WHAT THE SUFI SAID

By K B Venu

National award winning director Priyanandanan’s latest flick, Sufi Paranja Katha (What the Sufi Said) is a sharp reply to the anxiety that parents in God’s Own Country underwent in the name of Love Jehad which was partly sponsored and ignited by the over enthusiastic and highly competitive media in the State. The film, based on a novel by the same name by celebrated author K P Ramanunni, puts forward fresh questions that our hypocritically secular social psyche fails, or rather refuses, to address. The cinematic hypothesis Priyanandanan and his crew present include religious, historical, political and sexual issues that continue to haunt Kerala and the rest of the country.
The plot centres around Karthi (Sharbani Mukherjee), heiress of an aristocratic Nair family in Malabar, who elopes with Maamootty (Prakash Bare), a Muslim trader who comes to her ancestral home in connection with his business tour.
Karthi who sends shockwaves through the family with her bold and unnatural behaviour and attitude towards life even from childhood, eventually poses problems in the new surroundings she chooses to live in. Cardinal among the embarrassments Karthi, now rechristened Suhra, causes in Maamootty is her refusal to part with Hindu traditions she had been following. The crisis deepens when she chances upon a sacred temple stone and later an idol of Godess Kali from the courtyard of Maamootty’s house. In a poignant sequence, as Maamootty returns from a business trip with costly gifts, Suhra tells him she lacks something in his home. To his intriguing query Suhra alias, Karthi says she needs the deities whom she used to bear in her soul. She makes it clear that it is not for prayer that she needs them but simply for remembering them.

When Avaru Musliar (brilliantly essayed by Jagathi Sreekumar), head of the local mosque, urges to demolish the temple like structure built by Maamootty in his compound for his spouse to offer prayers, Suhra replies: “Can I forget my mother because I converted religion?” With this question, Priyanandanan is disputing the very foundation of religious fundamentalism (of all sorts) and its resultant follies. Karthy’s question has devastating consequences on Avaru Musliar whose restless inner soul gets entangled in his own past. Musliar becomes a somnambulist and in his hallucinatory night walks through the beach, he assumes the life of Kochunni Thampuran, an upper cast Hindu landlord who is his forefather.
Karthy had earlier embarrassed her maternal uncle Sanku Menon (Thampi Antony) who unconsciously developed incestuous thoughts whenever they both met. Menon who becomes uncontrollably lascivious, later loses his very appetite for sex. Menon, an astrologer, is also torn between the extremes of his own superstitions and the bold denial of religious orthodoxy by his niece.
Karthy’s presence thus has a manifold effect on the men with whom she interacts. The newly sworn in Adhikari (local governor) who barges into Menon’s house is afflicted with small pox when he sees Karthy in the sanctum sanctorum of the family temple. Sanku Menon, after becoming impotent helplessly watches his niece falling in love with Maamootty. On the night Karthy elopes with Maamootty, Menon, almost on the verge of madness, asks his servant to tie him up using a huge iron chain meant for elephants. Avaru Musliar’s plight after being questioned by Karthy is almost similar to that of a castrated person. In one of his soliloquies, Musliar says: “To sustain life I may have to relinquish belief. If I am to stick on to belief, I may have to lose life. I desired both. And, did I get either?”
Finally, unable to bear the radiance of Karthy’s strong will and losing his once boisterous sexual urge, Maamootty resorts to homosexual relationship with a young boy. Karthy’s act of castrating male characters is part of her fight against patriarchal norms.
When the religious fanatics treacherously kill Maamootty, the clairvoyant Karthy leaves her husband’s home, walks to the beach, lures Amir (Maamootty’s gay partner) and walks with him into the depths of the Arabian Sea. Later local people recover her from the sea in the form of the monument of a Beevi, a deity adored fervently by all religions. Thus, Karthy becomes a symbol of religious harmony in a land that once had welcomed and promoted a number of cultures and religions across the world. Karthy first confronts the problems around her courageously and with utmost feminine grace and strength, plunges into the ocean only to emerge as a universally adored goddess. The movie emphasizes the triumph of womanhood or matriarchy over the oppressive patriarchal order. The element of lust brimming up in Karthy is in fact part of Kerala’s fertility cult. Karthy symbolizes the fertile womanhood capable of creating ripples of desire in man and drain his arrogance off only to produce a rich harvest of love. It is through unfathomable love that she regains herself and the malignant society around her. Karthy grows up further to channelise her almost insatiable sexual energy to a greater state of adorable motherhood.
Priyanandanan whose earlier works Neythukaran and Pulijanmam had won national accolades, has proved that he can make films having fabulous visual space with exquisite professional élan. His adroit handling of emotionally charged situations has many examples in the film, including the one in which Karthy and Mamootty make love on the banks of the river. Hats off to director of photography K G Jayan and editor Venugopal for their valuable contributions to the film’s structural beauty.
K P Ramanunni wrote the novel in the politically turbulent post-Babri Masjid demolition era-in 1993 to be exact. His venture can rightly be considered as one of the most powerful intervention of a writer on the dangerously feeble religious scenario of the country. (No wonder the novel was translated into seven other languages including English and French.)
Ponnani, where the main events of the story take place, used to be the hub of religious harmony and Hindu-Muslim camaraderie. But later, after the invasion of Tipu Sultan the religious and cultural equations in the region changed drastically. Priyanandanan cleverly chooses this scenario for his film with a distinct purpose. He wants his audience to know the importance of being aware of their political and cultural history and understand the meaninglessness of nurturing extremely fundamentalist religious sentiments deep inside their mind. That’s why the Sufi tells the story writer towards the end of the movie: “You must listen to stories. Those who do not listen to stories will become meaningless and useless. Those who are meaningless will eventually ruin the land.”