The story of celebrated Indian writer Kamala Surayya, who broke convention with her bold writings in English and Malayalam, will come alive on the silver screen, possibly with Vidya Balan in the title role.
Director Kamal is planning to bring out the movie on Surayya, who wrote in English as Kamala Das and enriched Malayalam literature with her highly acclaimed short stories and memoirs under the pseudonym Madhavikutti.
The writer, whose memoirs Ente Katha (My story) shocked conservative Malayalis in the 1970s, later changed her name to Kamala Surayya after embracing Islam a few years before her death in 2009.
According to Kamal, the movie is conceived not as a “realistic biopic” but as an “independent journey through the personal and literary life of Surayya, who was torn away by the hypocrisies of pseudo moralists but boldly stood for the wounded womanhood through her works.”
The director said the thread of this movie had been in his mind for quite some time and he would work out the plot after completing his ongoing project, a political satire in which superstar Mammootty appears as the protagonist.
“The thread is in my mind. After completing my present movie, I will move on to the project on Surayya. Vidya Balan is in my mind for playing the title role,” he told PTI.
Rather than a biopic, it would be an independent attempt to see the life and works of the writer from the perspective of a reader.
Born in an aristocratic Nair family in Punnayurkkulam in Thrissur district and daughter of eminent poet Balamani Amma, Surayya has left a rich body of literary work.
The most sensational, and arguably widely read of all of them, is Ente Katha, which was initially propagated as her real-life story, but she herself clarified later that it was just an “imaginary work”.
Her other major works are Childhood Memoirs, Summer in Calcutta, Alphabet of Lust, Descendants and Collected poems.
“No woman writer has ever surprised or shocked Malayalis’ psyche like Surayya. She was not afraid of anyone while writing or in saying what she had in her mind,” Kamal, who had a close acquaintance with the writer, said.
