Kaaka Muttai , >a Tamil film whose milieu was ultra-local but whose thematic appeal was near universal, drawing worthy comparisons with Pather Panchali , has been remade. And no, the remake is not in Hindi; to preserve the regional flavour of the movie, it is in Marathi. Its title is one that is sure to make us do a rewind and take a dip into our childhood memories. It is Half Ticket . That the title matches that of a yesteryear movie starring Kishore Kumar — a manchild at heart — is a mere coincidence.
Samit Kakkad, the director of the Marathi adaptation that is scheduled to release on July 22, says Half Ticket is an inclusive term, one that will have resonance with people from all regions and classes. “We have all been in the half-ticket category as children and the term is common for almost all Indian languages,” he says. The remake’s story is credited to the original’s director M. Manikandan. And its music is credited to G.V. Prakash Kumar. “We wanted to retain the soul of the original even as we adapted the script to suit the milieu of Mumbai,” says Kakkad.
Mumbai provided the perfect setting for a remake of Kaaka Muttai , as Kakkad says. Playing host to the largest slum in Asia and having close to 60 per cent of its population living in slums and shanties, the Maximum City is the best example of India’s unplanned tryst with globalisation ending in uneven distribution of the riches. However, as numerous tales of achievement show, it also is home to the dreams and desires of the slum-dwellers, including children similar to those shown in Kaaka Muttai .
“I have my roots in the slums of Kaula Bandar, Darukhana. That was the area where my grandfather was born. Matunga, where I live currently, is very close to Dharavi. I have had the best of relations with children from both Kaula Bandar and Dharavi since my childhood. The film made me connect with my own subaltern identity,” says Kakkad.
Director Samit Kakkad with the kids Kaaka Muttai was a perfect children’s movie, and I mean this as a sincere compliment to its director, M. Manikandan. Not because of its content but because of its perspective. The entire narrative takes place not from the vantage point of the director’s adult-self but through the eyes of the child in him. The two children, Periya Kaaka Muttai and China Kaaka Muttai act as the prisms through which he presents his child self.
A piece of lucrative real estate being acquired, by bribing the local politician, to establish a pizza parlour may invite reflections on land grab, corruption and environmental degradation. But, for the two children, what is more painful is the loss of home for their winged friends, the crows; the loss of their sole source of indulgence, the crow’s egg; the loss of their playing space, while they were pushed further to the margins, being made mere spectators to this urban spectacle.
The act of stealing coal on a large scale may have been an act of theft from an adult’s point of view; but for the children, it is a perfectly legitimate means to earn enough money to be able to buy their new object indulgence, a pizza. It is no more unethical for them to steal and sell coal than it is to distract a crow’s attention through food while climbing up the tree to steal its egg.
And the act of a poor child getting slapped after being denied entry to the fast food outlet despite having money, could be a source of outrage inviting articles on discrimination. However, for the children it is a mere temporary act of insult, more so because it happens in front of their buddies from the slums. They quickly get over it and don’t understand the fuss created by the media. And we are made to see it through their eyes, not the eyes of politicians, media or their scheming neighbours.
In terms of the way this little tale of self-discovery — through which the children become a little more self-aware, a little more comfortable in their own identity — unfolds, Kaaka Muttai reminded me of another movie made by master wordsmith Gulzar 40 years ago, Kitaab , another little tale of self-discovery seen entirely through the eyes of Babla, a child whose tryst with truancy involves running away from home and ends with getting united with his mother, feeling comfortable in his own middle-class self.
Some recent Marathi films, like Elizabeth Ekadashi and Killa , have made similar successful attempts at traversing life’s journeys through a child’s eyes. Kakkad — whose first film Aayna Ka Baayna ( Delinquent Dancers ) released in 2012, was also centred on children — says Kitaab and similar movies provide him with good inspiration. He feels that if there is one definite film that has shown Mumbai slum life in its authenticity, it is Mira Nair’s Oscar-nominated Salaam Bombay . He adds that there have not been many similar attempts made in Marathi.
The lyrics for G.V. Prakash Kumar’s music have been given by Kshitij Patwardhan in Marathi. The videos of the ‘ Chal chal’ song — its Tamil original created poetry out of how the kids find beauty amid the squalor of their surroundings — and ‘ >Rubaab Pahije ’ (‘Karuppu Karuppu’) look to be broadly following the pattern of the original.
So how different is Half Ticket from Kaaka Muttai ? Kakkad says while the script is the same — and the trailer retains the innocence of the original — the screenplay reflects Mumbai’s own identity. “Its slums act as a microcosm of the cosmopolitan nature of the city. We have people from different States speaking many languages — Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Gujarati, different dialects of Hindi. This shows even in the life of those people in our movie.”
The director also wishes to screen his movie in Chennai. “I want to have a joint screening, with the cast and crew of both the movies watching Kaaka Muttai ’s Marathi version unfold on screen,” he says.
