The other day, I saw a Malayalam movie of the 1960s, titled Puthiya Akasam Puthiya Bhoomi (The New Sky, The New Earth). Written by Thoppil Bhasi, who spearheaded the pro-communist progressive movement in Malayalam literature through plays such as Ningalenne Communistakki (You Made me a Communist), it was directed by M S Mani, one of the hit-makers of the bygone era. And the team included the only masters the Malayalam film world has ever seen: P Bhaskaran (lyrics), M B Sreenivasan (music) and P Udayabhanu, P Leela, and P Susehela (singers). Equally brilliant was the cast. Sathyan and Ragini, both favourites of my father’s generation, in the lead; and G K Pillai, B S Saroja, S P Pillai, Bhadadoor, KPAC Lalitha and company to support them as villains, comedians and in character roles. The film’s story can be paraphrased as follows: The government decides to build a big dam across a river in a hilly, pristine, rural village and assigns an efficient engineer (G K Pillai) to the job. If the dam is constructed to the heights in the original plan, thousands of acres of fertile land, estates and plantations will go under water. So, to save their property from inundation, the estate lobby bribes the engineer into reducing the dam’s height. And the work begins with a manipulated plan. In the meantime, while the work is in progress, a young engineer (Sathyan), the senior engineer’s nephew comes back after higher studies in England, to be appointed to the same project. He detects the alterations made in the plan and finds out that if the dam is built higher, it will help irrigate many more barren villages than the ones it can now. He acts as the conscience of the people by stressing the usefulness and necessity of increasing the height of the dam. The uncle tries to dissuade the nephew. But the idealist nephew, for the ‘common good’, doesn’t give in. Not only that. He even petitions the higher ups against his uncle, whose benevolence enabled his higher studies in England. The rift between the uncle and the nephew deepens and the nephew, providing a staple diet to the drama, organises a people’s movement and embarks on his project. Offended, the uncle hatches a plot to dynamite the dam, which the nephew foils with the people’s support. As actor Mammotty said in his DLitt acceptance speech at Calicut University recently, “The Malayalam film is a continuation of the renaissance spirit, the national movement and the political awareness our state had passed through in the first half of the last century. The pioneers of our cinema — script-writers, actors and directors — were those who had active involvement in social issues. For them, filmmaking was an extension of social activism. This is the unique aspect that has made cinema a people’s medium.” Viewed from this angle, Puthiya Akasam Puthiya Bhoomi provides a perfect model for understanding post-Independence India’s development concept. The demanding mission before our political leadership after Independence was to lead the country towards social and economic prosperity. For this, there were only two choices: the Gandhian and the Nehruvian. While Gandhi relied exclusively on traditional skills, indigenous resources, and a participatory approach, Nehru’s emphasis was on large-scale industrialisation, central planning, the application of advanced technology and huge capital investments which he drew from the experiences of the West and the Soviet Union. We opted for the Nehruvian. Hence, big dams were part of a development paradigm in which those who opposed it became villains and those for it were heroes. Presently, there’s a trend in Malayalam to remake old films. MT Vasudevan Nair’s 1979 film Neelathama (The Blue Lotus) was remade last year with a new cast. There’s also news that more old films by MT, Bharathan and many more are going to be remade. I wish somebody could remake Puthiya Akasam Puthiya Bhoomi. Then, in the context of the social movements Narmada Bachao Andolan won’t the hero become a villain? And the villain, though he was corrupt, a hero?
rthachompoyil@yahoo.com