There's Something About Mira

by Sonali Dev

I watched An Affair to Remember for the first time in my junior year of high school, when Rumi took a film appreciation class. The teacher was a fan of iconic romances, and Rumi and I became obsessed with them. Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell, From Here to Eternity, Pillow Talk, Come September, Roman Holiday: we watched them over and over again, lost in the grayscale and comic-book-toned color images moving slow and intense. The deliberate movements, the close-ups highlighting every nuance of the large, hyperfocused emotions, all of it so pure and heartfelt and undistracted by the complex background imagery of today’s movies. I’d been especially felled by Deborah Kerr’s simplicity and playfulness and how Cary Grant saw her. Like really saw her all the way down to her soul. I think Druv sees me that way, the way I want to be seen. It’s why when he first showed an interest in me, I didn’t run and hide, the way I’ve always done.