RR
1st March 2006, 10:15 AM
THE SCREEN-TURNERS
Turn is a special word.
It carries within it a sense of change - be it a manner, a physical gesture, a trait of character, an everyday phrase, or even the eternal grave. When someone or something or some feeling turns, there is a transformation. Mostly, the change is simple, ordinary, and meaningless. But some times it is profound. The purpose of this series is to chart that change with a focus on one commercial turning: What happens when images of words on the page become images of movement on the screen? The Screen-Turners will explore this transition of media – creatively, critically and perhaps, not too controversially.
There are many books that been made into tamil films. My selection here is entirely random and evidently contemporary. In a turn (that word again!) toward selfishness, I have chosen the books I would like to reread. Some of these are also based on my music collection – I want to include songs and a close reading of the lyrics wherever possible – and that really narrows my choice. To pin this literature, film and music tent, we might have to head somewhere into the mid-70s, and do the distance again. The good thing is, most of the books are in print. And even if you don’t get around to reading them now, there will be enough here to make you want to look them up sometime, maybe on a lonely flight from Toronto to Kuala Lumpur. Trust me, it will bring it all back home.
The format of this exercise is dynamic. Ever changing. Wherever possible, I will include song files, pictures, interviews, and such. My analyses of the books turning into films will be all and only mine. So feel free to rave, rah-rah or ruminate.
The Screen-Turners - Interview One
VISHALI, PARIS, AND BACTERIAL PROCESSES…
When I called, Sivasankari answered the phone herself. But that’s the kind of person she is. I told her about the new series I was contemplating, and asked her if she’d have the time to answer a few questions on 47 Naatkal, the novel and the film. “I’m busy with a wedding in the family,” she said, “but I’ll certainly look at the questions if you send them to me.” I told her to take her time - and the space she needed. She got back in a week.
Here’s my Q & A with celebrated author, Sivasankari.
[html:bb3d7ab2de]http://www.rediff.com/news/1996/1011san1.jpg[/html:bb3d7ab2de]
Q. Why 47 Naatkal? Why not 53 or 34 or 69 Naatkal? In other words, how did you arrive at this span of days? Was the novel written and ready before it was serialized? Is there any other reason for this particular choice of number?
A. This is a question asked by many people. In fact, there is no real reason for selecting 47 days. The novel, as you know, was written in 1978 and I find it very difficult to recollect how specific my thinking was! But I can try to tell you why I chose ‘47’ with a reason. Normally a pregnancy is confirmed after 45 days. Once Vishali’s pregnancy is confirmed, I wanted to end the story. Hence, 47 days. And also, I liked the way ‘47 Naatkal’ sounded. It is my practice to write the serial story week after week, although the entire story would have taken shape within myself. But, in the case of 47 Naatkal, I remember writing and completing it in a month’s time before handing it over to Mr. Manian to be serialised in Idhayam Pesugirathu.
Q: Would it be right to classify 47 Naatkal as a domestic thriller? Wasn’t this the greatest draw for the audience - the thriller element of the writing? Or could it be voyeurism?
A: I certainly don’t agree that this novel is planned to be a domestic thriller. The incidents I heard from some of my close people led me to write about them. This, added on to my trips and experiences in the US, consolidated the theme. As far as I am concerned, writing is a process through which I share the thoughts that have motivated me into thinking - as authentic and interesting as possible. I can tell you faithfully that when I sat to write this novel, there was no intention of making it a thriller or voyeuristic.
Q: Is Vishali a Victim or Survivor? The novel ends with her rescue, but what precedes the denouement is a series of violent acts that can be summed up as spousal abuse. How do you see her now, given the distance between the novel from the time of publication and the current strides of Indian feminism?
A: Vishali was a victim who survived finally. The series of violence – that erupts out of the inability and anger of Kumar - happened very naturally. Kumar behaves like angry caged animals, whose calculations go haywire and cause his extraordinary behaviour. Yes, in today’s context, one can definitely say it is a spousal abuse. But when I wrote the story, as the events unfolded, whatever naturally would be the response is what I have tried to depict. You have asked me how I see her now. To be honest, it will be very difficult. She can be anything. A successful woman who has learnt her lessons through bitter experiences, or somebody who is shattered and finding solace in self-sympathy, or a combination of both. Everything depends on what kind of mental attitude she develops after she returns, and the family and social support she receives.
Q: Is there something more to the character of the ex-pat/NRI husband? Was the dislocation of Vishali from India to a western country a cautionary gesture on your part? In other words, was there a nascent nationalism in the binary of East/West that the novel seemed to suggest? A division such as, India = Moral/Traditional, West = Libertarian/Immoral?
