Mani Ratnam defends Kamal Haasan romancing 28-year-younger Trisha Krishnan in Thug Life

The filmmaker believes that though people judge relationships between men and women with an age gap on screen, it happens all the time in real life and said, "Let me put it this way, this way, in real life, there are people, slightly older, who have a relationship with a younger person, male or female. There are. It is a fact of life. It's been like that for a long time. It's not just now.

When it's in cinema, we try to find fault with it or pass judgment on it, which means you are trying to cover or close your eyes to what is happening in your society and claim that it should be only this way."

The filmmaker says the scene should be viewed in the context of the relationship between the two characters and added, "It is (about) how these two people meet. It is not Trisha Krishnan and Kamal Haasan. It is (about) their respective characters. So that is what it should be. And if you see the film, the relationship, how it formed and whether it is real or not, then you can make a judgment, not based on Trisha Krishnan and Kamal Haasan."