Everybody Says I'm Fine!

Everybody Says I'm Fine!
Poster
Directed by	Rahul Bose
Written by	Rahul Bose
Produced by	Vivek Vaswani
Starring	Rehaan Engineer Koel Purie Rahul Bose Pooja Bhatt Anahita Oberoi Boman Irani
Cinematography	Vikas Sivaraman
Edited by	Suresh Pai
Music by	Zakir Hussain
Distributed by	Pinnacle Entertainments
Release date	12 September 2001 (2001-09-12)
Running time	103 minutes
Country	India
Language	English

Everybody Says I'm Fine! is a 2001 Indian English-language drama film, written and directed by Rahul Bose in his directorial debut.

The premiered on 12 September 2001 at the Toronto International Film Festival. For his work on Everybody Says I'm Fine! Bose won the runner-up John Schlesinger Award for best directorial debut at the 2003 Palm Springs International Film Festival.^[1]

The film revolves around a small group of elite Mumbaikars whose lives converge at a hairdresser's salon. Xen owns the salon and has a unique gift of connecting with the minds of his clients and reading their thoughts while at work. Most of his customers maintain a facade of normality in order to gain semblance and hide their tumultuous lives to some extent.

As backdrop to Xen's ability, it is revealed that as a young boy, he witnessed the death of his parents in a freak accident at a recording studio, where nobody could hear his cries for help through the sound-proof booth as he saw the flames rising. Ever since, Xen's life plunged into some sort of forced silence. Xen uses his gift to help most of his clients, notably Tanya, whose private life is being indecently probed into by another one of his customers, Misha. Xen manages to get the dirt on Misha, who is a secret cocaine addict, and more unsavory details surface where it comes to knowledge that Misha has even gotten some children at the orphanage she works at addicted to it. Xen slips the information to Tanya without her knowledge, who then confronts Misha with it when Misha becomes a little too inquisitive in Tanya's personal affairs.

Xen is however, clueless in his own silence, and to add to it, he is unable to probe into the mind of one of his customers, Nikki/Nikita, who comes to the salon one day and asks him to cut off all her long hair. He begins to develop feelings for her, sensing some form of distress in her being, unable to reach her but somehow wanting to help.

Later, as Xen serves one of his regulars, a respectable businessman, Mr. Mittal, it transpires that the married Mr. Mittal is busy planning a liaison with another woman. More facts slowly unfold to reveal Mr Mittal is, in fact, Nikki's father, and Nikki has been subjected to an incestuous relationship. Enraged, on gradually learning the truth straight from the thoughts of his client, Xen strikes a heavy blow to Mr. Mittal's head, killing him, and later disposing of the body.

The death of her father triggers in Nikki a sudden response, and she crumbles to the ground in Xen's arms. He is now engulfed in her disconcerting train of thoughts, disjointed, and echoing her torment of many years. The final scene of the film shows Xen waking the next morning to find the silence in his life is now beyond him, and he can hear, as clearly and wholly as the next human being. Nikki embraces him; the mutual catharsis has made them both more wholesome beings.

The film's soundtrack was composed by tabla player Zakir Hussain. Released by Universal, it was the first Indian soundtrack to feature Carlos Santana.^[2]

• Everybody Says I'm Fine at IMDb
• Everybody Says I'm Fine at Bollywood Hungama