Balyakalasakhi : From Fiction to Film

 

Vaikom Muhammed Basheer is placed in the high altar of Malayalam literature as his literary creations are marked by the down to earth narration and sheer verities of the lives of common folk. Balyakalasakhi (Childhood Friend), the most enduring romantic tragedy novel penned by Basheer has been translated into various Indian and global languages. Reading this novel again in the time of quarantine made me analyze lot many things in detail. I have read this novel during my school days. Am I the same person who read the novel after a decade and half? I doubt. Either I have matured or the characters have matured. As a school student, I enjoyed reading Basheer. Now, I am able to unearth new dimensions, values and meanings to his novel. The feelings, emotions and the zeal with which I read Balyakalasakhi is no more the same. Those who expect a popcorn love, candlelight dinner, happy go lucky love affair, do not go for this small novel of 88 pages. It is indeed a page torn from life and its edges are bleeding. I watched its celluloid version (2014) a few years ago. I felt like watching it again. Reading and watching/viewing: the two dimensions of literary aesthetics put me in knots. I could unravel a sort of artistic independence and interdependence in the novel and big screen adaptation. I don’t intend to call the director as a translator. The source text is not at all directly carved into the screen. Pramod Payyanur, the director of Balyakalasakhi has given a decent depiction of the hardships and miseries befallen in the life of Suhara and Majeed. He did not fail to give life to romance, childish affection and the adolescent love affair that bloomed in their hearts despite all the perils and problems of their daily life. The childhood romance between neighbours gradually take the form of passionate love in their adolescence. Majeed hails from a well off family whereas Suhara represents a family where in her father strives hard to make both ends meet. The tragedy of her father’s death stops studious Suhara from dreaming of job and higher studies. The first half of the story trailing through their childhood and adolescent is pleasant whereas the second half exposes the grim and dark occurrences of their life saga.

Contrary to the novel, the film goes for a flashback technique. The movie opens with a soliloquy of Majeed “I have been wandering from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, Karachi to Kolkata”. He has come across various sects of people despite the barriers of region, religion, culture, caste and creed. Many people have helped him out in lot many ways throughout his wandering. He is still a wanderer. Following a skirmish with his father, he leaves home and comes back after a long gap of ten years.  The circumstances of his family have become pathetic and his father is no richer. His mother fails to manage the life and expenses taking care of his ailing father and two sisters of marriageable age. He leaves home again. In the celluloid version, we see Majeed finding a job at Kolkata with the help of Selvi, a transgender. He ruminates his childhood moments with Suhara and the spectators are taken back to their school days. Their childish enmity bears the fruition of an eternal friendship cum love over the days. The circumcision marriage/ sunnath kalyanam prevalent among the Muslim community comes live in both the novel and cinema. When puberty marriage was celebrated in Malayalam novels, literary creations depicting circumcision marriage were scanty. Basheer might be the first one to portray the custom prevalent among the Muslim community. Majeed at times reflects Basheer as he was forced to leave Kerala for editing a revolutionary journal. That odyssey took him to the length and breadth of India and to sojourn at various places in Asia as well as Africa. Like Basheer, Majeed also had some association with the freedom struggle that gets a place in the flick.

 

Film can be adjudged as the result of the critical analysis of the source text by the director. Adaptation according to me, is a work inspired by another. It is the reinterpretation or relocation of a text. It is way different from translation, as the translator has to convey the sense and essence of the source language to the target language.  Dudley Andrews has been right in stating that the success of adaptation should be searched on the aspect of fertility rather than fidelity. We cannot isolate the source text completely. At the same time, the director has his liberty to reinterpret based on his perceptions of the novel. Film and fiction are the parts of linguistic phenomenon. In novel, we perceive images through words whereas in movie, we perceive images through eyes.  Both are story telling medium: one is visual and the other is verbal. I have gone through a handful reviews of the movies and I noticed that people have given the rating to less than six out of ten. I do not know how to give such a rating and I am not an adept at critiquing a movie. What I believe is a novel is the backbone from which the movie plot is constructed. There is a visible artistic independence and interdependence in these two aesthetic media. I am not expecting an exact carbon copy of a novel in the celluloid version. I think, I must use Majeed’s mathematical view to elucidate my view.

“How much is one plus one?”

Once teacher asked Majeed. It is a world renowned fact that one plus one gives one.

But, Majeed’s surprising reply created a boisterous laughter in his teacher. The entire class burst out into laughter within no time.

Majeed thought for a while before giving that answer.

When two rivers unite, it becomes a slightly fatter river.  Like the fusion of two rivers gives way for a fatter one, Majeed proudly declared: A slightly bigger one (immini balya onnu)”

 

As one plus one is giving a slightly bigger version of one, I would like to say that artistic independence and interdependence of fiction and film versions of Balyakalasakhi give rise to a slightly bigger version of the childhood companion.