As sangeeth and mehendi functions seep into the traditional Tamil weddings, A. Gokul Krishna’s Aaha Kalyanam , the Tamil remake of Hindi hit, Band Baaja Baaraat , hopes to capture the slowly changing cultural mores.
Having grown up in a big family with dozens of cousins and witnessed a number of fat weddings, Gokul was perhaps a good bet to give the Punjabi-flavoured original a Tamil makeover. But, how did he decide on what elements from the original to chop and change? “I didn’t want to change too much. I have kept all the moments that we know landed well in the original. Though I was given lot of creative freedom, I approached it like a remake.”
How will Aaha Kalyanam speak to the large audience whose weddings are still high on rituals? “We are not trying to show how weddings should be done, but how there can be other ways of doing the same thing. And why not?” asks Krishna, director of the film.
In a city that teems with wedding contractors than planners, did he initially have doubts that the plot wouldn’t work? “I looked at it as a story about a relationship between two very different people; a Chennai girl with an entrepreneurial spirit and a naïve village bloke who identifies with the liberal urban culture, which matures as they go about organising weddings. But, the concept of a street wedding that’s shown in the film, for instance, is not alien to Chennai, particularly the northern part of the city,” he says. Like most first-timers who work with Yash Raj films, Gokul too has been offered a three-film contract. When asked how he feels to be backed by such a big production house, he is at a loss of words. “What can I say? I have been plain lucky.”