A: As I mentioned in one of the earlier answers, in middle 70s I suddenly happened to hear 2 or 3 incidents in succession about girls going from here to other countries and finding that the husband is already married to a foreigner. In those cases one being educated, returned immediately; one died due to unknown reasons in France itself; and the third one came out of it with the help of a German lady. All these made me feel that I should go in depth with the topic. Because I’d been to America few times, and the topography and the customs are familiar, I chose US as the place of action. Otherwise, there is no particular reason as you mentioned -India-moral/traditional; west-liberation or immoral. So many such cases happen in India too. Actually I was invited to Singapore a month ago by the National Library Committee that comprises of 26 libraries. They had selected my book ‘47 Naatkal’ for READ Singapore programme and had invited me for 3 interactions with the readers. The main reason for their selecting the book is that they felt the theme is still very contemporary. In fact, in one meeting a young girl came forward to accept that she was victimised like Vishali and has come out of the wedlock just a year ago. I am telling you all these to emphasise that though I chose US for the base of my novel, this can happen anywhere and with my inputs is happening everywhere to many people.
Q: What are your views regarding the omniscience of the Author? How do you negotiate the fine balance between your own personal views and those of your characters? How important is authorial control and/or distance to you?
A: Writing is like ‘Parakaya pravesham’ - that is, going from one body into another. If I project Sivasankari’s views through all characters, then they will become so alike, boring and there will be no individuality at all. Hence, I am very clear that the author cannot penetrate or influence the characters unless there is an absolute need. Out of 45 or so novels I have written, may be in two. I have consciously made the main female characters reflect some of my personal ideas because their characterisation is somewhat similar to mine.
Q: Of all your works that have been made/adapted for film, which film was the most faithful to the text?
A: Well, if you are talking about faithfulness to the text, then it is the recent film ‘Kutti’. The film has almost ninety-nine of the text intact. As for 47 Naatkal, director K. Balachandar told me at the very first meeting that he doesn’t want Sivasankari’s readers to blame him that he has changed the story. Hence, he wanted me to do the necessary changes. First, as they were planning to take the film in Paris, the location had to change. Then, since most of the scenes in the book were happening inside the house, they wanted to shift them to outdoor locations. Also, filming the rescue Vishali through the Embassy would be difficult, hence they wanted that to be changed. So I brought in Sarat Babu’s character and ‘Adhisaya Raagam’ song. The adaptation of the movie was definitely with my consent.
Q: Would I be wrong if I said that 47 Naatkal was a successful literary work precisely because it was serialized and kept the reader’s anticipation in high gear every week and throughout, and which was impossible to create and hold in the film?
A: Every reader has a right to hold on to their view. It is your opinion that the serialised version of the book was more successful than the film. People who have not read the book, seen only the movie, feel it is a very gripping movie.
Q: Did the film lose much of the novel’s communal specificity, as it was made for two linguistic audiences, tamizh and telugu?
A: I don’t think so. As I mentioned earlier, this kind of incident has happened, is happening, all over India. I don’t think that it is restricted to any linguistic state.
Q: If 47 Naatkal were serialized/written today, how would you change or modify the character of Vishali? To frame it another way: Would the character’s (under)exposure to the world around her seem plausible, even realistic?
A: Well, if I decide to create Vishali as an educated girl, then naturally the sequences would be different. But you must remember that even today there are lot of illiteracy prevailing in villages and small towns. Education to women in India is certainly coming in a big way, but not as fast as we all would like.
Q: What are the creative compromises in the transfer from one medium to another book to film?
A: I have explained this in many seminars. If reading belongs to one medium, the cinema or TV belong to another medium, though both are creative areas. The former essentially covers literate groups; and the latter along with literates, also the illiterate groups. So, it is essential that the text under goes certain changes - note - I don’t call this compromise.) as it shifts from one to another medium. What we say in a paragraph, in a film they can show it in a flash. And, what we say in one line – “the crowd had thousands of people” would be very difficult for the visual people. Once we understand these difficulties, then accepting the changes would be easier. I also quote one more example in this context. To have excellent yogurt, it is imperative that the quality of the milk is also good. Once the milk becomes the yogurt, the entire property changes. Milk is liquid, sweet; whereas, the yogurt is semi solid and slightly sour. Instead of commenting about the quality of yogurt, it would be foolish if one laments that the milk is spoiled. This is how the adaptation of a novel should be looked at when it is made into a film.
