CHENNAI : What makes An Unlikely Chemistry true to its name is that it is an autobiography of a couple. The book is authored by S Krishnaswamy, a renowned documentary, television film-maker, and a Padma Shri awardee. It was initially planned as a biography on his wife. While penning down his thoughts, the stories they shared overlapped and merged into a single book. Divided into nine chapters, the autobiography starts with the author’s life, gradually combines with his wife Mohana’s life, then sheds light on the ups and downs in their career path, and how they made things work in their marriage. The book was recently launched in the city.
“An Unlikely Chemistry in a sense indicates the problems we’ve gone through because of Mohana’s career. Two people who want to be together can be together. That’s the kind of treatment I have given to the story line. It does not talk just about our ephemeral life but deals with values that may be of help to others. It also speaks about family situations, government policies and society,” shares Krishnaswamy who started working on the book two years back.
Mohana was a scientist and circumstances forced her to switch to the art field. “When she was on the threshold of national importance she had to give up her job because of reservations and her responsibility towards the kids. That was a rough phase, especially when your partner thinks that marriage is an impediment to personal growth. But we eventually made things work,” he explains.
Finally when Mohana couldn’t continue her career in medicine, Krishnaswamy suggested that she take care of the film production house, Krishnaswamy Associates, started in 1963. Probably India’s oldest film house that did non-fiction films. “We don’t depend on people for scripts but evolve our own theme, and that makes it tough for survival,” he says. Ten years after establishing the film house, he shot Indus Valley to Indira Gandhi. When the Indian distributors refused to buy, it was eventually purchased by the Warner Bros and became a global success.
“I joined him for Indus Valley...and KA Abbas had done the translation. A common feedback was that it never looked like a dubbed version. Within 13 days we had to broadcast the film on television. Despite being lengthy, it ran for several days,” shares Mohana who is also a trained Hindustani singer, a Bharatanatyam dancer, and a fan of Hindi literature.
The Defence Ministry had then called the couple to make a film on Operation Blue Star, which happened in 1984, in Amritsar. “We travelled to Sri Lanka and met leaders of different parties. The experience we gathered there was so varied from her experience in laboratory. In a couple of years she made her own film on the status of women at grassroots level in Tamil Nadu, and won an international award in Helsinki,” he says.
The couple have also made over 200 non-fiction films and a dozen of television serials. They made a pioneering serial on the impact of Ancient India on South East Asia. “We travelled to a lot of places with our film crew and had quite an adventure. We got caught in an earthquake in Java that left us as nomads for a few days,” he reminisces.The book sums up the social history of India for the past 50 years. Alongside it also highlights the progressive mindsets of the families of both sides, his three children (Lata, Gita and Bharat) growing up, and their timeline of success. We ask him if the book could be made into a film and he says, “You’re planting an idea in my head. Of course, it is possible to make a film.”
Although the chapters speak on every phase of their life, one factor binding them together is the unconditional love and the respect they have for each other. We ask Mohana for her definition of romance and she concludes with, “At one level when you’re new to this world, you see somebody and get attracted. As you grow, you understand the need for something else. The love that you have then takes a different shape. If there is one person whom you can love unconditionally in your life then why can’t it be your own spouse?”
Laurels
Some of Krishnaswamy’s most accomplished works include his marathon four-hour documentary film Indus valley to Indira Gandhi. He also co-authored the book Indian Film with Erik Barnouw. Mohana is a highly qualified bio chemist, and a gold medallist at the University level. After her doctorate she joined the counsel of Ayurveda with an aim to find a cure for cancer and also published around 20 research papers in national journals. She was invited to give a lecture in China in their institute of traditional medicine.