Panjumittai

Panjumittai

In a country like India, there is no dearth to epic stories and grand mythologies. Perhaps, having grown up listening to these tales has led us to unintentionally keep looking out for such miraculous events to come upon real lives as well. When impatiently waiting on the roads that have slithering lines of vehicles caught in a traffic jam, we haplessly wish that our wheels sprout wings to fly away. The reply that you would hear from your mother when you shout out to her that you are really hungry would be, “Do you think I have ten hands?” We would probably wonder if one had ten hands it would make life much easier. When the previous day’s rains had turned the lane into slush and mud, we would secretly wish that there could have been showers of flowers and the roads could have been carpeted in petals for us to walk. But this kind of surreal stories are a norm here. The character Jatayu is a talking vulture; when Sita stood over the burning pyre, the earth splits itself and engulfs her to protect her. A part of us always craves for such fantasies to come true. Real world, however, had rooted itself in art and literature that depict reality as is. Twentieth century has been able to move art and literature to a place where human emotions could be liberated of reality. Should the earth open up to save someone only in a fable? Can it not happen in real? How come only Ravana gets to have ten heads, when we could find that kind of anatomy so much more useful? To be able to escape the tyranny of reality and our lives, we need these myths and tales that make us happy in one way or the other. Though we have many such magic realism stories in Tamil, when these stories take shape as movies, the kind of influence and impact is spectacular. As a first of it’s kind, a magic realism story is to be made in Tamil cinema. Director S.P. Mohan is to give us Panchumittai, a magic realism movie, starring Makapa Anandh, Sendrayan, Nikila, Pandiyaran and Pandu. This movie is based on J.P. Sanakyan’s “Manjal Neelam Vellai” and Ezhilvarathan’s collection of stories titled “Soppanathil tabla vasitha kazhudhai”. Directors like Pa. Renjith and Vetrimaran have lauded Panjumittai and this has created quite some expectation about the movie. At this movie’s audio launch, Director Pa. Ranjith announced that he too would be working on a story of this genre. This creates some flutter about whether Ranjith’s Rajini starrer Kala is a fantasy fiction.