(* end of interview *)
Analysis of the book: 47 Days & 23 Nightmares
Vishali is all of sixteen when she is married to Kumar who is all of twenty-nine. He seems like a good enough chap – charming, affable, easy on the wallet – and his modesty and self-effacing demeanor is soon the talk of the towns that side of Vizhupuram. Kumar’s parents have put the word out for jathakams, and the agraharams all the way to Aadhichapuram are abuzz with feelers. Kumar, the American success-story, is looking for a very, very Indian bride.
Sivasankari’s novel, 47 Naatkal, begins with a wedding in rural Tamil Naadu and ends with a FBI rescue operation in suburban Chicago. What lies between (pun intended) is a pool of innocence lost and violence found; an allegorical Alice in Wonderland gone way, way bad.
[html:bb3d7ab2de]<img src=http://static.flickr.com/7/10371614_de06655082.jpg?v=0 align=right>[/html:bb3d7ab2de]
The Kumar Vishali wedding is indeed the talk of Aadhichapuram. For a high-school drop out like Vishali, with nothing but looks to bring in her wedding trousseau, to marry Kumar, a prince of riches, good manners and handsome looks, is everything plus a miracle. Vishali’s sister Gnaanam, and her older brother, Chandru, can’t believe the youngest one’s good luck. The marriage consummated, Kumar makes plans to fly back to Chicago with Vishali, who, just a few days into the marriage, has discovered that her husband smokes, drinks, and will very soon eat meat on their flight to Frankfurt, and from thereon to New York and Chicago.
We, the readers, soon realize that what you see is not what you get with a guy like Kumar. Kumar is your classic gold-digger - with brahminical good features. Already married to Lucia, a millionaire doctor back in the USA, Kumar’s hasty wedding to Vishali is one of convenience. Lucia is pregnant and has threatened to quit practice once the baby is born, and Kumar can’t bear to think of the loss of all those easy medical dollars. By now, married for a few years, he has become accustomed to the soft life of being just and only good enough to chill. Lucia’s home-stay with the baby will also signal an end to all those easy daytime sexual encounters with other women; an abrupt goodbye to those afternoons of wild hedonism that are an indispensable part of his “maerkaththiya” lifestyle. Kumar decides on a trip to India, back home, with the hope of finding a quiet, pliant and illiterate girl to marry. To Lucia, back in Chicago, he will present her as his heartbroken “sister” who would love to nanny their child when Lucia returns to work; and to the girl he marries he will have to explain nothing, only say that the “white woman” is his close friend and benefactor, and that kissing your benefactor on her lips whenever you greet her is customary for the average American. The language barrier, one would speak no English and the other no Tamil, will be the great divider, and his translator manipulations would ensure that the game never gets out of hand. There is nothing he couldn’t make up, he reckons, to keep Lucia happy and the Indian girl guessing.
On the third day of her arrival in Chicago, Vishali discovers Kumar’s nightclothes in Lucia’s bedroom and confronts him. In an attempt to convert her with the truth by making her party to it, he confesses that Lucia is indeed his wife, and that he plans on staying with her for a few more years – that is, until he has made sure he has put away enough money to return to India and spend his life farming with Vishali in a Vizhupuram village! Divorce is common in America, he offers, and Vishali would reap the sweet rewards of the settlement if she only played along for a year or two. Vishali turns him down flat. And thus begins a game of bondage and control, mastery and subjugation.
Writing is not merely a political act for an author like Sivasankari. It is also an act of disseminating awareness, of floodlighting the spots of ignorance in the dark corners of the reader’s mind. What sets Sivasankari apart from her contemporaries is essentially this one quality – the author as fully conscious of her writing as a catalyst for change (www.sivasankari.com). Hence, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that in her novels the Issue is the Hero. If her meticulous descriptions of bank procedures in Amma, Please, Enakkaaga, her nuanced exploration of the ravages of cancer in Nandu, her compassionate understanding of alcohol addiction in Oru Manithanin Kathai, and her historically and culturally detailed edifice, Paalagal -- if any and all the novels not mentioned above share one thing in common, that one unmistakable stamp of identification, it has got to be the author’s daring, her success at making the unfamiliar both familiar and comprehensive. 47 Naatkal is no exception.
Through Vishali’s eyes we see both the bewilderment and the dangers of alie(nation). Her character provides a dual critique: she lives and symbolizes the cold isolation of NRI brides while allowing the author to implicitly debunk the institution of arranged marriages, particularly those involving girls who have no power in the decision-making. Vishali’s underexposure is a conduit, a tabula rasa, and Sivasankari fills in the thoughts and insights with a simple naturalness.
