THE MANY FAILED ATTEMPTS TO FILM THE BOYFRIEND - I

In the visual age in which we live, every writer, especially writers of novels, harbours the desire, secretly or otherwise, to see his work filmed. It doesn’t matter if the film is faithful to the novel or not. Just seeing one’s work transformed on to celluloid fills the heart with pride. Writers like R. K. Narayan who was so displeased with Dev Anand’s filming of his novel The Guide that he wrote a scathing essay about it titled “Misguided Guide” are rare to come by in the twenty-first century. Salman Rushdie waited for thirty-two long years for Deepa Mehta to film Midnight’s Children. Other Indian English novels adapted into films include Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan, Anita Desai’s In Custody, Upamanyu Chatterjee’s English August, and of course several novels of Chetan Bhagat.

I must confess that as a literature professor I dislike the tendency of students to see a film (where it exists) in lieu of reading the novel. Films being an altogether different medium, they rarely do justice to every aspect of the novel. Still, as a writer I too have succumbed to the temptation of wanting to see my work filmed.

The Boyfriend was published in 2003, and the first attempt to film it was made that year itself.  Let me recount how it happened. One Sunday afternoon, while I was in Bombay to meet my mother and sister, I got a call from a gentleman who surprised, nay shocked me by introducing himself as Vanraj Bhatia. This was because Vanraj Bhatia was a famous music director who, among other accomplishments, had scored the music for Shyam Benegal films like Manthan and Bhumika. Since the early 70s, I have been an ardent admirer of Shyam Benegal’s films and the art-cinema movement in India that they spearheaded. I don’t think there’s a single Shyam Benegal film that I haven’t seen. And here was Vanraj Bhatia, Benegal’s music director, giving me a call! I couldn’t believe my ears.

Vanraj Bhatia did not mince his words. He modestly introduced himself as a music director, said a friend and he wanted to start a film production unit, and The Boyfriend was the first film they were thinking of producing and directing.

 Bhatia asked me if I could meet them at the Oberoi Sheraton Hotel at Nariman Point at 3 pm that day. Not the one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I readily agreed, although I had a return ticket to Pune on the Deccan Queen which left at 5.10 pm from VT Station.

When I reached the Oberoi, Bhatia and his friend were already there, having drinks. Bhatia introduced the friend as Adam Clapham, a British national who lived in India and worked for the BBC. They ordered drinks and snacks for me, and said many nice things about The Boyfriend which doubtless gladdened me immensely. What they wanted to know was if I was amenable to their offer to film the novel. They asked who the rights of the novel belonged to, and if anyone else had approached me to film it. I told them that I would be absolutely delighted to have them make a movie of the book, described by reviewers as “India’s first gay novel,” and that no; nobody else had expressed the desire to film it.

We spent the rest of the afternoon in a spirit of jovial conviviality.  There were several rounds of snacks and drinks. We chatted, but the question of sexuality, as I remember it, never once came up in the conversation. It was assumed that all the three of us knew of each other’s sexuality. Time flew. I had gotten quite drunk, and when I looked at my watch I saw to my horror that it was already a quarter to five. Although my head felt heavy with the booze I had consumed, I had no intention of missing my train. So I rose, teetering a little, thanked Bhatia and Clapham for their hospitality and kindness, bid them a hasty goodbye, and hailed a cab as soon as I got out of the five-star Oberoi Sheraton.

I caught the Deccan Queen virtually by the skin of my teeth. I ordered a coffee on the train to help me deal with my hangover. But the hangover wasn’t just on account of the alcohol. It was also on account of the giddy heights I felt myself soar to, revelling in the fact that my very first novel was soon going to become an international film. How many writers were that lucky, I asked myself.

A year passed, then two. I did not hear from Vanraj Bhatia again. However, Adam Clapham was in touch with me, and he informed me that they had submitted a proposal to film the book to the BBC in London. I was confused. I thought Bhatia and Clapham had intended to start their own production company. But now they had got the BBC involved.  It obviously meant that their own project hadn’t kicked off. I grew sceptical. There was nothing I could do, though, except wait and watch.

Another couple of years passed. Bhatia and Clapham did not bother to keep me in the loop. But when I riled Clapham with emails and phone calls, he finally forwarded a note to me that they had received from the BBC. It tersely said, “We considered your proposal, but unfortunately The Boyfriend is not for us.” I gathered from Clapham that they went to the BBC as they couldn’t cough up the money required to set out on their own.

So that was the end of my dream to have my novel filmed.

To be fair to Clapham, he did not sever his ties with me just because our partnership had fizzled out. In 2011, when some friends and I were on our way to Kerala to attend a conference, we broke journey at Mangalore where Clapham lived. He hosted us for the day, treated us to lunch at the swanky Mangalore Club, and even gave me a signed copy of his book, which was a compilation of humorous anecdotes he had gathered while working at the BBC India Office, from which he had now retired.  

As for Bhatia, that call he made to me in Bombay that Sunday afternoon was his first and last.  Good Luck had come knocking at my door, but although I opened the door, it refused to step in.