Hrudaya Geethe (song from the heart) is a movie that starts out as a Rom Com but then slowly morphs into quite the dark drama, with a tragic conclusion. The movie centers around Ashok, a musician and singer, who is apparently committed to a mental hospital. However, it soon becomes apparent that he ''isn't'' actually crazy, he is just acting the part. While other inmates do behave like typically mentally ill or mentally challenged people, Ashok seems to just be a fun loving normal person, who loves to entertain people. An old childhood friend, who is a psychiatrist there, is curious as to why he was committed there. While he is initially evasive, he eventually opens up to her and reveals the truth - that he faked insanity to protect the woman he loves. Agreeing to play along, and to enable the couple to reunite, the psychiatrist discharges Ashok. He then goes off to reunite with the love of his life - only for events to then take a significantly darker turn. And in the end, someone will die.
Tropes in this movie are
- Arranged Marriage: Asha's father sets her up with Sudhakar, a tennis professional.
- Artistic License – Law: An "insanity" defense for murder that actually succeeds. Of course then, Ashok the protagonist is whisked away to a mental asylum.
- Also, Asha's fear of being convicted of murdering the guy who attempted to rape her is unfounded, even in the slightly regressive I Dian judicial system. She could have had a very credible claim of self defense, as her assailant was a known lech.
- Artistic License – Medicine: Electroconvulsive therapy a.k.a shock therapy is nothing like what is depicted here. First of all, no patient is ever involuntarily subjected to shock therapy, especially one who is clearly disturbed like Ashok is. Secondly, shock therapy involves binding the patient down in a bed, having personnel still restrain him, and being administered one jolt of electricity, much like a defibrillator. In the modern era, patients are even put under general anesthetic before the treatment is administered. No one is bound to a chair, and subjected to a continuous current flow - that is electric chair style execution, not shock therapy. Disturbed patients are instead put into restraints and sedated to calm them down.
- Break His Heart to Save Him: Asha agrees to flaunt her seemingly happy marriage to Sudhakar, so that a deeply depressed Ashok can start to move on and get better.
- Cerebus Syndrome: The movie shifts from a lighthearted playful comedy about a Cloud Cuckoolander in a mental hospital to a dark tale about that person being dumped, having a psychotic episode, going into a deep depression and having to recover from it. It then gets even darker, with him uncovering an organ harvesting ring in that hospital.
- Cloud Cuckoolander: All the other mental patients are portrayed this way.
- Cloud Cuckoolanders Minder: Uma the ward's nurse.
- Cold-Blooded Torture / Electric Torture : The chief doctor at the mental hospital orders a clearly disturbed psychotic Ashok to an extended session of shock treatment. Although it is stopped, he is clearly in a lot of pain, and has to be rolled away in a stretcher.
- Death of the Hypotenuse: Asha dies in the end, having been stabbed.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: Asha, although this is an all too common characterization of women in Indian media.
- Establishing Character Moment: Ashok is shown leading his fellow Ward inmates in a song about how "this is the madman's bazaar". It shows that he is clearly lucid and not crazy.
- First Girl Wins: Aruna, who has had a Precocious Crush on Ashok since they were both children.
- Hospital Hottie: Aruna, the psychiatrist, who takes on Ashok as a patient.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Asha's father disapproves of his daughter, the star track athlete dating a musician and singer, who is living gig to gig. He sets her up with, then forces her to marry Sudhakar, a tennis pro. One could make the case, that Asha and Sudhakar, both being champion sportspersons would have a lot more in common and therefore be capable of building a stable long lasting relationship, than Asha could with Ashok, with whom she has very little in common. That and his unhealthy obsession with her.
- Love Makes You Crazy: Ashok goes batshit insane when Asha marries someone else.
- Not Quite the Right Thing: Aruna releases Ashok after he tells her, he confessed to a murder he didn't actually do, and then faked insanity to avoid imprisonment, to ensure that his love interest Asha could compete in the Asian Games. Aruna decides to play along and release him, as having been "cured". However, the flashbacks recounting how he courted Asha, are indicative of an unhealthy obsession with her, and this obsession morphs into a full blown derangement when he finds out that she married someone else. Ashok did have an underlying mental problem, which needed treatment after all.
- Obfuscating Insanity: Ashok, initially. Towards the midpoint, he actually goes insane.
- Organ Theft: Dr Prasad the Chief doctor of the mental hospital is harvesting his patients’s organs. First, he is running an “involuntary confinement for pay” scam in which certain people who are an inconvenience are designated as mentally ill and confined for the right price. Those people are then “prescribed” a tonic which is actually a poison that causes them to have painful spasms. To “treat” this, they are sent to surgery where they die and their organs are semi-legitimately harvested.
- Parental Marriage Veto: Asha's father isn't too eager of her relationship with the musician and singer, Ashok. He thinks a star athlete like her is better paired up with another star athlete and sets her up with Sudhakar, a tennis pro.
