Adil woke before dawn, the kind of waking that wasn't really sleep ending but more like giving up on it. The suite was quiet. Through the gap in the curtains, Paris was still grey, the rain from the night before reduced to a faint mist on the windowpane.
He found Aishwarya still asleep, one arm thrown across the space he'd left. He didn't wake her. In the hall, Monica and Madhuri were gone from the sofa where he'd left them, their absence somehow louder than their presence had been.
He showered, dressed, and ordered coffee from room service in a flat, automatic voice. By the time the others stirred. Madhuri first, then Monica, then Aishwarya trailing in last with sleep still in her eyes, Adil was already at the writing desk in the corner of the suite, a legal pad in front of him, three lines of dialogue crossed out twice.
"You're up early," Madhuri said, watching him from across the room.
"Couldn't sleep," he said, which was true in the way that incomplete things are true.
Nobody pushed. Over breakfast there was an unspoken agreement to let the previous night settle into the past tense. Aishwarya buttered her toast and asked Monica something about the gallery they'd planned to visit. Monica answered. Madhuri laughed at something. The three of them moved through the morning with an ease that suggested whatever had needed to be said between them had been said, fully, and didn't require repeating.
Adil noticed it and was grateful for it, and also, in some part of himself he didn't examine too closely, used it as permission to disappear.
"I think I'm going to skip the gallery," he said, not looking up from the pad.
Aishwarya studied him for a moment. "Working?"
"Trying to." Adil nodded.
She didn't ask on what, didn't ask if he was alright in the careful, testing way people ask when they want reassurance more than information. She just nodded, kissed the top of his head on her way past, and let him be.
That was the shape the next several days took, and then the next several weeks. The women filled their days without him at first, the Musée d'Orsay, the perfumer Madhuri had read about, long lunches that ran late into the afternoon. Adil stayed behind with his legal pads and a growing wall of crossed-out pages, working through something that had less to do with plot and more to do with needing his hands occupied and his mind pointed somewhere other than at himself.
The first script, it was; Awarapan, The story take place as;
'Shivam Pandit is a lonely, emotionally broken hitman working for a powerful underworld don. Haunted by the memory of the only woman he ever truly loved, Aliyah, he lives without purpose, believing that his chance at happiness died with her. His life changes when he is assigned to watch over Reema, the don's mistress. Instead of treating her as a prisoner, Shivam sees in her the same longing for freedom that Aliyah once had. When he learns that Reema loves another man and is being kept captive against her will, he decides to risk everything to help the lovers escape. His act of compassion turns him into a hunted man, forcing him to confront his criminal past and sacrifice himself for a cause greater than his own survival. In the end, Shivam dies after ensuring Reema's freedom, finding redemption by giving another couple the life that he himself was denied.'
He wrote Shivam Pandit's loneliness without having to invent it. The opening scene came first; Shivam standing at a window much like the one in this very suite, watching rain, a man already dead inside long before anyone puts a bullet in him. He wrote the character's conviction that his one chance at love had already come and gone, that whatever remained of his life was just the business of finishing out a sentence someone else had handed him. He wrote Reema's captivity, her quiet defiance, the way Shivam recognized in her the same hunger for freedom that had once belonged to a woman named Aliyah who existed only in memory now.
He worked through that first day almost without noticing it pass. Aishwarya brought him a sandwich around two that he ate without looking up. By evening, when the others returned from the gallery full of stories about a Cézanne exhibit, he surfaced just long enough to ask Madhuri what she'd liked best, listened with real attention, then drifted back toward the desk before dessert arrived.
"He's gone again," Monica said fondly, watching him go.
"Let him," Aishwarya said. "He needs this."
By the third night, The script was finished, Adil's hand ached and there were three empty coffee cups on the desk and dawn was already breaking grey over the rooftops again. He didn't celebrate finishing it. He just squared the pages, rubber-banded them, and slept eleven hours straight.
He surfaced the next afternoon looking more like himself and joined the three of them for a walk along the Seine, hands in his pockets, genuinely present for the first time in days. Madhuri threaded her arm through his. Aishwarya stopped him at a bookstall and made him wait while she dug through it. Monica took him to a photographer. For a few hours there was no desk, no legal pad, just the four of them and the city.
But the pull was still there, and by the next morning he was back at it.
Second script he started writing was; Barfi.
The story proceeds as;
'Set in the beautiful hill town of Darjeeling, the story follows Barfi, a cheerful young man who is both deaf and mute but lives with extraordinary optimism and kindness. He falls deeply in love with Shruti, a young woman from a respectable family, but social pressures and family expectations force her to choose another man for marriage. Heartbroken yet unwilling to lose his joyful spirit, Barfi later develops an unexpected bond with Jhilmil, an autistic young woman who understands him without words. Their relationship grows through shared innocence, trust, and unconditional acceptance rather than conventional romance. As the years pass, Shruti realizes that Barfi represented the purest form of love she had ever known, but by then Barfi has already found happiness with Jhilmil. The story celebrates love beyond physical limitations and societal expectations, showing that genuine affection is built on understanding, sacrifice, and companionship.'
