Kalki’s Ponniyin Selvan beyond big screen - A throwback

CHENNAI: The impact of the historical fiction ‘Ponniyin Selvan’ on the Tamil literary scene has been phenomenal. Kalki did to prose what Bharathi did to poetry. The remarkable aspect is the much-loved novel is a best seller even today after 70 years. That’s certainly an asset to the memory of its author Kalki Krishnamurthy who incidentally sold only four copies of his first printed book. Other novels of Kalki have been filmed but despite many attempts by big shots, Ponniyin Selvan could never make it to celluloid. Now, that it is hitting the theatres on Sept 30, it is time to look at the background of the novel and find out why it is loved by millions

Weekly series with suspense that stuck with readers

Kalki wrote Ponniyin Selvan as a weekly series which he published in his own magazine. It went on for three and a half years. Artist Maniam would draw pictures for illustrating the novel.

There were problems with serialisation. Kalki did make mistakes like when he introduces a character called Murugaiyan, who is described as dumb and cannot speak. Kalki forgot this a year later and in the finishing chapters, Murugaiyan would speak pages of monologue. A loyal reader is the most elusive character. But Kalki sustained the allegiance of millions of them for years with his down-to-earth writing and vivid descriptions, and always ended the weekly episode with some suspense.

Kalki magazine reached the top of the chart by selling 70,000 copies during the period, pushing back all its rivals.

Story revolves around a charming, brave and brilliant young man

The next in line to the Chola throne, crown prince Aditya gives Vanthiyathevan what was no perilous mission. He just had to hand over a communication to the Chola emperor and one to princess Kundavai.

On the way to Thanjavur, he goes to meet his friend, the Sambuvarayar prince of the Kadambur fortress. Sleeping on the terrace, he overhears the chieftains of the Chola land colluding over who the next Chola king should be. Knowledge of the conspiracy turns his journey into a merry old adventure where a hero takes his life in one hand and his sword in the other. He even befriends a spy, who is also a Veera Vaishnava, falls in love with pretty girls, is thrown into a dungeon which tigers guard, and survives drowning incidents and conspiracies. Over eight months Vanthiyathevan is drawn into every intrigue in Chola land and makes hazardous enemies.

With a plethora of commoners, mundane Chola days come to life

The power tussle in the Chola royal family was true. But Kalki for the first time tried to introduce a plethora of common man characters. There was a touch of undeniable genius in the writing. Ponniyin Selvan had many commoners in it, and Kalki sketched mundane civilian life in the Chola days, something no writer had done before. There were flower pickers, boat girls and lighthouse keepers moving along with princes and princesses. A flower-picking boy Uthama comes throughout the book and only when he is revealed to be the true heir to the throne and later becomes Uthama Chola, people realised that Kalki was giving them a clue for three years (A-MU-THA is a Tamil anagram of U-THA-MA).

By concluding the book, when a flower boy becomes the Chola emperor and a boat girl his empress, Kalki had announced to the world that democracy had gained a definite currency in India. It appeared that most of the star protagonists of the story were picked out from the teeming streets of then Madras, and the reader identified them as one of their own.

Commoner Vanthiyathevan as protagonist — a masterstroke

The title of the novel was dishonest; Raja Raja is not the lead character, his brother-in-law is. Kalki felt his hands would be tied if he chose a mega hero to lord over his story. As an astute writer, he sensed the character would be far removed from the audience’s mindset. He wanted a character with whom the audience could identify with themselves or at least the boy next door. Waiting for him was one such character. A son-in-law of the Cholas was mentioned thrice in the Tanjore Big Temple edicts. Kalki’s masterstroke was his ingenious choice of a commoner, Vanthiyathevan, as the main protagonist.

Vanthiyathevan was so much of the common stock (though of royal origins) and plain looking and was described by pretty women of the novel as resembling an owl or a tailless monkey.

Tamil’s celebrated prose and Aadi Perukku connect

The Aadi month (July 15 to August 15) in the Tamil calendar is a mixed bag. Tamils don’t hold weddings during this month but on the contrary, every goddess temple is infused with devotion and merriment complete with fireworks and festivity. The 18th day of Aadi month was once considered very auspicious on par with Deepavali and Pongal.

The southwest monsoon in the Coorg highlands thrusts a flood into the Cauvery and for many centuries the Tamils noted the river swelling almost to the same date.

Every year the Cauvery delta regions get ready to welcome the Aadi flood with great pomp and pageantry.

“On the 18th day of the month of Aadi, in the early hours of the evening, a young warrior mounted on a horse was riding down the banks of this ocean-like Veera Narayanapuram Lake... Vallavarayan Vandiya Devan was his name...” So began a novel in the early fifties. Was it a coincidence the novel was received just as the floods and it coerced its way into the Tamil literary pantheon as its most popular prose ever written?

The colonial mindset and the euphoria of freedom

After centuries of colonial mindsets and the serfish gloom, Indian literature was set to burst into a creative explosion at the onset of freedom. In Tamil, the despondency of 20th Century urban literature was swept away by the powerful pen of Kalki. Even Kalki’s earlier novels like Sivagamiyin Sabatham were often tragedies and stitched together with melancholy.

