The announcement of a Malayalam film a couple of weeks ago got a euphoric response from across the country. It is being touted as India's most expensive film till date, with a Rs 1,000-crore budget featuring Malayalam superstar Mohanlal in the lead role. The movie, it is said, will be released in all major Indian and global languages.

But the real awe factor was not only the jaw-dropping budget, it was the title of movie, The Mahabharata, which enthused the Indians more.

The budget of the film is more than five times that of Baahubali: The Beginning, but a title like the Mahabharata is more than enough to set the Indian expectations soaring high.

However, the fact is that most of the excited crowd is not aware of the theme of the movie apart from its title. Most people are misled by the title and it seems those behind the project too intended the same.

The movie is based on a well-acclaimed Malayalam novel, Randamoozham. which means the second turn. The novel is considered to be a masterpiece by author, MT Vasudevan Nair, who will also be doing the screenplay for the film. The 1984 novel, which has two translations in English with titles Second Turn and Bhima: Lone Warrior, has won many awards in Malayalam.

MT Vasudevan Nair.

The novel is based on the author's interpretation of events and characters of the epic Mahabharata through the eyes of Bhima. In his version, the author has taken the liberty of straying away from the original story line of the epic. The author, fondly called MT, is well-known for mischievously changing the nature of historical characters in his writings. He is known for questioning the very nature of the good and the evil — by painting heroes as villains and vice-versa.

This novel too is no different. To cite a few instances, Bhima, the central character in Randamoozham is not the mighty, respected, loved by his own and dreaded by the enemy, unlike the Bhima of the epic Mahabharata. If the Bhima from Mahabharata is the epitome of strength, power and victory, MT’s Bhima is completely opposite.

The thread of the story itself is that the whole world is doing injustice to Bhima by making him a second in everything in his life — be it Draupadi’s love, or the respect he commanded among the Pandavas, as the title Randamoozham suggests.

In the novel, he is always resentful in the step-motherly attitude meted out to him and he transmits only negativity throughout, unlike the original Bhima.

It is not only the character of Bhima which is disfigured by MT in the novel. There is no divinity to Krishna in the story as well. He is even shown as a caste bigot who feels satisfied in the fact that it is a lower caste, Ghatotkacha, who died (and upper caste Arjuna is saved) in the fight against Karna.

Another example is Mata Kunti, who is characterised as a prostitute by suggesting how she mothered Bhima from some random forest-dweller; Yudhishtira from Vidhura, the brother of her husband Pandu; and Karna from some charioteer.

A controversy is raging in Kerala over naming the movie as Mahabharata. It is doubtful that the cheerleaders who lauded the announcement of the movie earlier will still favour naming it as Mahabharata after knowing that it is not the same epic that India reveres.

However, the point is that nobody is against the novel Randamoozham, or making it into a film.

The main argument at this point in time is that the adaptation of a novel, which deals with a few leaves taken out from the epic, should not be called Mahabharata. Instead it should either retain the original title, or use anything else other than that of the epic.

Neither anyone is averse to the use of the name Mahabharata nor anyone is against the freedom of the writer to depict Bhima and other characters of Mahabharata in his own way.

The issue is that if you want to name something as Mahabharata and want to show it to the world (producers have announced this to be a global project), then it must represent Ved Vyasa’s epic Mahabharata.

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