Thursday, September 29, 2022

The Long Awaited Ponniyin Selvan Spectacle

 I come from a family of readers and when I say that most people who know me think I am referring mainly to my dad. But my mom and my paternal grandmom were equally voracious, except they read Tamil literature whereas my dad read mainly in English. Growing up one of the hardest things I had to do in school was to learn Tamil all the way through till my 12th grade. With all the effort one was forced to put in one would barely scrape a 50% in the exam. So reading in Tamil was in my mind never a fun activity despite the fact that we had a writer (Sandilyan) in the family. Leaving TN behind and gaining a few years changes all that. About 20 years back a friend of mine told me he was engrossed in Kalki's Ponniyin Selvan. Now this is a guy I really respect and who I thought shared similar literary interests with me and not a regular Tamil reader. I rarely pass on anything he recommends and so I picked it up and as they say - the rest is history or in my case an obsession.

Since then I've read the books multiple times. I've read them aloud to my nursing daughter, read them over her shoulder when she was being kept upright for burping, even read them at work when I was taking a break. My mom would read them every time she came to the US and we would talk about it. We used to talk about how many people wanted to make a movie out of the novels but never succeeded. We wanted to see it as a a TV series and we would often say who would do it though. I always wished Manohar would have done a stage play out of it. I was also proposing to her that we should do a Ponniyin Selvan roadtrip when I came to India but I would come for such a short time and my daughter was still very young that I didn't want to subject her to it.

Ponniyin Selvan led me to other books by Kalki (Sivagamiyin Sabadam, Parthiban Kanavu) and then I finally picked up my own relative Sandilyan's Kadal Pura, Yavana Rani and Kanni Maadam. I was now hungry for the real history. So I turned to Nilakanta Sastri as I wanted to learn more about the Cholas. From there I became obsessed. Of late, I am devouring Kudavayil Balasubramiam's books and Youtube lectures. I watched a 6-part, 6 hour lecture by Vidya Dehejia on the Chola Bronzes and I am finding more things to read/watch.

So like millions of other fans across many generations I eagerly await the movie by Maniratnam tomorrow. He was the last person I imagined would bring this book to life. He is known for bringing modern, urban, contemporary topics to Tamil cinema and is famous for his (so-called) natural dialogues. I've enjoyed only a few movies of his - Mouna Ragam, Nayagan and Anjali are the only ones I like. I thought Roja and Bombay were too contrived. Agni Natchatram was a product of its time and could have used a great editor. Never saw any of his new movies after Alaipaayudhe. Didn't see Gitanjali, Thiruda Thiruda or Iruvar (I know I sound like Kanchan & Nirmal from Kadhalika Neramillai - "we don't see Tamil pictures, only English pictures") Anyway as you can tell, I am not a Maniratnam fangirl. My favorite Tamil Director was Mahendran. But I am definitely a Ponniyin Selvan devotee. 

Tomorrow's movie is as big as the release of Lord of the Rings or Dune or more accurately (because of the genre) Wolf Hall for me. So I am rooting for its success as I want this story to get the audience it deserves and I cannot deny that Maniratnam and ARR are the only two who can achieve that in this day and age. I know they insist that the majority of the people who come to the movie would have never read the book. But I hope they know that a significant chunk of the population are those who have read it multiple times. It is a Tamil classic that has never been out of print since the 1950s and is probably the only thing that unites many generations of readers. Maniratnam has said he himself is a huge fan of the book which he had first encountered in his teenage years and so I hope he will do justice to it.

I am beyond excited as my daughter who has only heard the story from me and who thinks it is one of the best plots ever is also going to be with me watching it. My husband (who is not a reader) has read only one novel in the 24 years we've been together and that was Ponniyin Selvan. So our family is going to be there tomorrow with my mom watching it in Chennai at the same time. 

Fingers crossed!

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