Barfi, arrived slower, stretched across nearly a week, and came not from ache but from a kind of stubborn tenderness, a refusal to let heartbreak be the only honest emotion a story could hold. He wrote the hill station, the cheerful deaf-mute boy whose joy nothing could fully puncture, the love that didn't work out and the second, stranger love that nobody expected to count as a love story at all until it became the only one that mattered.
This script came in fits rather than floods. Some mornings he'd write four pages before breakfast and then close the pad entirely, joining the women for a full day, a long lunch near Saint-Germain, an afternoon at the Musée Rodin where he found himself more interested in watching Madhuri's face as she studied the sculptures than in the sculptures themselves. Other days he barely left the desk, surfacing only for dinner, eyes distant through most of the meal.
Madhuri found him one evening still working, paused in the doorway. "You look lighter today," she said, and she wasn't wrong. Something in writing Barfi's refusal to let the world's cruelty calcify him had loosened something in Adil's own chest, even as the pages came unevenly, a scene some days, nothing at all on others.
He finished it on the seventh day since the first script began, and that night he took all three of them to dinner himself, insisted on it, dressed properly for the first time in a week. It felt, briefly, like the vacation they'd originally planned.
After Barfi he thought a lot, He wanted to write a Debut mivie for Monica Bellucci. Finally,he choose the script; 'Sanam Re", but he modified the story a little.
The new story takes place as;
'Akash grows up in a quiet Himalayan town, where he falls deeply in love with Shruti, his childhood friend. Their love is innocent and unwavering, and they dream of spending their lives together. However, circumstances force Akash to leave India to pursue higher studies and build a successful career abroad. During his years overseas, he meets Elena, a compassionate young European woman who helps him through loneliness and hardship. What begins as friendship gradually blossoms into love, and for the first time since leaving home, Akash believes he has found happiness again. They dream of a future together, but fate intervenes cruelly when Elena is diagnosed with an aggressive illness. Despite every effort to save her, she passes away, leaving Akash emotionally shattered. Before her death, Elena asks him never to let grief imprison his heart and urges him to return to the place where he was happiest. Broken and unable to find meaning in his successful but empty life, Akash returns to India after many years. Every street, mountain, and river reminds him of both the childhood he shared with Shruti and the love he lost with Elena. Carrying the pain of two great loves, he struggles to move forward until he unexpectedly meets Shruti again. She, too, has spent years silently carrying the memory of their unfinished love. As they reconnect, Akash slowly heals, realizing that loving Elena never erased his love for Shruti, and that Elena's final wish was for him to live rather than merely survive. Through shared memories, forgiveness, and renewed hope, Akash and Shruti rebuild the bond that time could not destroy. The story ends with Akash finally finding peace, not by forgetting his first love, but by honoring her memory while embracing the second chance at happiness she wanted him to have.'
Sanam Re's script took five more days, and hurt to write in a different register, not heartbreak as ending but heartbreak as a thing carried alongside a second chance. The idea that loving someone new doesn't erase what you'd lost, and that the dead, if they loved you, would want you to go on living rather than mourning. He sat with the line 'don't let grief imprison your heart' for the better part of an evening, rewriting it again and again.
Monica found him at it one night, nearly two weeks into the whole stretch now. "You've read that sentence eleven times," she said, settling into the chair across from him. "I counted."
"I'm trying to figure out if it's true. That you can love two things at once and have it not diminish either one."
She held his gaze a long moment, and whatever passed between them didn't need to be spoken aloud, it had already been spoken, days before, by two other women on a hotel sofa. "I think that's the only thing that could be true," she said carefully, "if any of this is going to work."
He finished the script three nights later, and the next day all four of them took the train out to Versailles, a full day away from the desk, Adil more relaxed than he'd been since arriving in Paris, trailing Monica through the gardens while she narrated half-remembered history with theatrical confidence.
Next script came was; Devdas story is classical 1990's story, like the original movie. It had not been changed. The story progressed as;
'Devdas, the son of a wealthy zamindar family, grows up alongside his childhood friend Paro, and their friendship blossoms into profound love. However, pride, class differences, and family opposition prevent their marriage. Humiliated by Devdas's family's rejection, Paro is married into another affluent household. Unable to overcome his regret and indecision, Devdas spirals into alcoholism and self-destruction. During his decline, he meets Chandramukhi, a courtesan who falls deeply in love with him and selflessly devotes herself to his well-being. Yet Devdas remains emotionally trapped in his love for Paro and his inability to forgive himself. Knowing he is dying, he makes one final journey to Paro's mansion to fulfill his promise of seeing her once more. He dies outside her gate before she can reach him, while Paro watches helplessly as the gates close forever. The story is a timeless tragedy about love destroyed by pride, social conventions, hesitation, and missed opportunities.'
