Slice of Pi

Making a cinematic jewel out of a notoriously “unfilmable” novel,Ang Lee proved yet again why he is regarded a filmmaker at the top of his game. Be it movies as diverse as Sense and Sensibility,Crouching Tiger,Hidden Dragon or Brokeback Mountain,this Taiwan-born director delivers quality cinema consistently.

I,for one,would love to see Deepa Mehta and Salman Rushdie accepting a golden statuette for Midnight’s Children but unfortunately the transliteration of Rushdie’s literary masterpiece on to celluloid failed to live up to expectation.

When I first read Midnight’s Children 30 years ago,I was enthralled by Rushdie’s audacity,his facility with language and the sheer scale and scope of his tome. Rushdie wrote poignantly on the pain of partition and the fatuousness of communal disunions.

In 1993,Midnight’s Children was famously awarded the Booker of Bookers,adjudged the best novel to have won the coveted prize over a 25-year period. It was also in this year that bomb blasts and communal riots devastated Mumbai. Though the city survived the trauma,the scars remained. Something,however,changed irrevocably in the city and its inhabitants after the secular fabric had been ripped.

Rereading Rushdie,it became clear to me that Mumbai belongs equally to those who built it with their enterprise and acumen. It is not the turf of local sectarians but a truly secular,all-embracing Indian metropolis. It is foolish to allow hate mongers to succeed in dividing cities along linguistic,parochial and communal lines. And it is equally foolish to allow oneself to feel marginalised in the land of one’s birth.

In Midnight’s Children,Rushdie has written eloquently,elegiacally on how the Emergency,imposed by Indira Gandhi,was India’s darkest hour. In many ways,this event signified the beginning of the end. The protagonist,Saleem Sinai,whose fate is inexorably intertwined with that of the nation,is doomed to splinter into millions of pieces. His impending tragedy is the tragedy of India.

In 2008,Midnight’s Children was again feted with the Best of the Booker and this time deemed the finest winner of the prize in 40 years. The writer,Italo Calvino defines a classic as a book which has never exhausted all it has to say to its readers. Each time I have gone back to Midnight’s Children,I have found something new and valuable in it. There are fresh insights,revelations,homilies and a wisdom that transcends boundaries. It is a timeless tale that defies appellations. It is,in fact,the story of Everyman.

Therefore,it is a pity that the film adaptation of this great Indian novel falls woefully short. If,somehow,Deepa Mehta’s Midnight’s Children were to win an award,I along with a billion Indians would be standing alongside on stage in spirit,exulting in her triumph. Meanwhile,we shall have to be content with a slice of Ang Lee’s Pi.

fahadksamaar@gmail.com