Kumar, on the other hand, is painted in some clichéd broad strokes. His villainy is presaged by the introduction of cigarettes and alcohol, and subsequently to his being a carnivore and a womanizer. The reader does not share the astonishment of Vishali at these revelations precisely because the reader can read and Vishali can’t, or not really. The stock stereotype is immediately apparent, and hence rendered ineffective. Kumar is a “bad boy”, we get it, and we think it’s a tad facile even for the late seventies. Such obviousness, when put beside the bare-bone contextual information in the development of Kumar, makes him into a caricature of a smooth-operator on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Similarly, his quick descent into sadomasochism (stubbing cigarette butts on Vishali, holding her hand under the hot water tap, forcing her to have sex with him at different locations in the house when Lucia is away, and taking her to a pornography cinema) is more sensational than studied. When the novel was serialized, it afforded the reader a distance to imagine and vicariously live the lives of Kumar and Vishali and Lucia - a break of seven days - before the next installment came along. The readers’ own imaginings, turned up to distressing levels of anxiety once Vishali’s humiliations began, a week between one day (as published) and another, also provided the thrill of having one’s own predictions and scenarios validated or alluded to in the latest chapter. Those accumulative rewards all but vanish when one reads the novel as a published book, making it seem curiously rushed, disaffecting and incomplete.
The film takes the seeming away.
[html:bb3d7ab2de]http://www.mayyam.com/tfmmagazine/nov05/47-naatkal.jpg[/html:bb3d7ab2de]
If it’s indeed true that Sivasankari wears her social liberal heart on her writing sleeve, it is also equally true that K.Balachander lets his bleed all over the camera lens. An auteur meets an author. And when they decided to collaborate creatively on the film version of the book, it was a marriage made in leftie heaven. The timing was also rather serendipitous - the book came along right around the same time that Indian cinema was beginning to carve out “anti-heroes,” - and K. Balachander himself had made such characters acceptable and popular in Avargal and Moondru Mudichhu. What went wrong with 47 Naatkal? Was it just bad luck and an impatient audience? Perhaps. Or it could be Rajnikanth, but we’d never know. However, luck’s not the only reason why the film sank into lukewarm oblivion. Its problems are unique, and they all come from outside of the book.
The film is structured as a mise en abime – a story within a story. Saritha (playing herself) meets Vishali for a tete-a-tete. As such, we, the viewers of the film, we all become surrogate Sarithas, listening to Vishali’s story as it unfolds in a flashback with appropriately inserted present day interjections (not to spur the story, only to prolong it.) A well-worn narrative device of literary merit (Wuthering Heights, anybody?), the only problem it presents here, in this particular case, is that it works directly against the momentum of the novel: While the reader turns the page with a pounding heart to find out about Vishali’s eventual fate, the viewer of the film begins with the full knowledge that Vishali is free and safe. The “Does She Get Away?” question is conjugated in this “transformation” as, “How Did She Get Away?” The formulation renders the film as completely antithetical to the foreshadowing impulses and pay-offs of the novel.
[html:bb3d7ab2de]<img src=http://megafans.com/plugins/coppermine_menu/albums/userpics/10416/chiranj1.jpg align=right width=200>[/html:bb3d7ab2de]
Anonymity is absolutely criticall for Kumar and Vishali to be identifiable as “every day” people, for it is only then can the novel resonate with the “every day” reader. The characters have to be unknown even when they are known - the reader has to constantly build their imaginary faces in an effort to keep the story personal and close to home (arguably not the faces sketched by C. Jeyaraj for sure -see book cover above!), for only then does the possibility that what happens to Vishali could just as easily happen to the girl who lives down the street become frighteningly real. And it did, too, when the novel was serialized. But we know Jaya Prada doesn’t live down the street, nor for that matter does Chiranjeevi. How, one wonders, did the makers of the film conclude that brand name stars would provide that bridge, a conveyor to the urgency of newspaper reports on NRI-bride scandals? The universality that would have emerged with unknown names instantly evaporates in the heat of star-power glitz. It becomes impossible to see Kumar and Vishali as people down the street, or even as characters in the book. The marquee dazzle that gets you in also becomes the one big barrier between you and the topical impetus of the novel filmed. It is a tellingly well-lit irony.
Ramaprabha and Sarat Babu have no corresponding characters in the book, and that’s just as well. Their “grifter / drifter” routine wears thin, and their machinations to whisk Vishali away makes one want to be more considerate in one’s estimation of the novel’s ending which is bizarrely high-handed. (Okay, RP and SB are just bizarre.)
Back to that “disaffecting” feeling - in its own words:
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Here’s the implosion: The novel’s sudden turn into first person didacticism finds a perfect corollary in the Ramaprabha / Sarat Babu sideshow. Both are clumsy and irksome cop-outs that blow in from the outside and make you feel cheated, of what you’re not sure yet, but you have an inkling that it might be something resembling human intelligence.