'Devdas', was the hardest and slowest of all, He added more rich emotions into the story, nearly a week of false starts, pages torn free and crumpled, because the material wasn't unfamiliar, it was too familiar. A man destroyed not by losing love but by his own pride and hesitation, by an inability to forgive himself standing between him and every door that might have opened. He wrote Devdas's slow unraveling with a precision that unsettled even him, and by the time he reached the final image, the gates closing before Paro could reach him, nineteen days had passed since the morning he'd first sat down at that desk.
He sat very still after finishing it, the suite quiet, the women already asleep.
The next morning he didn't write at all. He took Monica to the perfumer she had mentioned weeks earlier and never gotten back to, stood patiently while she tested a dozen scents, and bought the one she liked best without telling her until it was already wrapped.
The fifth script came fastest of all, three days, almost in a single breath, and was the lightest of the five, though maybe the most personal. '18 Again' wasn't about a man losing love; it was about a man who'd given up one dream to build a family and spent twenty years wondering if the sacrifice had ever been seen. He wrote Arjun Malhotra walking unrecognized among his own children, learning who they really were rather than who he'd assumed, and didn't examine too hard why that particular shape of story was the one his hands wanted that week. The story is as;
'Arjun Malhotra was once regarded as one of the most gifted young cricketers in the country. As the captain of his college team and a former India Under-19 star, he was widely expected to play for the senior national team. Scouts from professional domestic franchises and selectors had already taken notice of his talent, and everyone believed it was only a matter of time before he wore the Indian jersey. Amidst his rising cricket career, Arjun fell deeply in love with his college sweetheart, Meera. They dreamed of building a future together after Arjun established himself as a professional cricketer. However, during their final year of college, Meera unexpectedly became pregnant. Faced with the choice between pursuing his lifelong dream and accepting responsibility for the family he had created, Arjun never hesitated. He gave up cricket, married Meera, and took a stable office job to provide for her and their unborn twins. Over the next twenty years, Arjun devoted every ounce of his energy to his family. He worked long hours, gave up every opportunity that came his way, and quietly buried the dream that had once defined his life. The cheerful, confident young cricketer slowly became a tired, overworked man weighed down by financial pressures and endless responsibilities. His sacrifices, though made out of love, were never fully understood. His son Aarav and daughter Aanya grew embarrassed by their ordinary father, often comparing him to the successful parents of their friends. Meera, exhausted by years of hardship and emotional distance, began to believe that the passionate young man she had fallen in love with had disappeared forever. Their marriage deteriorated, and eventually Meera filed for divorce.
On the night before the divorce hearing, a devastated Arjun found himself standing outside the cricket stadium where he had once dreamed of making his international debut. Looking at the empty field, he wondered whether his life would have been different had he chosen cricket over family. Yet his greatest regret was not giving up the game, it was failing to remain the loving husband and father his family needed. With tears in his eyes, he wished for one impossible chance to relive his youth, not to rewrite history, but to become a better husband and father. The next morning, Arjun mysteriously woke up in the body of his eighteen-year-old self while retaining all the memories and experiences of his forty-year-old life. With the help of his childhood best friend, he assumed a new identity and enrolled in the same college attended by his teenage children. Living alongside them as a fellow student, Arjun discovered the struggles they had hidden from him. Aarav was being bullied at school and had lost all confidence in himself. Aanya secretly dreamed of becoming a sports journalist but was afraid of disappointing her family. Meera was struggling to balance work, parenting, and the emotional pain of a broken marriage, hiding her loneliness behind a brave face.Arjun quietly became a part of their lives without revealing his true identity. He stood up for Aarav, encouraged Aanya to pursue her ambitions, and supported Meera whenever she needed help. At the same time, his extraordinary cricketing talent quickly caught the attention of coaches and selectors. Once again, he was offered the opportunity to pursue the career he had sacrificed twenty years earlier. Standing at the same crossroads as before, Arjun realized that while dreams are precious, they should never come at the cost of the people one loves. Rather than chasing personal glory, he chose to use his second chance to heal his family and help his children pursue the dreams they truly wanted.
Eventually, the truth about his identity was revealed. Meera and the twins finally understood the immense sacrifices Arjun had made for them, the cricket career he had willingly abandoned, the fame he could have achieved, and the countless opportunities he had let pass so his family would never have to struggle alone. Their resentment turned into admiration, and the family reconciled with a deeper understanding of one another. Having learned the true meaning of love, sacrifice, and family, Arjun returned to his original age. His marriage was renewed, his children respected him with newfound pride, and the warmth that had once disappeared from their home returned. Though he never became the international cricket star he once dreamed of being, Arjun realized that his greatest victory had never been scored on a cricket field, it was winning back the love and trust of the family for whom he had sacrificed everything.'