Words caught in a twister, stretched and pulled to submission. Phrases dipped in a heady mix of fantasy, satire, magic and hyper realism. If you were Salman Rushdie, you wouldn't let those literary lements survive in isolation.
You control them like a master possessed, play with them, line them up in studious devotion to serve the dictates of a ravenous, galactic book called 'Midnight's Children'.
In the company of Deepa Mehta, he passionately reworked the book, filtered it to match the challenges of the film. For proof, await the film for an all-India release on February 1.
The multi-layered, enormously complex book wasn't an easy prey for film adaptation. But Rushdie didn't think so. "It is not that difficult a book. It has got a very strong storyline which is what you need for a good screenplay. So that's a good starting point. Obviously, you have to refine that storyline. This book is full of stories, the question is only which story to focus on," he reasons.
Rushdie found Deepa Mehta to make that discrete selection, and sculpt it organically into a multi-hued celluloid piece of art.
"The book is unlike many Indian stories," says Rushdie. "The character moves a lot instead of living in his village or a little neighbourhood. He is everywhere. He goes from Bombay to Karachi, Rawalpindi to Dhaka, Delhi and back to Bombay…So, it is a novel about uprooting, about the loss of a fixed place." Unlike most writers whose works are adapted for film, Rushdie partnered actively with Mehta and even turned a narrator.
"Since it was a book that I wrote long time ago, I could be disrespectful of the book than somebody else coming to write it," says Rushdie in defence of his screenplay. Rushdie had a role in the film's casting too. He elaborates: "Casting for the lead character, we were sure he should have a sort of sweetness to him, because an awful lot of terrible things were going to happen to him. And you wanted the audience to feel connected to that character, and care for him as he goes through these trails. I think that's what Satya Bhabha brought."
Trapped in myriad controversies, Rushdie knows acceptance of any of his work in India cannot be taken for granted. But he is sure 'Midnight's Children' would be different. "It is about the story of India, of a Muslim family, of about two partitions. I remember the kind of Hindutva argument that only Hindu experience of India is truly authentic. I think one of the things that this work does is to show that it's nonsense."
You control them like a master possessed, play with them, line them up in studious devotion to serve the dictates of a ravenous, galactic book called 'Midnight's Children'.
In the company of Deepa Mehta, he passionately reworked the book, filtered it to match the challenges of the film. For proof, await the film for an all-India release on February 1.
The multi-layered, enormously complex book wasn't an easy prey for film adaptation. But Rushdie didn't think so. "It is not that difficult a book. It has got a very strong storyline which is what you need for a good screenplay. So that's a good starting point. Obviously, you have to refine that storyline. This book is full of stories, the question is only which story to focus on," he reasons.
Rushdie found Deepa Mehta to make that discrete selection, and sculpt it organically into a multi-hued celluloid piece of art.
"The book is unlike many Indian stories," says Rushdie. "The character moves a lot instead of living in his village or a little neighbourhood. He is everywhere. He goes from Bombay to Karachi, Rawalpindi to Dhaka, Delhi and back to Bombay…So, it is a novel about uprooting, about the loss of a fixed place." Unlike most writers whose works are adapted for film, Rushdie partnered actively with Mehta and even turned a narrator.
"Since it was a book that I wrote long time ago, I could be disrespectful of the book than somebody else coming to write it," says Rushdie in defence of his screenplay. Rushdie had a role in the film's casting too. He elaborates: "Casting for the lead character, we were sure he should have a sort of sweetness to him, because an awful lot of terrible things were going to happen to him. And you wanted the audience to feel connected to that character, and care for him as he goes through these trails. I think that's what Satya Bhabha brought."
Trapped in myriad controversies, Rushdie knows acceptance of any of his work in India cannot be taken for granted. But he is sure 'Midnight's Children' would be different. "It is about the story of India, of a Muslim family, of about two partitions. I remember the kind of Hindutva argument that only Hindu experience of India is truly authentic. I think one of the things that this work does is to show that it's nonsense."