**
[html:bb3d7ab2de]©[/html:bb3d7ab2de] Author 2005
(Republished from the TFM Page Magazine series of the same name.)
Turn is a special word.
It carries within it a sense of change - be it a manner, a physical gesture, a trait of character, an everyday phrase, or even the eternal grave. When someone or something or some feeling turns, there is a transformation. Mostly, the change is simple, ordinary, and meaningless. But some times it is profound. The purpose of this series is to chart that change with a focus on one commercial turning: What happens when images of words on the page become images of movement on the screen? The Screen-Turners will explore this transition of media – creatively, critically and perhaps, not too controversially.
There are many books that been made into tamil films. My selection here is entirely random and evidently contemporary. In a turn (that word again!) toward selfishness, I have chosen the books I would like to reread. Some of these are also based on my music collection – I want to include songs and a close reading of the lyrics wherever possible – and that really narrows my choice. To pin this literature, film and music tent, we might have to head somewhere into the mid-70s, and do the distance again. The good thing is, most of the books are in print. And even if you don’t get around to reading them now, there will be enough here to make you want to look them up sometime, maybe on a lonely flight from Toronto to Kuala Lumpur. Trust me, it will bring it all back home.
The format of this exercise is dynamic. Ever changing. Wherever possible, I will include song files, pictures, interviews, and such. My analyses of the books turning into films will be all and only mine. So feel free to rave, rah-rah or ruminate.
The Screen-Turners - Interview One
VISHALI, PARIS, AND BACTERIAL PROCESSES…
When I called, Sivasankari answered the phone herself. But that’s the kind of person she is. I told her about the new series I was contemplating, and asked her if she’d have the time to answer a few questions on 47 Naatkal, the novel and the film. “I’m busy with a wedding in the family,” she said, “but I’ll certainly look at the questions if you send them to me.” I told her to take her time - and the space she needed. She got back in a week.
Here’s my Q & A with celebrated author, Sivasankari.
[html:bb3d7ab2de]http://www.rediff.com/news/1996/1011san1.jpg[/html:bb3d7ab2de]
Q. Why 47 Naatkal? Why not 53 or 34 or 69 Naatkal? In other words, how did you arrive at this span of days? Was the novel written and ready before it was serialized? Is there any other reason for this particular choice of number?
A. This is a question asked by many people. In fact, there is no real reason for selecting 47 days. The novel, as you know, was written in 1978 and I find it very difficult to recollect how specific my thinking was! But I can try to tell you why I chose ‘47’ with a reason. Normally a pregnancy is confirmed after 45 days. Once Vishali’s pregnancy is confirmed, I wanted to end the story. Hence, 47 days. And also, I liked the way ‘47 Naatkal’ sounded. It is my practice to write the serial story week after week, although the entire story would have taken shape within myself. But, in the case of 47 Naatkal, I remember writing and completing it in a month’s time before handing it over to Mr. Manian to be serialised in Idhayam Pesugirathu.
Q: Would it be right to classify 47 Naatkal as a domestic thriller? Wasn’t this the greatest draw for the audience - the thriller element of the writing? Or could it be voyeurism?
A: I certainly don’t agree that this novel is planned to be a domestic thriller. The incidents I heard from some of my close people led me to write about them. This, added on to my trips and experiences in the US, consolidated the theme. As far as I am concerned, writing is a process through which I share the thoughts that have motivated me into thinking - as authentic and interesting as possible. I can tell you faithfully that when I sat to write this novel, there was no intention of making it a thriller or voyeuristic.
Q: Is Vishali a Victim or Survivor? The novel ends with her rescue, but what precedes the denouement is a series of violent acts that can be summed up as spousal abuse. How do you see her now, given the distance between the novel from the time of publication and the current strides of Indian feminism?
A: Vishali was a victim who survived finally. The series of violence – that erupts out of the inability and anger of Kumar - happened very naturally. Kumar behaves like angry caged animals, whose calculations go haywire and cause his extraordinary behaviour. Yes, in today’s context, one can definitely say it is a spousal abuse. But when I wrote the story, as the events unfolded, whatever naturally would be the response is what I have tried to depict. You have asked me how I see her now. To be honest, it will be very difficult. She can be anything. A successful woman who has learnt her lessons through bitter experiences, or somebody who is shattered and finding solace in self-sympathy, or a combination of both. Everything depends on what kind of mental attitude she develops after she returns, and the family and social support she receives.
