Another trip to Malgudi
DEEPA GANESH
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Malgudi Days, R.K. Narayan's literary masterpiece, is back on television. This time Kavitha Lankesh calls the shots
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PHOTO: BHAGYA PRAKASH K.
TIME AND TIDE Kavitha Lankesh: `Now, everybody is professional and works by schedules. And with urbanisation and globalisation, even Agumbe is not the same'
Nostalgia hardly needs a reason. If you belong to the watershed generation straddling two worlds, the past constantly lives in the present. But this time round, you sure have reason to be nostalgic. R.K. Narayan's Malgudi Days, which became synonymous with the late Shankar Nag, one of the brightest stars of Kannada, is back on Doordarshan in its second avatar. The auteur for this new take is filmmaker Kavitha Lankesh.
For every R.K. Narayan fan, the characters of the imaginary, quaint village Malgudi came so intimately alive that it seemed like they had met each of them, seen them somewhere, some time. Even for the formidable Graham Greene who said: "Malgudi is a real place with which we have been as familiar as with our own birthplace. We know it like the streets of childhood, Market Road, the snuff stalls, the vendors of toothpaste, the Regal Hair Cutting Saloon, the river (Sarayu) and the railway station." Not to forget the astrologer, the reading room, Sampath the printer and, as critic V.N. Narayan in his essay Malgudi Magic describes "the whole place pulsating with human activity of the kind that is memorable for its ordinariness." And this memorable ordinariness has cast a spell on people across generations.
Malgudi magic
V.N. Narayan says further: "Malgudi is Narayan's greatest invention wherein he could put in real people, real places in one harmony of day-to-day existence and eccentricity. Every minor and major character of Narayan's stories fascinates, even the only villain to figure in all his writings, Vasu, the man-eater of Malgudi. Narayan is that supreme alchemist who discovered that the ordinary is the most extra-ordinary aspect of civilised living."
With Shankar Nag's touch, this extraordinary aspect turned into magic. "I have vivid memories of how he came home jumping and dancing to announce that producer T.S. Narasimhan had asked him to make Malgudi Days for television," recalls Arundhati Nag, wife of Shankar Nag and dialogue writer for Malgudi Days. The voracious reader that he was, he had read R.K. Narayan's books cover to cover. But that didn't stop him rediscovering Malgudi's magic with the project on hand.
When the pilot episode (Old Man and the Temple) was approved by a visibly overjoyed R.K. Narayan, Nag went full steam. "We worked very hard, day and night. He had such a wonderful team, in fact the best of those times."
Arundhati recalls how Shankar and she, with their little Kavya, literally "packed up their lives" and went uphill to Agumbe, where much of the series was shot. "The crew and the actors were such a huge number that we had occupied every jagali (front yard) of Agumbe," she remembers. The logistics were intimidating. One episode demanded donkeys and there wasn't a single one in Agumbe, necessitating their sourcing and carting them uphill. For another episode, they even ferried an elephant in a lorry! Dialogue writers, makeup men, lighting team, actors... pitched their tents and worked with total commitment, switched off to time.
But times have changed. "Though I do have many of the crew members from the original Malgudi like the art director and the associate director, it's not the same. Now, everybody is professional and works by schedules.
And with urbanisation and globalisation, even Agumbe is not the same!" explains Kavitha Lankesh. So much so that now 300 vehicles pass every day on the once peaceful Agumbe road, making it extremely difficult to sync sound.
Making it 20 years later, Kavitha has had to face a lot more impediments, even in terms of creating period ambience. For instance, they had to hunt high and low for an old bus before finally locating one of the right vintage in Saundatti, driving it 400 kilometres to the location.
Anant Nag in a scene from the episode Lawley Road
But wasn't the bigger challenge taking on Shankar Nag's masterpiece? "No, I had other challenges and this was the last one on my mind. When Shankar Nag made his serial there was just one channel. But now there are hundreds and an audience that is hooked to the saas-bahu sagas. Reaching out to them seemed more daunting than taking on Malgudi Days," she avers.
She also adds how networking with Doordarshan can be completely off-putting. Not only did the mandarins take their own sweet time to decide, but they also changed the schedule to accommodate the cricket match.
Kavitha has chosen to retain the title song, the unforgettable folk melody by L. Vaidyanathan, and the exceptional illustrations by R.K. Narayan's sibling, R.K. Laxman. She has even tried to retain the ring of the language as in the original. Apparently, Shankar Nag spent days trying out various Hindi dialects before he zeroed in upon on what he used in the serial. "We knew it wouldn't be Benarasi or Lucknowi, not even the Bollywood Hindi, which is very Punjabi. We worked on the language till we arrived at this brand, which was easy on the ears," says Arundhati, recalling their language sessions.
Kannada actor Sunder Raj, who has been part of both the productions, says that both directors are extremely talented, though he does see a great difference in their approach. "As a person Shankar Nag was extremely exuberant. He had a Bombay theatre background and a core middleclass experience in him. Having been brought up in very ordinary circumstances, he knew the struggles of the middle-class. And that was so typical of R.K. Narayan's Malgudi Days too."
But Kavitha comes from an upper middleclass family with a seminal writer like P. Lankesh for her father. "She may not have been exposed to middleclass struggles like Shankar Nag was, but Kavitha has a critical eye, which helps her grasp Narayan with the same fervour as he did."
Shankar Nag didn't believe in entertainment bereft of thinking; nevertheless he didn't do it in the arthouse style, risking alienating huge chunks of the viewership. Having blazed a trail, Kavitha already has a captive audience. However, she hasn't let down Malgudi fans, holds Sunder Raj.
Says Arundhati Nag: "I'm not sure if even Shankar Nag would have been able to pull it off now. It was a team and a time that is no longer there. I must say Kavitha is courageous. Fighting Shankar's ghost is a brave act."
Malgudi Days is telecast Wednesdays on Doordarshan, 8.30 p.m.
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