You may know him now as the writer of Bahubali’s mother Sivagami’s story. You may know him as the writer of hit TV serials like Siya Ke Ram and Ashoka Samrat. You may know him as the man who wrote the bestselling Asura and Ajaya books. But what a select audience at An Author’s Afternoon learnt was that Anand Neelakantan is a one-man laughter army! Presented by Shree Cement and Taj Bengal, held in association with t2, Prabha Khaitan Foundation and literary agency Siyahi, this ROFL conversation at the Alipore star hotel was steered by Esha Chatterjee, the CEO of BEE Books. Excerpts from Anand speak...
THE RAJAMOULI REVEAL
Even before I had written Asura: Tale of the Vanquished, I used to brag to everyone, right from my college days, that I will become a big writer, I will become the Prime Minister of India (laughs).... And after I wrote Asura and it was doing very well, I used to tell people that James Cameron will call me. When Bahubali released (in 2015), I told my wife (Aparna) and a few friends, that its director S.S. Rajamouli is going to call me. I dream all adventurous dreams. Then one fine day this call came.... the next day I was sitting in Rajamouli’s Hyderabad office!
He asked me, ‘What problems did you find with Bahubali: The Beginning?’ Initially I was a bit hesitant about how to tell him. Then he said, tell me like a storyteller, so I listed a lot of problems, because, to be very frank, as a storyteller I found a lot of problems. He laughed and said, ‘These are things I already know.... a novel is different from a film. Film has to appeal to people and stay in people’s minds, so we can take certain logical liberties. You are not teaching people science lessons… it is a fantasy world, so people can be put in a cannon and thrown over the fort. If viewers think how is it possible, then that is the failure of the director.’
This was a big revelation for me, because when I write, I take out all the magic. For me, in Ramayana or Mahabharata there’s no Brahmastra, there are no atom bombs in my books, Kurukshetra is not an atomic war. I had actually taken out the magic and here was a person who, from an ordinary tale, was creating magic.
WRITING VISUALLY
I believe there are two kinds of writing — lyrical and visual. Earlier they used to write lyrically, because people were used to poetry and stories were told in the song format, so previous generations of writers were all lyrical writers. Now we are used to a visual form of storytelling. My stories are not lyrical because I don’t know that much English. I write my short stories very lyrically in Malayalam, but when it comes to English, I am handicapped. So Rajamouli told me to write visually. He wanted me to write a prequel to Bahubali. I chose to write Sivagami and Kattappa’s story... but there are many other characters, close to 40 new characters.
I took six years to write Asura. So, when he asked me how much time I needed, I wanted to say five years, but I said ‘at least three years’. He said, ‘I need it in three months’. So this is a book written in 100 days (laughs).
TV trains you to write anything at any time. I was writing two serials and at 2am a call comes, ‘The actor is behaving cranky and he will not come for three days, so you have to change the screenplay.’
‘When do you want it?’ I asked. And they are like, ‘We are all waiting, unless your screenplay comes we can’t start!’ So I have to send by 7am the next day... and people keep complaining that serials don’t have any depth (laughs). This is the reality.
ONE NAME CHANGED
I cannot plot, that is a disadvantage I have. I create the characters in-depth and then I randomly think of a situation and then I put each character and see how they will react. Out of the 40 characters, 28 are appearing in The Rise of Sivagami, the first part of the trilogy.
The only thing Rajamouli asked me to change when I showed him the manuscript was the name of one of the villains, an amoral-immoral character, because it was his sister’s name! He said, ‘I don’t want any family problem’ (laughs).
DURYODHANA & RAVANA
Our Indian literature is very rich, only Indian English literature is not rich. It has nothing to do with the Queen’s English. Indian English is a very shallow language, if you ask me, because it is very new. Writing from Ravana or Duryodhana’s side has been attempted in a lot of regional literature…. though not many have taken Duryodhana’s side. I don’t know why, because Duryodhana is a more fascinating character than Ravana, even though I personally like Ravana more. In mythology itself, Ravana has done a lot of good things and bad things, but Duryodhana’s only bad thing was the Panchali incident (disrobing Draupadi after the Pandavas lost her in the game of dice). Other than that you cannot point to anything in his life, yet people hate him, which is a strange thing.
The original Mahabharata and Ramayana were not judgemental at all. Later-day Bhakti literature turned these into good versus evil. Indians never had this concept of good versus evil. Our concepts are based on action and fruits of the action (karma and karma-phala).
We become judgemental saying Ram had abandoned Sita, and a lot of debate happens. In the traditional point of view there is no cause for any debate at all. You cannot take Ramayana in isolation, you have to take it as a whole literature. So, in Ramayana, for every action he either gets paid there itself or in the next janma (birth). Ram killed Vali by hiding behind a tree. There is no justification in Ramayana, only in later days, people justified saying that Ram is a king and he (Vali) is an animal, so Ram can kill. Now nobody says that because of the animal rights people (laughs).
Jara is Vali’s next birth. He hides behind a tree and kills Krishna. So, the equation is equalled, there is nothing right or wrong. It’s all a chain of action and fruits of action. From this logic if you start writing, from Duryodhana or Ravana’s side… the entire story changes.
TIED TO HEROINE’S SARI
I cannot maintain the style of my books in TV because I will get lynched. TV is for the masses. The elite or the educated class has already moved away from TV. There is a research team for TV. They give feedback like, ‘The heroine wore this kind of sari or that kind of churidar and the rating went up.’ So the writer will have to make up events so that they can wear all that. It’s very commercial, but nothing to be ashamed of. If you get ashamed, you will not get paid (laughs).
TV usually targets women, only few shows are there for men. And the shows are not targeting educated working women. If they watch, it is a plus. If they watch and abuse also, we don’t mind (laughs). It is mainly meant for rural and semi-urban viewers, where you try to sell aspirational values.
I enjoy writing short stories, which pays the least. If I write one short story in Malayalam, I will get Rs 3,000. You cannot live on that. Serials will pay that per minute perhaps. A short story will take me a week to chisel out, while for a serial, I will have to write one dialogue and repeat it 10 times.
The novel gives me satisfaction but novels are a painful process. Asura: Tale of the Vanquished took me six years… it’s hard work. I was fortunate that the novel sold in all the languages. But after taking all the pain, how many novels become a hit? I was lucky that The Rise of Sivagami is No.1. Asura was No.1 for three months and Ajaya was No.1 for 16 weeks. Writing a novel is a thankless job. I got 18 rejections before someone (publisher) took Asura: Tale of the Vanquished.
QUARTER GIRLFRIEND
Before I started writing this lyrical kind of short stories in Mathrubhumi and other prestigious magazines, I used to write under a pen name in small Malayalam magazines…. political satires, parody songs. I was a cartoonist before that, so I have drawn cartoons in a lot of political magazines in Malayalam, for almost three years. I used to be paid Rs 50 per cartoon. This is the reality why cartoonists don’t survive.
People wanted me to write something like college romance — half-girlfriend, quarter-girlfriend and also three-fourth! If I had the skill to write that, I would have tried. I can only write what I know. I never even had one-fourth or one-tenth girlfriend for that matter, the only girlfriend I had, I married her (laughs), and even if I had I don’t want to write about it and spoil it!
Malancha Dasgupta
Pictures: Arnab Mondal
