The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : She beat Adoor Gopalakrishnan for the prize for best book

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jul 17, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

She beat Adoor Gopalakrishnan for the prize for best book

"I am hoping that the award will raise awareness of the book and help its sales"

"I've won a National Award this year and nobody but me and the judges seem to know," says the author of `Star Dust — Vignettes from the fringes of the film industry.'

This Swarna Kamal winner is a filmmaker herself, having made her debut with "Five by Four", funded by the National Film Development Corporation. As she waits for its release,

Roopa Swaminathan tells Sudhish Kamath how excited she is at having beaten Adoor Gopalakrishnan for a prize for the Best Book on Cinema.

"I am extremely excited about winning the award which was chosen from among 23 entries this year," says Roopa. "I am even more excited about how a huge portion of the book is based on the Chennai film industry and feel that Chennai should be proud of me," she laughs adding: "I am hoping that the award will raise awareness of the book and help its sales."

Very often, it is Bollywood that steals the limelight from regional film industries that produce four times the number of films Bollywood produces. To ensure that it was time the local film industry got its due, Roopa decided to go in for a mix of stories of people from Bollywood and the Chennai film industry. Roopa's book had a low-key launch in December 2004. The idea was to write a non-fiction book in fiction style. She set out to collect real life stories of technicians, assistants, dancers, extras, "the unseen, unknown faces who are somehow lost in the melee that surrounds the big stars." And those of fans, especially here in Tamil Nadu.

"We went looking for interesting personalities who had really interesting stories to tell," says the writer who has a fascination for the offbeat. It was an intriguing, heartbreaking journey for Roopa, especially for her chapter on `Extras.' She did not want stereotypical stories and her hunt led her to "three incredible women — Sulekha, Srimati and Roja paati."

"I wanted to feature everyone. Even dancers, who spend hours together with the stars, learning the same intricate steps, injuring the same spot on their ankles, sweating equally under the hot, scorching sun and freezing to death in Auckland," says Roopa. "But seldom can two lives be more different than that of the star and dancer."

For the finale of the book, she wanted to profile someone who had made the jump from the fringes to the core. And she found a hero right here at home: Vikram.

"I spent over three months with him to get a feel of his life... then and now. How did it start? How long did it take before the mandatory happy ending? It was an awe-inspiring jaw-dropping story of a man, his courage and his determination to make it: against all odds and in the face of immense humiliation. "It took him 15 years to get to the top," says the writer who found the perfect climax for her book in his story.

Even in her films, Roopa likes to explore newer ways to tell a story. Her "Five by four" is a breakthrough of sorts in the alternative narrative. Roopa tells a story of a close-knit gang of five girls through four episodic stories that show how interlinked their lives get over 10 years. "I want to experiment with and specialise in alternative structures," says the filmmaker, who is leaving for the U.S. to mobilise resources for her second film.

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