I dont think about marriage a whole lot. When I do it's because someone asked me about it. And my answers is always the same - I can't really see myself in one. There are the children of divorce and then there are children of those who should have been divorced. I belong to the second group. So technically, I'm hard wired to be extremely cynical of marriage; to see it as a prison sentence that slowly eats away at two people. Although, lately I've started questioning this long-held belief. I think people can be together for a long time but only if they're in touch with themselves.

My ideal marriage now revolves around Rilke's definition of it - where partners appoint each other as a guardian of the other's solitude. George Carlin spoke about how the individual starts compromising in groups, even as small as two. When you look at a history of neglecting your own emotions to please your parents as children (a staple in South Asian households), it makes sense how this neglect directly translates to avoiding conflict in relationships as adults. The result is a frog-in-boiling-water scenario where you let your relationship slowly deteriorate to "keep the peace". Years, even decades later you wake up to a strange reality in which you neither recognize yourselves, nor each other wondering, "what happened?"

Hussain and Shefali from Adiraj's short film First Time find each other in a similar predicament. The plot then becomes their attempt to get out of it through a roleplay dinner date. The story unfolds in three chapters. Played by Saurabh Sachdeva and Priya Pereira Chhabria, the characters pretend to be strangers cheating on their spouses. It’s absurd, funny, and maybe even a little sad, but it works. This setup becomes a safe zone, a place where they can finally admit what they’ve been holding back. As the night deepens, the masks come off—not just the ones they’re wearing at dinner but the emotional armor they’ve built over years of misunderstandings, small betrayals, and neglect.

Here’s the twist: the concept of 'roleplay' in the film isn’t really about pretending. It’s about confronting the roles we trap ourselves in every day—the caring spouse, the perfect partner, the one who always has it together. We get so tied to these identities that we lose touch with who we really are and what we actually feel. For Hussain and Shefali, stepping into characters lets them finally step out of their marital autopilot; they begin to break out of their shells that they've constructed slowly, year by year in their marriage.

Adiraj Singh, a fresh face in filmmaking, brings an emotional intelligence to First Time that’s rare, especially in a debut. At just 27, he’s created something that feels both intimate and universal. The slow pace is a little uncomfortable to watch, but so is a difficult conversation around a stagnating relationship so it fits the bill. Structuring the film into three acts—passion, conflict, reconciliation, Adiraj tells a story that’s both simple and layered. The dinner date becomes a microcosm of the different stages of marriage itself (if the people in it want to make it work).

The film paints a portrait of romantic love, not with grand gestures or dramatic revelations but the small, piercing truths we hide even from ourselves. In an age of fleeting connections and surface-level interactions, First Time is a reminder of what it takes to really see someone—to step out of your own head and into theirs, to risk being vulnerable even when it feels impossible. In its aching nakedness, it presents itself as an emotional reckoning—a little dinner date with truth.

Follow Adiraj here.

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