Q: Is there something more to the character of the ex-pat/NRI husband? Was the dislocation of Vishali from India to a western country a cautionary gesture on your part? In other words, was there a nascent nationalism in the binary of East/West that the novel seemed to suggest? A division such as, India = Moral/Traditional, West = Libertarian/Immoral?
A: As I mentioned in one of the earlier answers, in middle 70s I suddenly happened to hear 2 or 3 incidents in succession about girls going from here to other countries and finding that the husband is already married to a foreigner. In those cases one being educated, returned immediately; one died due to unknown reasons in France itself; and the third one came out of it with the help of a German lady. All these made me feel that I should go in depth with the topic. Because I’d been to America few times, and the topography and the customs are familiar, I chose US as the place of action. Otherwise, there is no particular reason as you mentioned -India-moral/traditional; west-liberation or immoral. So many such cases happen in India too. Actually I was invited to Singapore a month ago by the National Library Committee that comprises of 26 libraries. They had selected my book ‘47 Naatkal’ for READ Singapore programme and had invited me for 3 interactions with the readers. The main reason for their selecting the book is that they felt the theme is still very contemporary. In fact, in one meeting a young girl came forward to accept that she was victimised like Vishali and has come out of the wedlock just a year ago. I am telling you all these to emphasise that though I chose US for the base of my novel, this can happen anywhere and with my inputs is happening everywhere to many people.
Q: What are your views regarding the omniscience of the Author? How do you negotiate the fine balance between your own personal views and those of your characters? How important is authorial control and/or distance to you?
A: Writing is like ‘Parakaya pravesham’ - that is, going from one body into another. If I project Sivasankari’s views through all characters, then they will become so alike, boring and there will be no individuality at all. Hence, I am very clear that the author cannot penetrate or influence the characters unless there is an absolute need. Out of 45 or so novels I have written, may be in two. I have consciously made the main female characters reflect some of my personal ideas because their characterisation is somewhat similar to mine.
Q: Of all your works that have been made/adapted for film, which film was the most faithful to the text?
A: Well, if you are talking about faithfulness to the text, then it is the recent film ‘Kutti’. The film has almost ninety-nine of the text intact. As for 47 Naatkal, director K. Balachandar told me at the very first meeting that he doesn’t want Sivasankari’s readers to blame him that he has changed the story. Hence, he wanted me to do the necessary changes. First, as they were planning to take the film in Paris, the location had to change. Then, since most of the scenes in the book were happening inside the house, they wanted to shift them to outdoor locations. Also, filming the rescue Vishali through the Embassy would be difficult, hence they wanted that to be changed. So I brought in Sarat Babu’s character and ‘Adhisaya Raagam’ song. The adaptation of the movie was definitely with my consent.
Q: Would I be wrong if I said that 47 Naatkal was a successful literary work precisely because it was serialized and kept the reader’s anticipation in high gear every week and throughout, and which was impossible to create and hold in the film?
A: Every reader has a right to hold on to their view. It is your opinion that the serialised version of the book was more successful than the film. People who have not read the book, seen only the movie, feel it is a very gripping movie.
Q: Did the film lose much of the novel’s communal specificity, as it was made for two linguistic audiences, tamizh and telugu?
A: I don’t think so. As I mentioned earlier, this kind of incident has happened, is happening, all over India. I don’t think that it is restricted to any linguistic state.
Q: If 47 Naatkal were serialized/written today, how would you change or modify the character of Vishali? To frame it another way: Would the character’s (under)exposure to the world around her seem plausible, even realistic?
A: Well, if I decide to create Vishali as an educated girl, then naturally the sequences would be different. But you must remember that even today there are lot of illiteracy prevailing in villages and small towns. Education to women in India is certainly coming in a big way, but not as fast as we all would like.
Q: What are the creative compromises in the transfer from one medium to another book to film?
A: I have explained this in many seminars. If reading belongs to one medium, the cinema or TV belong to another medium, though both are creative areas. The former essentially covers literate groups; and the latter along with literates, also the illiterate groups. So, it is essential that the text under goes certain changes - note - I don’t call this compromise.) as it shifts from one to another medium. What we say in a paragraph, in a film they can show it in a flash. And, what we say in one line – “the crowd had thousands of people” would be very difficult for the visual people. Once we understand these difficulties, then accepting the changes would be easier. I also quote one more example in this context. To have excellent yogurt, it is imperative that the quality of the milk is also good. Once the milk becomes the yogurt, the entire property changes. Milk is liquid, sweet; whereas, the yogurt is semi solid and slightly sour. Instead of commenting about the quality of yogurt, it would be foolish if one laments that the milk is spoiled. This is how the adaptation of a novel should be looked at when it is made into a film.
