Nitham Oru Vaanam () is a 2022 Indian Tamil-language romantic drama film written and directed by Ra. Karthik in his directorial debut. The film stars Ashok Selvan in a triple role alongside Ritu Varma, Aparna Balamurali and Shivathmika Rajashekar in the principal roles. Gopi Sundar composed the film's music and cinematography was performed by Vidhu Ayyana. The film was announced in January 2017, but went through a change of cast, and was relaunched in June 2021. It was subsequently released on 4 November 2022. Despite a positive critical reception, the film was an average grosser.
Plot
The film revolves around Arjun, a young man with OCD. This results in him being rather closed off and seemingly rude to most people and happenings around him, alongside a strong dislike for trying things out of his comfort zone. However, he does have the habit of imagining himself as the protagonist in any story he reads. After a long time, he meets Janani, a woman who he thought understands him, and starts to develop feelings for her. Arjun-Janani's marriage preparations go really well until Janani decides to reconcile with her ex-boyfriend, resulting in their wedding being called off and causing Arjun depression. To help him overcome this hurdle, Arjun’s doctor advises him to read the short stories she had written about two couples—Veera-Meenakshi and Mathi-Prabha. This results in three distinct story arcs.
Veera-Meenakshi story arc
Veerappan alias Veera and Meenakshi is a love marriage couple where Veera is a civil engineer and Meenakshi is a mechanical engineer who plays basketball for passion. They share a wonderful life with each other. During a rainy day, a pregnant Meenakshi is left alone in her home, while Veera goes out and unexpectedly encounters a tragic accident. The story abruptly ends there. Arjun, who imagined himself in the place of Veera, is left clueless and angry as to what happened next. He asks the doctor about the remaining story and she asks him to read the other diary to know the answers. When he starts reading, he finds that the new diary has the story of Mathi-Prabha.
Mathivathani-Prabhakaran story arc
Mathivathani alias Mathi, a care-free girl who wishes for a love marriage, runs away the night before her wedding. En route, she meets Prabhakaran alias Prabha (also portrayed by Ashok Selvan) with whom she travels in a car but later comes to know that he consumed poison because of love failure. She admits him in hospital while Mathi's father comes to the hospital looking for her. He asks Prabha to tie the wedding thread around Mathi's neck. When Prabha is about to do so, Mathi falls unconscious with her nose bleeding. Then, the story abruptly ends.
Arjun, desperate to find answers, goes to the doctor's house to confront her. But she says that these both the stories are real life stories and gives the addresses of the real Meenakshi-Veera who are in Kolkata and Mathi-Prabha who are in Himachal Pradesh. Arjun decides to meet them in person to know what happened next in their lives.
On his journey, Arjun is accompanied by Subhadra alias Subha. First, they go to Kolkata to meet Meenakshi, who narrates that Veera died in the building crash. Instead of feeling sad and hopeless, she felt motivated and took her newborn baby to Kolkata to pursue her basketball career and now works as a basketball coach. Arjun feels disappointed and decides to call off the other meeting, but Subha urges him to meet Mathi-Prabha and then decide for himself. So they continue their journey.
There, we come to know Subha's backstory.
Subha's Backstory (parallels) arc
For some time, we get to know about who was in a relationship for two years. But he dumped her for another girl. Later he marries that girl and buys a house. Subha is desperate to confront him and ask him the proper and logical reason for breaking up with her but never gets the guts to do so.