5 Star

Five classmates from the Madras Institute of Technology make a simple pact before they graduate: whatever life brings, they will stay together. For a while it works, and the friends even end up at the same company. Then Elango's strict father presses him into marrying his cousin Eshwari, and before long Elango has drifted out of all their lives. Years later Prabhu, still sharing a home and an office with the rest of the group, meets a quiet young woman on a train and falls for her without knowing who she is. When the connection comes to light, the friends close ranks around Eshwari and set out to trace the man who walked away from them. Susi Ganesan wrote and directed this coming-of-age drama as his debut feature, produced by Mani Ratnam's Madras Talkies, with a cast of newcomers led by Prasanna and Kaniha, credited as Kanika, alongside Krishnakumar, Sandhya, Mangai and Karthik. It is a modest, character-driven story about friendship and the compromises of early adulthood, and was later remade in Telugu as Lifestyle.