The Affair: An Act of Selfless Love

The Affair is an award-winning Tamil short film directed by Surrya M. Narayan. The film follows the story of a sick bedridden wife who believes that her husband is cheating on her, the children persist that their father is cheating on her with a girl of their age. The daughter argues with her father ashamed of his sinful act, yet the father doesn't say anything even once during the argument hence further proving their point. The next day itself the father comes to clarify that he is indeed cheating on his wife with a girl who is blind therefore since his wife is about to die in a month or so, he asks for her favor one last time, asking her if she could lend her eyes to the blind girl who he was 'apparently' having an affair with. Both the son and the daughter who are also witnessing this scene are absolutely disgusted and repulsed by their father unable to process over how could he even think about crossing his line. Nonetheless, the mother signs the paper approving to lend her eyes once she dies. 

In the next scene itself the big revelation occurs, the father tells his wife the story of when she eloped with another man before getting married to him and had a baby, the baby was none other than the blind girl who he stated to have an affair with. This was all an act by the husband to cover up her mistakes in the past and as the wife learns about this truth, her years of longing to see her child finally comes true. 

There is this line that I would like to state here that truly reveals the character of the husband.

"To my children and the rest of the world, let this remain to be my mistake"

The above line itself shows how selfless he is, despite the constant insults that he received from his children he continued to not say anything in order to not tarnish his wife's image and to not ruin anything further on, reflecting his unconditional selfless love for his wife.

I think short films are a great way to kill your time, apart from killing your time short films are also very compact yet very interesting since they only include the main storyline and the climax, so you don't have to go through more than an hour worth of boring scenes in a 2-hour long film. Hence when I have nothing to do and when I cannot seem to find good movies (which is rarely) to watch I like to binge through a bunch of short films which is how I found this gem in the midst of everything. 

This short film is available on YouTube, so if you would like to watch the movie then please do check out the link below 

https://youtu.be/C_mVB6ng5lU?si=QKoH_hJpLRCNwj_H