last page, it is written. Ghajini is dead – I found him and killed him. He takes out the photograph and matches the handwriting. But doesn’t know who is Ghajini and why he’s killed.

Finally there is this slate on his wall with his and Kalpana’s footsteps. He looks at it and says to himself – Life is like this slate on the wall where my footsteps and those of my fellow travellers in this journey are engraved in our memory just like this slate. My slate gets cleaned every fifteen minutes, in half an hour from now I won’t even know why that slate is there, what I thought just now and I won’t even know why I exists, what is the purpose of my life. Is it just me or Everyone else too?