Author pens trilogy as prequel to Baahubali

While it isn’t new for films to bring to life literary characters on screen, never in the past has a fictional personality inspired a novel. But, Kerala-based author Anand Neelakantan has attempted to do just that in his trilogy, Baahubali. However, unlike the on-screen version, the literary adaptation will not be centred around Baahubali. Rather, it will focus on his mother Sivagami, who was played by Ramya Krishnan on screen. The books are on her journey, purpose and why she wants to destroy Mahishmati. The last book ends with what was the first scene in Baahubali: The Beginning. The Rise Of Sivagami, the first book of the trilogy, set in the eighth century, will trace her transition from being an adventurous teenager to a fierce warrior. “When I met Rajamouli, he revealed that somewhere down the line, he felt that both his films could not do complete justice to all the characters. He wanted to bring them alive through a book. He then gave me a brief of the characters and their sketches and asked me to conceive their back stories and create additional characters. He liked what I’d written and we decided to go ahead with the trilogy,” says Neelakantan whose book will be released at Starmark, Express Avenue, on Friday, adding that the release could not have been better timed as the much-awaited second installment, Baahubali 2: The Conclusion, hits the screens on April 28. 

Neelakantan, who has written for popular TV shows like Siya Ke Ram and Adalat 2, and authored three fiction books based on Ramayana and Mahabharata, has so far weaved his stories around powerful male personalities at their centre. “It is this very pattern that I wanted to break from with this trilogy,” adds Neelakantan, an engineer-turned-writer, whose last book Asura: The Tale of the Vanquished, was well received. He is also aware of the expectations considering the unparalleled success of the movie franchise. “Yes, comparisons are inevitable. Having said that, as a novelist, it gives me more freedom to explore characters in depth which a filmmaker may not have given the time constraints. Apart from Sivagami, there is also emphasis on Kattappa and others,” adds Neelakantan. That’s perhaps why 40 new characters and a self-devised vocabulary inspired from Telugu, Tamil and Sanskrit, find their way into Neelakantan’s historical fiction. Much like the film, the literary adaptation too portrays the era, places, people, culture and practices it depicts, with grandeur. 

The book is also an ode to India’s most iconic female figures and their success stories. “I’ve chalked out Sivagami’s character drawing from women who made a mark for themselves in history including the likes of Indira Gandhi, Jayalalithaa, Mayawati, Razia Sultan and many others. So, she will come across not as miss congeniality or a sati savitri, but somebody who has both admirers and detractors. While she is tender and compassionate like a mother, Sivagami is also ruthless, shrewd and strong,” he finishes.