Nee Manasu Naaku Telusu

Nee Manasu Naaku Telusu (“I Know Your Heart”) is a 2003 romantic comedy written and directed by Jyothi Krishna, shot simultaneously in Telugu and in Tamil, where it is called Enakku 20 Unakku 18. Tarun, Trisha and Shriya star in both versions, with Sunil and Tanikella Bharani taking the Telugu roles played by Vivek and Manivannan in Tamil. A. R. Rahman composed the music. The film is Trisha’s Telugu debut, and the Telugu version was released on 19 December 2003.

What the story is about

Sridhar, a final-year management student and keen footballer who has won a place for postgraduate study in the United States, meets Preeti on a train back from an interview in Mumbai and falls for her. Both are cricket fans, and both leave without exchanging names or details. Preeti’s family, it turns out, moves into the street next to Sridhar’s, and the two spend the film searching for each other across the city’s colleges while repeatedly just missing each other, until a bomb blast separates them again.

Cast and crew

• Tarun as Sridhar
• Trisha as Preethi
• Shriya as Reshma, the football team’s student coach
• Sunil as Kapil
• Tanikella Bharani as Preeti’s father
• Riyaz Khan as Kumar, Preeti’s brother, an IPS officer
• Archana Puran Singh as Preethi’s mother
• Reema Sen in a guest appearance

Writer and director: A. M. Jyothi Krishna. Producer: A. M. Rathnam (Sri Surya Movies). Music: A. R. Rahman. Runtime: 158 minutes.

Making the film

Trisha signed the film in 2001, before any of her other films had been released, and it was launched on 20 January 2002. One song took 260 shots across 90 locations in Chennai and Hyderabad, and “Yedo Yedo” was filmed in Venice, at the Colosseum in Rome and at St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City.

Music

Rahman’s songs were popular with young audiences. The same singers were used for both language versions except on two songs: in Telugu, Mano and Unnikrishnan replace S. P. B. Charan and Venkat Prabhu on “Oru Nanban Irundhal”, and Sriram Parthasarathy replaces Srinivas on “Asathura”.

Reviews and box office

The Telugu version drew poor reviews. Jeevi of Idlebrain joked that despite the title, the lovers “fail to read what is there in the other heart’s” when they meet again. Sify found the campus scenes “lewd with double meaning dialogues”, said Rahman’s music had not been used well and accused the director of copying Shankar’s picturisation. Reviews of the Tamil version were kinder: The Hindu found it “absorbing in parts, spontaneous in spurts”.

According to The Hindu, the film had an average run at the box office.

Where to watch Nee Manasu Naaku Telusu

We do not have a confirmed streaming listing for Nee Manasu Naaku Telusu on file. If we verify one with a platform, it will appear on this page.

Sources: the Wikipedia article on Enakku 20 Unakku 18 / Nee Manasu Naaku Telusu and the reviews and reports it cites, linked above; our own cast and crew records.