(* end of interview *)
Analysis of the book: 47 Days & 23 Nightmares
Vishali is all of sixteen when she is married to Kumar who is all of twenty-nine. He seems like a good enough chap – charming, affable, easy on the wallet – and his modesty and self-effacing demeanor is soon the talk of the towns that side of Vizhupuram. Kumar’s parents have put the word out for jathakams, and the agraharams all the way to Aadhichapuram are abuzz with feelers. Kumar, the American success-story, is looking for a very, very Indian bride.
Sivasankari’s novel, 47 Naatkal, begins with a wedding in rural Tamil Naadu and ends with a FBI rescue operation in suburban Chicago. What lies between (pun intended) is a pool of innocence lost and violence found; an allegorical Alice in Wonderland gone way, way bad.
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The Kumar Vishali wedding is indeed the talk of Aadhichapuram. For a high-school drop out like Vishali, with nothing but looks to bring in her wedding trousseau, to marry Kumar, a prince of riches, good manners and handsome looks, is everything plus a miracle. Vishali’s sister Gnaanam, and her older brother, Chandru, can’t believe the youngest one’s good luck. The marriage consummated, Kumar makes plans to fly back to Chicago with Vishali, who, just a few days into the marriage, has discovered that her husband smokes, drinks, and will very soon eat meat on their flight to Frankfurt, and from thereon to New York and Chicago.
We, the readers, soon realize that what you see is not what you get with a guy like Kumar. Kumar is your classic gold-digger - with brahminical good features. Already married to Lucia, a millionaire doctor back in the USA, Kumar’s hasty wedding to Vishali is one of convenience. Lucia is pregnant and has threatened to quit practice once the baby is born, and Kumar can’t bear to think of the loss of all those easy medical dollars. By now, married for a few years, he has become accustomed to the soft life of being just and only good enough to chill. Lucia’s home-stay with the baby will also signal an end to all those easy daytime sexual encounters with other women; an abrupt goodbye to those afternoons of wild hedonism that are an indispensable part of his “maerkaththiya” lifestyle. Kumar decides on a trip to India, back home, with the hope of finding a quiet, pliant and illiterate girl to marry. To Lucia, back in Chicago, he will present her as his heartbroken “sister” who would love to nanny their child when Lucia returns to work; and to the girl he marries he will have to explain nothing, only say that the “white woman” is his close friend and benefactor, and that kissing your benefactor on her lips whenever you greet her is customary for the average American. The language barrier, one would speak no English and the other no Tamil, will be the great divider, and his translator manipulations would ensure that the game never gets out of hand. There is nothing he couldn’t make up, he reckons, to keep Lucia happy and the Indian girl guessing.
On the third day of her arrival in Chicago, Vishali discovers Kumar’s nightclothes in Lucia’s bedroom and confronts him. In an attempt to convert her with the truth by making her party to it, he confesses that Lucia is indeed his wife, and that he plans on staying with her for a few more years – that is, until he has made sure he has put away enough money to return to India and spend his life farming with Vishali in a Vizhupuram village! Divorce is common in America, he offers, and Vishali would reap the sweet rewards of the settlement if she only played along for a year or two. Vishali turns him down flat. And thus begins a game of bondage and control, mastery and subjugation.
Writing is not merely a political act for an author like Sivasankari. It is also an act of disseminating awareness, of floodlighting the spots of ignorance in the dark corners of the reader’s mind. What sets Sivasankari apart from her contemporaries is essentially this one quality – the author as fully conscious of her writing as a catalyst for change (www.sivasankari.com). Hence, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that in her novels the Issue is the Hero. If her meticulous descriptions of bank procedures in Amma, Please, Enakkaaga, her nuanced exploration of the ravages of cancer in Nandu, her compassionate understanding of alcohol addiction in Oru Manithanin Kathai, and her historically and culturally detailed edifice, Paalagal -- if any and all the novels not mentioned above share one thing in common, that one unmistakable stamp of identification, it has got to be the author’s daring, her success at making the unfamiliar both familiar and comprehensive. 47 Naatkal is no exception.
Through Vishali’s eyes we see both the bewilderment and the dangers of alie(nation). Her character provides a dual critique: she lives and symbolizes the cold isolation of NRI brides while allowing the author to implicitly debunk the institution of arranged marriages, particularly those involving girls who have no power in the decision-making. Vishali’s underexposure is a conduit, a tabula rasa, and Sivasankari fills in the thoughts and insights with a simple naturalness.
