Child prodigy's stories spin a spell at MIFF

Child prodigy's stories spin a spell at MIFF
K Balachandra

FEBRUARY 9: Ten-year-old and an imagination running on the wild, wild side. In the fantasy world of V Abhimanyu, a Class V student, mouths seek freedom from human bodies, books rebel against insensitive children, garbage conspires with wind to annihilate man and mother unknowingly kills her daughter.

Abhimanyu, accompanied by his father, noted Malayalam story writer M N Vinaykumar, is here to exhibit a film Kuttumanipookkal (Pretty Little Flowers) at the 6th Mumbai International Film Festival for Documentary, Short and Animation Films (MIFF 2000). The film is a collection of four mini-stories written by Abhimanyu and filmed by his father-turned-debutant film maker. When big financers refused to fund, the Thrissur District Panchayat volunteered to put in its money.

It all started four years ago when the boy watched his father sit under the lamp spinning fables. He saw how people came to life on a blank page and wanted to be part of that world. ``I want to be one among them,'' he told his father, wholater spun stories around his son. Before long the boy began writing his own stories, many a time putting himself among the characters. At the age of six `Oru Poovu' (A Flower) became his first story to be published, and he was the youngest among 15 winners (1,540 entries) in a short story contest organised by Malayalam Manorama for youths under 15. The story had ridiculed police for their atrocities, reported regularly in the newspapers.

Abhimanyu's writing career then began in earnest. ``Over 16 stories published so far,'' reveals Vinaykumar, while the boy himself energeticlly hops around the NFDC office before the screening of his film on Wednesday. He was on his feet all through, anxiously clutching the brochure, biting it while the staff fumbled with the video projector and some among the audience, a sprinkling of festival regulars and aficianados, clucked at the amateur effort. But when the credits rolled up, no one could help clapping appreciatively at the two-feet high writer in theirmidst.

Coming out of the auditorium, he is beaming and talks little, what with strangers shaking his hands, stroking his close-cropped head and patting him. While he could speak only in Malayalam with some, his father managed the rest of the eager crowd wanting to know how it all clicked in that tiny head. ``I would be doing anything when it happens. Playing, reading, speaking to friends, mother or jostling with dad. When I want to, I just write and end it there. Writing stories is very easy for me,'' he says. The easy creativity comes not in small measure due to his writer-father who says, ``To this day I have not corrected a word in his stories. Being a writer myself I know they must stay his own stories in all ways.'' The father has no worry about how his son would fare as a student. ``Studies or not, well or indifferent is all same to me. All I want is that he realises his full potential as a writer,'' Vinaykumar says.

The mini-stories of the festival entry `Pretty Little Flowers' include the titlestory. While tending plants in a small garden, a little girl is hurt. Not knowing what caused the wound, the widowed mother applies an antiseptic powder. After taking food they go to sleep. Next morning the child does not wake up. In `Sankadam' (Sorrow), a child waits alone after the dance class for his mother to pick him up. Though night falls, there is no trace of her. On the deserted road an ambulance appears. When the door opens he finds his mother's corpse. `Vayum Alukalum' (Mouth and People): Once, all mouths convene a meeting. ``We should escape from people,'' the committee chairman declares, ``otherwise they would distort us by applying toothpaste.'' One day the mouths begin relentlessly biting people. Later people cut away their mouths and the mouths run away.

The latest story `Crying Motherland' shows it would take long for him to trust grown-ups. In the story a soldier returns home after the Kargil war and gets killed in a wanton blast in his native village. One need not go further looking formoral than that.

There are stories on cats, mice, trees, garbage. And human beings cut a sorry figure in all. They emerge as the ultimate destroyers targeting the innocent of the world. ``That's how it all is,'' the boy says when asked if he doesn't like grown-ups. ``I let him express himself. Shaping up his thought process is not my job,'' says Vinaykumar, himself not happy with the treatment NFDC meted out to his entry at MIFF. The festival entry has already won the Kerala Film Critics' Association Award for this year and is being currently screened for the Kerala State Film Awards.

Apart from MIFF screenings, Kuttumanipookkal was shown at nine different places, like schools, where majority of the audience were children, and social gatherings in Mumbai, within ten days. ``This place is full of people, too many,'' said Abhimanyu cryptically.