Director R. Balki says that Moondram Pirai, the Tamil original of Balu Mahendra's '83 Hindi drama Sadma, featuring Kamal Haasan and Sridevi, is the “most brilliant film“ made in India and had a tremendous influence on him as a filmmaker.

He admits he had never seen love and pain portrayed as it was in Moondram Pirai, which revolves around the story of a girl who meets with an accident which leaves her with a blank memory and the intelligence of a seven year old. She is rescued from the brothel where she lands up in by a good Samaritan. A village practitioner cures her and she regains her memory to the point of the accident and is unable to recognise the man who saved her. Her return home leaves him heartbroken. “As soon as I watched it, I thought that it (films) was a beautiful place to be in,“ asserted the director, admitting he has seen the film 30 times.

Released in 1982, Moondram Pirai, bagged several awards. It was dubbed in Telugu as Vasantha Kokila. The Hindi version released a year later with most of the original cast and crew.