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Magazine
In Conversation
‘I have no aspirations for a Booker’
ANUJ KUMAR
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With his latest novel behind him, Farrukh Dhondy has started work on the screenplay for Mahabharata. He says one needs flexibility to switch to different writing styles. Excerpts from an interview….
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Photo: Sushil Kumar Verma
Pleasant persona, biting words: Farrukh Dhondy.
“I want to be as real as possible in my writing. People want to know the story, not how clever I am. I believe in readable prose, not literary conceit. I don’t suffer from literary affectation. I have no aspirations for a Booker.” Biting words from a writer whose characters are in consonance with their surroundings. But, Farrukh Dhondy’s amiable persona dilutes the causticity of his words. Shuttling between U.K. and India, Farrukh has just completed a novel, The Snake. Meanwhile, he is scripting Mahabharata for Star Plus. “The novel is the study of a serial killer, Johnson That. I was interested in understanding a person who has no morals.” The novel is set in France, India, Thailand and Vietnam. Enough hints for one to speculate whether it is about Charles Sobhraj. “Charles Sobhraj was indeed in my mind but mine is a fictional character because I don’t know how and why he killed because Charles never confessed.”
Farrukh reveals that he met Charles quite a few times in London when he was working with Channel 4. “He introduced himself as the cousin of Ram Adhvani, who was my classmate in Pune. He wanted his Tihar memoirs to be published. I didn’t read them. I gave them to an agent but they were not published as publishers were more interested in how he killed so many people.” Farrukh says what makes Charles fascinating is that he never confessed. “If you ask him to confess he would ask, how much? He doesn’t have normal emotional commitments like you and me. And most importantly, he planned for life 21 years ahead, which normally we don’t do. He knew that according to Thai law one can’t be tried for an offence 20 years after it is committed. So he got himself arrested in India for minor crimes because according to Indian law a person can’t be extradited before he completes the sentence for the crimes committed in India. He ran away from Tihar so that he could get to spend some more time in the jail.”
Many don’t think screenplay writing is a literary activity, but Farrukh feels these are those who don’t have the flexibility to switch to different styles of writing. He feels he has been able to reach out to many more people through plays and films. “Writing for films is a cooperative effort where director and editor can make changes to what you have written. And, of course, you can share the blame,” he quips. Like in the case of “Mangal Pandey” and “Kisna”! “Kisna was Subhash Ghai’s baby. When I saw the film, there was little of what I had written. I saw too many names credited with writing, with whom I had never worked. In ‘Mangal Pandey’ I had written three or four subplots, out of which they retained only one. Aamir and his team stressed on including songs instead.”
Farrukh says popular Indian cinema still draws a lot from mythology and fantasy unlike the Hollywood or British cinema which is rooted in drama and novels. “The characters don’t speak like people do in real life. Films like ‘Om Shanti Om’ just pretend to be real. I don’t say I don’t like it. I don’t understand it. ‘Chak De’ is again too good to be true but at least the characters are real. Historically, in India, religion is closely associated with entertainment. Be it Ram leela, Nautanki or Bharatanatyam, all have a religious connotation.”
Despite commercial compulsions and having spent most of his life in the capitalist world, Farrukh maintains that he is still a Marxist. “I am not a communist but a Marxist. If Pol Pot is communist, I can’t be. Actually those who call themselves communists are followers of Stalin. Marxism is not a religion but a way to look at history.”
Farrukh spent 14 years as the Commissioning Editor of Channel 4 where he commissioned films like “Salaam Bombay” and “Bandit Queen”. Talking about the standards of Indian television, Farrukh feels Indian television has betrayed the truth. “I don’t find any probing programmes on television. The analysis is missing. They treat the politicians too respectfully. Tehelka has done some good sting operations but here it seems nobody cares.” As for the reality shows, Farrukh, who allegedly called Shilpa Shetty a fake after the Big Brother episode, clarifies he commented on the entire episode. “Crying racism has become an industry in the UK. Shilpa should have known what the show was all about. And she was called a papadum after being paid three hundred thousand pounds. You could call me a papadum for three pounds!”
Translation too
Farrukh’s is working on a film for Ketan Mehta and a novel woven around Rajneesh. “Being from Pune, I knew the man. I am not making a hero out of him. He was a shallow person who had the advantage of being the first commercial guru.” He is also translating Rumi because he is not satisfied with the existing translations. “They literally translate words like saqi and suroor which have a different connotation in Sufi poetry. I want to prove you could be lyrical and true to the meaning at the same time in translation.”
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