Mayakkam Enna & Jersey: Pursuing your passion
Most of us are middle-class people with high aspirations and compromise on lives for our family and other reasons and give up our passion in the mid-way. There are obvious reasons for doing so, but what it takes to pursue your passion?
Is it years of struggle, or a lot of sacrifices? Let’s see what happened in these two emotionally made brilliant movies — Mayakkam Enna and our very own Jersey, that marked one year of its theatrical release yesterday.
Dhanush and Richa Gangopadhyay played lead roles in Mayakkam Enna, directed by Selva Raghavan while Nani and Shraddha Srinath played lead roles in Jersey, directed by Gowtam Tinnanuri.
Disclaimer: This content has spoilers of both movies, but I guarantee you that you won’t be losing any feel of these two movies, even if you haven’t watched them until now.
So, the question arises now: is it easy to pursue your passion even though our society applauds only success stories? Karthik Swaminathan from Mayakkam Enna wants to be a professional wildlife photographer (not an Instagram celeb). We get to know his aspiration at the very beginning of the film.
To get going with life, he does wedding photoshoots and works as a freelance photographer. He admires Madhesh Krishnaswamy, an established photographer, and asks him if he can work under Madhesh as an assistant.

First rejection! Meanwhile, Yamini recommends him at her firm for a project, in which he gets rejected for not being a professional. Rejection and humiliation from Yamini in the form of unwanted suggestions!
Karthik goes again to Madhesh with few samples and begs him for work under him that Karthik says, “I will work like a dog if you appoint me, Sir.” Another humiliation, but this time Madhesh assigns him to shoot birds, and he only appoints him if Karthik’s work is excellent.
The story becomes intense now. Karthik again faces rejection accompanied by humiliation yet again. This time with theft of intellectual property!
గమనాలనే గమనించరా ఒకరోజు గమ్యం ఎదురవదా!
Even in Jersey, for the innocent request of his son, Nani, for a jersey, Arjun decides to go back to cricket again. What’s the problem here? It’s his age! He aspires to become his younger self.
Coach Murthy is his support system throughout his journey. Arjun faces rejection several times on the field too. But did he give up? No!!! I don’t want to give away much of Jersey as everyone should watch it.

Coming back to Mayakkam Enna, several rejections and humiliations make Karthik alcoholic, and he becomes ill-tempered whenever he hears about photography. Yamini tries hard to bring him back to a healthy life, becomes a victim of his anger issue.
What makes him get back on track to pursue his passion for Wildlife Photography?
These two emotional movies talk descriptively about the struggle that we have to go through while following our passion. Brilliantly written cricket scenes in Jersey to the fantastic performance by Dhanush in Mayakkam Enna made these two movies must watch whenever we are feeling down.
The music in these two movies provides additional energy that pushes us to be back on track.
It’s not easy, but it’s not impossible, either!
Mayakkam Enna is available in MX Player and Telugu version of it, Mr. Karthik is available on YouTube for free while Jersey is available on Zee5.
Coming to the much-loved scene in BrochevarevaruRa, Shalini while hearing narration from Vishal asks him was it not difficult for him to get through this struggle while his friends are living happily, for which Vishal replies “I burned all my certificates as I thought it wouldn’t be fair if I have many options. Now, I have only one option; I have to make it work!”
Keep working and live your dream life! Until then,