Gurvinder Singh was a third-year student at the Film and Television Institute of India when he picked up a book titled Abhed Akash,and found he couldnt put it down. There were 112 pages of a conversation between legendary filmmaker Mani Kaul and poet-writer Udayan Vajpeyi. Though Singh had never met Kaul,he had seen some of his famous films,and the book opened a window to his idols world. It became an obsession,and Singh wanted,more than anything,to translate the Hindi book in English. More than five years later,Singhs translation,Uncloven Space was released at FTII on Monday,where both he and the original author,Vajpeyi,reminisced about their experience of working on their respective books. Abhed Akash helped me connect to the films I had watched. It tells you what kind of a thinker he was and what he thought of films. It is such a fundamental text for filmmakers. I began to think of translating it because I wanted to go deeper into it, says Singh. Right after he graduated,Singh went to Bhopal and visited Vajpeyi. I asked him whether I could work on a translation. And the first year after graduation,I stayed home,drank lots of tea and sat at the table,reading and working. My parents wondered what I was doing sitting at home and reading a book after graduating, he says. While Singh saw the book as a discussion of Kauls style of filmmaking and thinking,for Vajpeyi,it had a much more personal significance. The conversation in the book was recorded by Vajpeyi in October 1991 across six discussions with Kaul,whom he considers his guru. This conversation is like a samvad (dialogue) between a guru and his shishya (disciple). I asked him questions and he answered. I wanted to ask him about his films,about the world and life. I wanted to know how he grew up. If you love somebody,you want to know more about them,participate in their lives, he says. Vajpeyi says Kaul was a willing partner in the project. Later when I was writing,Mani did not interfere even once. The only discussion was right before the book was published,about its name. I wanted to call it Anekta Katha,or the story of multiplicities. But he didnt agree. Then I suggested Abhed Akash and he liked it, he says. While Singh was working on Uncloven Space,he also finally got to meet Kaul. Again,his only instruction for the book was on what to name it. The experience of actually meeting and getting to know the man was very different for Singh. I had imagined him as someone who spoke about intellectual things all the time,but I found we could connect on many levels. I discovered that both of us loved cooking,and we even got a chance to cook together, he says. The book too isnt just about Kauls films or cinematic techniques. There are discussions of moral and ethical questions,of Kauls childhood memories and other things that made him the man he was. Vajpeyi says,Mani was a very philosophical filmmaker. He was a thinking man. And his films think too.
