The last evening at the New Town Book Fair was marked by a discussion on entertainment in literature. Subhankar Dey of Dey’s Publishing recalled the flight of fantasy his mind took on reading Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s Chander Pahar.
“It was upto me to imagine the appearance of Bunip (the mythical creature the protagonist encounters in the African jungle). But in the film, the Bunip appeared on screen. The next generation will see the film first. Even if they read the book later, for them there will be no scope for the imagination to unfold,” he said.
He spoke of various forms that literary works take to entertain the audience. “I have seen elderly women listen to tales of Ramayana and Mahabharata from a narrator in villages. Even this is a form of entertainment.” He recalled the tales of mystery and terror presented in the radio programme Shonibarer Barbela on Vividha Bharati. “Now we present them in another format called audio books.”
When Subarnalata was serialised on TV, the sale of the Ashapurna Devi novel had quadrupled at Mitra & Ghosh, Rupa Majumdar of Deb Sahitya Kutir recalled. “Many of Ashutosh Mukhopadhyay’s novels that we published in Nabakallol and brought out as books have been filmed. Seeing a film or TV show arouses curiosity in readers about the book.”
But Noor Islam of Mitra & Ghosh added a condition for the book to benefit from the film adaptation — the title of both have to be the same. “Marutirtha Hinglaj did not do well till the Uttam Kumar film released. Then there were queues in front of our stall,” he said.
Subhankar stressed the point, recalling how Keyapatar Nouka by Prafulla Roy registered a jump in sales after a serial by that name came on air. “But the serial was actually based on Atin Bandyopadhyay’s Nilkantha Pakhir Khoje which did not benefit at all,” he said, causing the other panellists to laugh.
A bad adaptation brings a bad name to the book. The panelists cited the example of the recent TV serial Pandob Goenda, based on the adventures of the detective quintet. “The author Sasthipada Chattopadhyay was almost in tears, saying what was being shown on TV was hardly the Pandob Goenda he wrote,” said Majumdar.
The discussion also included author Sirshendu Mukherjee, Pijush Ghosh and publisher Animesh Pramanik as moderator.
