Randamoozham - The Second Turn

After completing the master piece novel 'Randamoozham' (means second turn) by M.T. Vasudevan Nair, my  thoughts were more in the lines as of  Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov. M.T, the historian-detective, scourges unseen and overlooked silences from the antediluvian pages of history and absorbs it with the magnifying lens of his sheer imaginative genius.

'Randamoozham' with its portrayal of the divine and superhuman casts as mere mortals and human is such a noteworthy and appreciated work that it is considered by many as the abridged version of the original.  After the epics of  ‘Vaishali’, ‘Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha’, ‘Perumthachan’, 'Parinayam' and ‘Pazhassi Raja’, every malayali is eagerly waiting for the release of the movie version of his magnum opus ‘Randamoozham’. The fact that Lalettan is back with the elite combination of M.T- Hariharan duo after a long gap of 25 years makes the wait worthwhile. Hopefully it will be better than 'Pazhassi Raja'. The portrayal of the title character in that movie, to me was pathetic. The lion of Kerala seemed to be pathetic and loosing courage and smelled of cowardice at some point. The solo heroic fights against an entire British troops were avoidable too. He would still be every bit of lion he was, by commanding tribal troops from the front.

It was not very long before that I had an argument with my friends during tea-time about the Bollywood movie ‘Ashoka’. It is neither an interpretation nor a work on the hidden / forgotten / corroded facts of history. It is creating history. A fantasy. A fantasy on real historic persons and incidents does not even qualify to fall in to the category 'fantasy'. Do we need to change our history? We are proud and blessed to have the best in the universe. I would have had no problem at all if the movie was not based on the great emperor Ashoka and had used other names.

But in whom should we vest the powers of rewriting history? To take the 'second-turn' to history? Not everyone! Though the right to free thinking is still for everyone. It has to be some one who can convincingly and modestly enhance upon the unforetold stories while the canvas is tightly pinned on the four sides with the available rigid framework. It has to be such a person can find his way to vantage point up the vertiginous climb. His work can be considered creative and earns tolerance on the merits of its artistic genuineness. Such a work that is passionately researched will be enlightening, it has to be  and has to come from an entrusted brain of high literary caliber.

Even if its my ingrained prejudice, as my friends ascribed to, that made me reason it like this or is it something else, I find myself in Raskolnikov's shoes right now. I am curious to know under which classification will I find Amish Tripathi's Shiva trilogy when I take it up this weekend.

(P.S., Raskolnikov’s theory goes as follows. All men are divided into two categories. 'Ordinary' and 'extraordinary'. While the 'extraordinary' man has the right to commit any crime and to transgress the law in any way, the 'ordinary' man has to live in submission and has no right to transgress the law)