The story had come to him eight years ago. Padmarajan’s words, in his hands. Raa Prasad had been a fan of the legendary filmmaker and writer. He had known Padmarajan through letters. So when he wanted to make a film, he went to the late director’s family and got the rights of a story he wrote — Kunju. Raa Prasad had struggled like many newcomers to make a film. Major actors and producers he went to had agreed to join his project, but due to several reasons, not unknown to the struggling artistes in cinema, Prasad had to drop it midway.
This Friday, however, after several years of struggle, his film has finally got a release. Padmarajan’s Kunju became Prasad’s Arani. “Pucca fantasy it was, when he wrote…” says the old Pappettan fan. “I made a free adaptation, retaining the fantasy nature, a film of two hours.” Prasad and his friends from the theatre — Madhu Master, Pradeep Mekkara, Arifa and Karthika — became the actors of the film. They went deep into the forests in Western Ghats and shot the film. “It is an Adivasi moopan’s (tribal head’s) wife who sang the title song, in their language.”
The film itself centres around the baby born to a man, who is an ambitious hunter, exploiting the forests. His wife, a tribal woman, loses eight of their children in birth. The ninth child, born on top of a rock, in the midst of nature, survives. “He has the power of all the eight children’s lives before him. With his power, magic happens. The father’s atrocities are stopped. Nature takes its vengeance through women and children.”
Prasad, a homeopathic doctor who left the medical scene to pursue his passion for cinema, had taken a film before, but this is the first that releases. He is glad it is a Padmarajan tale.
