# Oru Kalluriyin Kathai

Oru Kalluriyin Kathai (transl. The story of a college) is a 2005 Indian Tamil-language romantic drama film written and directed by newcomer Nandha Periyasamy. It stars Arya and Sonia Agarwal, while Jaivarma, Santhanam, and Charuhasan play supporting roles. The music was composed by Yuvan Shankar Raja with editing by Kola Bhaskar and cinematography by R. Madhi. The film was released in 2005 and was deemed a success upon its release.

## Plot

Moorthy is excited to meet his close friend Satya and their other college friends at a reunion after 5 years, seemingly planned after Satya's letter. Unfortunately, Satya's father comes only to inform them that he is in a coma. The psycho-test conducted by his doctor makes Satya reveals some incidents that happened in the early years of his college life. He had fallen in love with Jothi after she helped him board a train he was about to miss. When Jothi joined the same college where he studied, he was overjoyed, as he could see her more often. However, he never confessed his love to her, and this lasted until the farewell day when he heard Jothi advising her friend about this. Satya's narration ends here, as he begins shouting in the doctor's room.
Following the doctor's advice, Satya's friends – Moorthy, Chandru, David, and a few others – decide to follow a recreational treatment for 30 days to help Satya wake up from the coma. They contact almost all the students, their retired principal, and lecturers from batch 2000 to help with this treatment. They find Jothi to be engaged, but Moorthy hides the truth that Satya loves Jothi to make her agree to their plan, and she agrees. The group of students then transforms their present college (2005) into an old college, as it was in the year 2000. Satya is brought to the college and slowly begins to believe it is the same time when he studied. He gets reminded of his love for Jothi and begins to wait for the farewell day, just as he was waiting 5 years ago.
Even Jothi realises that Satya had loved her in the past, and the entire plan is to make Satya propose to her on the farewell day. So, she angrily quits the plan and leaves for her home. On the night before the farewell day, he realises that the current situation he is facing is in the year 2005, not 2000, as he was thinking. Slowly, he begins to remember what exactly happened five years ago on the farewell day. Satya is seen waiting for Jothi outside a temple to confess his love when a corrupt police officer, with whom he had a previous altercation, attacks him. He suddenly wakes up and comes back to the present day, realising that his friends have recreated their entire college days after 5 years.
On the farewell day, Jothi returns to college, and his friends force him to propose to Jothi. Satya goes to Jothi and asks her to stop acting which his friends had asked for and not to cheat herself. He thanks her for saving him for the second time and walks away without expressing his love. Jothi comes running towards Satya and tells him that she needs him and regrets wasting the five years not knowing his love for her. The couple then hugs each other, followed by cheers from all the college students.

## Cast

* Arya as Satya
* Sonia Agarwal as Jothi
* Jaivarma as Moorthy
* Sashi as Chandru
* Santhanam as David
* Anandsami as Guru
* Ravikumar as Satya's father
* Mouli as Principal
* Charle as Lecturer Azhagusundaram
* Pyramid Natarajan as a college correspondent
* Periyar Dasan as Munusamy, college security guard
* Baburaj as a corrupt police officer
* Charuhasan as Doctor
* Thalaivasal Vijay as a taxi driver
* Vasu Vikram
* Kovai Senthil as Nair, canteen cook
* Manju
* Sai Madhavi

## Soundtrack

The music was composed by Yuvan Shankar Raja, with lyrics penned by Na. Muthukumar. R. Rangaraj of Chennai Online wrote Yuvan "songs for 'Oru Kalluriyin Kadhai' are an apt example of Yuvan's perception and understanding of the demands of the market. Yet, he is able to provide something distinctive in the overall delivery, presentation and packaging of the songs".

## Critical reception

Sify wrote "On the whole Oru Kalooriyin Kathai is too high-concept for our audience with a slow paced narration that goes back and forth with a predictable climax." G. Ulaganathan of Deccan Herald wrote, "Weird and depressing. That in a nutshell is Oru Kalluriyin Kadhai [...] Yuvan Shankar Raja’s music is the only saving grace". Lajjavathi of Kalki wrote that the story is good but called the screenplay, dialogues and direction as average and most of the scenes did not stay in the mind and advised Arya to concentrate more on script selection.