Oh to be young and careless in Shimla. That's the first half of Sunaina Bhatnagar's debut film in which two 16-year-old schoolgirls, Anna (Madiha Imam) and Ira (Shreya Chaudhary), just want to have some fun. So they write love letters to a reclusive "bechari" and "lovesick" woman (Manisha Koirala) in a bid to add some colour in her "boring" existence. It is Anna who possesses the creative writing skills, the curiosity and the desire to befriend the neighbourhood's least social resident. But the prank misfires when Maya falls for the romantic prose and leaves Shimla to search for the writer, a dude named Ved, in Delhi.

We live in an age when concepts like love, letters and innocence seem like old library nostalgia rather than real-life facts. But that's exactly the charm of these old-world ideas. Once you see them, you appreciate the charm and candour associated with them. Manisha Koirala's new film, Dear Maya builds on these jaded but engaging ideas. Two seemingly nave girls in Shimla write letters to their reclusive neighbor Maya Devi (Koirala) in an attempt to stir some Shah Rukh Khan type love in her life.

A newspaper report about a woman who hadn't stepped out of her house for almost two decades, proved to be trigger for debutant director Sunaina Bhatnagar to create this film. Bhatnagar, who has also penned the story, recreates the dreary, lonely world of a woman named Maya, who remains untouched by the sun's rays for 20 years, with only dogs and birds for companions. Manisha Koirala as the wary protagonist, manages to get into character, but the film progresses slowly, at least until the interval. There's little happening in her staid life.

Debutante director Sunaina Bhatnagar brings you all an interesting story of a woman who leaves in search of her pen pal that will disappoint you with its climax. After Bhoot Returns, Manisha Koirala is back on celluloid and with a bang must say. Maya (Manisha Koirala) lives in a secluded bungalow in Simla. She had a dysfunctional family and has been staying alone with a caretaker since past twenty years.

Swathed in blank, a lone woman stands in a dark corridor staring into nothingness. It's an eerie image but Sunaina Bhatnagar's debut feature film Dear Maya is anything but creepy. Sleepy Simla is the setting for most of this fable-like story of two school girls, their fascination with a reclusive woman and a prank with far-reaching consequences. Maya Devi (Manisha Koirala) lives in a large, dusty house next door to Anna (Madiha Imam). Anna and her best friend Ira (Shreya Chaudhary) revel in the make believe world of romantic novels.

Charlotte Bronte said something really heart-breaking once: 'The trouble is not that I am single and likely to stay single, but that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely.' Debutant director Sunaina Bhatnagar's Dear Maya centres around a forlorn recluse who has probably uttered those lines many times in all the years she has inhabited a derelict mansion in Shimla. Except Bhatnagar doesn't subscribe to such bleak views and dreams up a possibility for miracle around a plot whose optimism is akin to wishful thinking.

Maya Devi (Manisha Koirala) is a Rajput lady who stays alone in a huge bungalow with her two dogs and cages full of birds in Shimla. She had a disturbed childhood as her mother fled with another man after her father's untimely death. Her uncle made her believe that she is responsible for her fate and is not worthy of receiving love. She grows up with this belief and is single even in her forties as her uncle had shooed away suitors when the time came for her marriage. She is living the life of a recluse, does not step out of her house and even keeps her doors and windows shut as she feels that the outside world is a big bad place which will cause harm to her.

Remember Makdee? Vishal Bhardwaj's superbly crafted suspenseful debut, in which a ghoulish woman turns a teenager into her errand-girl? Dear Maya ditches the witchcraft element, but its first half has an unmissable similarity to the 2002 sleeper hit. Here, Maya (Koirala) keeps to herself in her ancestral home packed with Rajputana antiques, her caged birds and her two dogs. Two schoolgirls from her neighbourhood, Anna (Imam) and Ira (Chaudhary), pity her sorry existence and decide to write love letters to her, to invoke a sense of hope in her life.