Kumar, on the other hand, is painted in some clichéd broad strokes. His villainy is presaged by the introduction of cigarettes and alcohol, and subsequently to his being a carnivore and a womanizer. The reader does not share the astonishment of Vishali at these revelations precisely because the reader can read and Vishali can’t, or not really. The stock stereotype is immediately apparent, and hence rendered ineffective. Kumar is a “bad boy”, we get it, and we think it’s a tad facile even for the late seventies. Such obviousness, when put beside the bare-bone contextual information in the development of Kumar, makes him into a caricature of a smooth-operator on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Similarly, his quick descent into sadomasochism (stubbing cigarette butts on Vishali, holding her hand under the hot water tap, forcing her to have sex with him at different locations in the house when Lucia is away, and taking her to a pornography cinema) is more sensational than studied. When the novel was serialized, it afforded the reader a distance to imagine and vicariously live the lives of Kumar and Vishali and Lucia - a break of seven days - before the next installment came along. The readers’ own imaginings, turned up to distressing levels of anxiety once Vishali’s humiliations began, a week between one day (as published) and another, also provided the thrill of having one’s own predictions and scenarios validated or alluded to in the latest chapter. Those accumulative rewards all but vanish when one reads the novel as a published book, making it seem curiously rushed, disaffecting and incomplete.
The film takes the seeming away.
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If it’s indeed true that Sivasankari wears her social liberal heart on her writing sleeve, it is also equally true that K.Balachander lets his bleed all over the camera lens. An auteur meets an author. And when they decided to collaborate creatively on the film version of the book, it was a marriage made in leftie heaven. The timing was also rather serendipitous - the book came along right around the same time that Indian cinema was beginning to carve out “anti-heroes,” - and K. Balachander himself had made such characters acceptable and popular in Avargal and Moondru Mudichhu. What went wrong with 47 Naatkal? Was it just bad luck and an impatient audience? Perhaps. Or it could be Rajnikanth, but we’d never know. However, luck’s not the only reason why the film sank into lukewarm oblivion. Its problems are unique, and they all come from outside of the book.
The film is structured as a mise en abime – a story within a story. Saritha (playing herself) meets Vishali for a tete-a-tete. As such, we, the viewers of the film, we all become surrogate Sarithas, listening to Vishali’s story as it unfolds in a flashback with appropriately inserted present day interjections (not to spur the story, only to prolong it.) A well-worn narrative device of literary merit (Wuthering Heights, anybody?), the only problem it presents here, in this particular case, is that it works directly against the momentum of the novel: While the reader turns the page with a pounding heart to find out about Vishali’s eventual fate, the viewer of the film begins with the full knowledge that Vishali is free and safe. The “Does She Get Away?” question is conjugated in this “transformation” as, “How Did She Get Away?” The formulation renders the film as completely antithetical to the foreshadowing impulses and pay-offs of the novel.
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Anonymity is absolutely criticall for Kumar and Vishali to be identifiable as “every day” people, for it is only then can the novel resonate with the “every day” reader. The characters have to be unknown even when they are known - the reader has to constantly build their imaginary faces in an effort to keep the story personal and close to home (arguably not the faces sketched by C. Jeyaraj for sure -see book cover above!), for only then does the possibility that what happens to Vishali could just as easily happen to the girl who lives down the street become frighteningly real. And it did, too, when the novel was serialized. But we know Jaya Prada doesn’t live down the street, nor for that matter does Chiranjeevi. How, one wonders, did the makers of the film conclude that brand name stars would provide that bridge, a conveyor to the urgency of newspaper reports on NRI-bride scandals? The universality that would have emerged with unknown names instantly evaporates in the heat of star-power glitz. It becomes impossible to see Kumar and Vishali as people down the street, or even as characters in the book. The marquee dazzle that gets you in also becomes the one big barrier between you and the topical impetus of the novel filmed. It is a tellingly well-lit irony.
Ramaprabha and Sarat Babu have no corresponding characters in the book, and that’s just as well. Their “grifter / drifter” routine wears thin, and their machinations to whisk Vishali away makes one want to be more considerate in one’s estimation of the novel’s ending which is bizarrely high-handed. (Okay, RP and SB are just bizarre.)
Back to that “disaffecting” feeling - in its own words:
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Here’s the implosion: The novel’s sudden turn into first person didacticism finds a perfect corollary in the Ramaprabha / Sarat Babu sideshow. Both are clumsy and irksome cop-outs that blow in from the outside and make you feel cheated, of what you’re not sure yet, but you have an inkling that it might be something resembling human intelligence.
**
[html:bb3d7ab2de]©[/html:bb3d7ab2de] Author 2005
(Republished from the TFM Page Magazine series of the same name.)