But freedom fighter Kalki was one of the first to feel the euphoria of hard-fought freedom. With the departure of the colonial rulers, Kalki envisioned the idea of a feel-good novel to reflect the new positivity. And his literary expression was to write on the greatest son of the Tamil land and the glorious times he unleashed on these lands — Raja Raja Chola. By weaving an epic tale called Ponniyin Selvan (Cauvery or Kaveri’s son), he kindled the essence of Tamil vanity among the readers.

Celluloid version and MGR’s tryst with the script

It was logical that such a popular book should embrace the main obsession of the Tamil land — cinema. The first attempt was when fresh from the success of Nadodi Mannan (vagabond king), MG Ramachandran (MGR) was looking for scripts to repeat the victory.

It was then that he turned to Ponniyin Selvan. MGR was a co-resident of Kalki in Gandhi Nagar, Adyar, and when Kalki died in 1954, he walked along the hearse to the cremation grounds. MGR obtained the copyright for a limited period from the Kalki family, and the advertisement for the launch of the movie was released in 1959. Casting work commenced and lead actors were chosen for even small roles. But successive box-office hits slowly moved MGR away from his dream. As late as 1964, he is reported to have told the press that location choices were ready and shooting would commence any moment.

But it was not to be, and until his agreement for the copyright lapsed, MGR, who was known to be a go-getter, couldn’t film Ponniyin Selvan.

The sequels and authors’ run-in with copyright owners

The novel has been printed as a book and is still a best-selling title. Three sequels have appeared in the 60 years since the book was written, on what the characters could have done after the book ended. With Kalki ending the book abruptly and even suggesting that somebody continue the story, it’s a wonder that only three sequels appeared in the 70 years after the novel ended. True, there is a mark of Ponniyin Selvan on every Tamil novel written thereafter. The first sequel was Nandipuraththu Nayagi where writer Vikraman was reportedly threatened by the copyright owners and had to remove all the characters created by Kalki (after the whole text was done). The mangled book didn’t do justice. Udayar by Balakumaran is set a long time after the story ends. Kaveri Maindhan with a title similar to the Ponniyin Selvan continues the story with the same characters after five years.

What to expect from Mani Ratnam

Ponniyin Selvan is a feel-good book. Very few people get killed and there are no war scenes. If they are present in the movie then they are embellishments attributed to creative licence.

The film is full of dialogues, many of them flowery or brave and definitely emotional.

Knowing Mani Ratnam’s love for short sentences and curt dialogues, it makes one curious about how he has handled this book.

When fans stood in pre-dawn queues to lay hands on magazine

For three and a half years, fans stood in pre-dawn queues at railway stations, where bundles of magazines and newspapers were offloaded, to lay their hands on a copy of Kalki magazine. Some houses in rural Tamil Nadu displayed signboards at the gates that said: “Ponniyin Selvan will be read aloud here”. In such households, which could afford to buy a copy, they would have somebody read aloud that week’s episode to a gathering of villagers. Artist Maniam drew realistic portraits to accompany every episode and helped the audience visualise the characters. Soon newborn children were being named after characters of the book the trend which continues. Surprisingly the antagonist character Nandini tops the list.

Kalki was flooded with verified info about Cholas

The Cauvery river does not flow within Tanjore town where the story is set. And Kalki had moved away from its banks for a long. He had moved to Madras — far away from the landscape he loved — the Cauvery shores. Perhaps, he looked wistfully at the Adyar River in Madras beside which he lived and dreamt of a novel meandering around river Cauvery. Chola history had a fillip recently — German Hultz had rediscovered that there had been a king called Rajaraj (yes, he had been forgotten). The Thiruvalangadu copper plates with the Chola history had been unearthed in an archaeological expedition near Madras. Nilakanda Sastri had finished his magnum opus ‘The Colas’. Kalki was flooded with verified information on the Cholas.

Drawing parallels to works of Dumas and Hugo

Alexandre Dumas’s novels were largely serialised in magazines. And there were hints of Dumas in scores of places in Ponniyin Selvan as well. One could draw parallels between the gorgeous Nandini and Milady de Winter of The Three Musketeers. The chivalrous Vanthiyathevan appeared very comparable to D’Artagnan. The royal heir growing up amongst common men is a common theme in french novels. Most of the prison scenes have inspiration from Hugo and Dickens as well. A lot of the themes in the story as to royal inheritance rules are from the Mahabharata as well.

Offshoots:

Fitting 1,000 pages of a lively story into a three-hour slot has been an issue all along. Comic books, animation films and theatre have embraced the novel.

An abrupt end that left readers shell-shocked

In 1954, Kalki did the unthinkable and ended his novel abruptly, leaving all his fans shell-shocked. The characters had by then become almost a part of the family and readers were outraged. Thousands of them did nothing to hide their annoyance and wrote scathing letters to Kalki to resume the story, but he would not budge. It was possibly because of the premonition that Kalki had of his death, for he died within six months after the novel was stopped.

Filming of Kalki’s novels

Three of Kalki’s novels have been shot as films with a fair amount of success. Kalki’s earlier script for Thyaga Bhoomi was simultaneously published in a magazine while the film was being made. His Poi Maan Karadu, Parthiban Kanavu and Kalvanin Kadhali have been filmed.