‘Samudra Parinamam’- ‘Sea Change’- Writings for Films
Long Synopsis
The proposed script is based on four Malayalam short stories by Victor Leenus, genius of a writer whose brief creative incandescence produced twelve outstanding short stories.
The author uses his own name for most of the protagonists and several pivotal characters keep on re surfacing in stories to weave together diverse episodes of metaphysical reality in the urban landscapes.
The film opens with rescuing a girl who was betrayed by her own partner with whom she eloped. Ronny, who undertakes the operation in a metropolitan city, is a kingmaker with substantial connections both in the under belly and surface of big cities. Victor Leenus, the protagonist, shares a strange yet deep friendship with Ronny. Victor dares to take lonely sojourns through the invisible yet real alleys of urban neighbourhoods and stumble upon weird, dark yet kind characters. During one such outing he meets Leela, a lean, dark complexioned, young woman spreading fragrance and compassion who also happens to be a sex worker. Their brief encounter at a crowded exhibition ground leaves imprints of mutual appreciation, respect and love. Leela could not find him afterwards for quite some time but identifies him with the help of one of her customers because of Victor’s unique usage of language. Their second encounter ends in a rather bitter note as they both get booked by the police for ‘immoral’ activities. They find bemused at each other as both of them take the episode at the police station rather light heartedly. Ronny intervenes to help them walk out free without much harassment from the police.
The nonlinear narration of the film takes us through the different adventures of human relations involving Ronny, Leela, Victor Leenus and his friend Usha. Ronny, after rescuing the girl from the big city, takes her to his house and says since she had been betrayed by her partner and was forced to submit herself to a few others, now what is the big deal in spending a night with him. She ambivalently obliges but felt the weight of the last straw too much on her. She ends her life at Ronny’s house. Frantic Ronny ropes in Victor to dispose her body and Victor joins him reluctantly. They take a ride in a boat to the outer sea and it is Victor who had to push the body into the sea and leave her to rot, decay and may be to evolve as an oyster pearl. He feels the deep pang of guilt inside him and quenches the pain by blowing a few punches on his friend.
Leela frequents Victor and engage in long conversations, take a walk together or sometimes tidies up his room. She often leaves a few hundred rupee notes in the book he reads without he ever asking yet she knows that he doesn’t have greater needs or desires than those a few hundred rupees couldn’t get.
One day, when the city was all frenzied with political processions, Victor happens to pass by an accident site and suddenly an intuition makes him check on the victim. He rushes to the hospital and chillingly realizes that his intuition was unfortunately correct. It was Leela and she was dead. Victor entrusts his friend Usha to inform the tragedy to Leela’s mother. We see a mother who loves and accepts her daughter along with her so called dark livelihood. She never loses her composure and temperament and accepts her daughter’s death gracefully. It is also revealed that Leela was killed in the accident while she was trying to save a child.
The narrative weaves sequences of Victor’s sojourns in hyper reality where he meets the deceased Leela, the girl whom he disposed in the sea, his friend Ronny, Usha and many others. Victor encounters a beam of blissful light that emanates from the compassion of all those fellow travellers who all are, more or less, seemingly living dark, marginal and mysterious lives.
Short Synopsis
The proposed script is based on four Malayalam short stories by Victor Leenus, genius of a writer whose brief creative incandescence produced twelve outstanding short stories. The author uses his own name for most of the protagonists and several pivotal characters keep on re surfacing in stories to weave together diverse episodes of metaphysical reality in urban landscapes. The nonlinear narration of the film takes us through the different adventures of human relations involving Ronny, Leela, Victor Leenus and his friend Usha. Victor dares to take lonely sojourns through the invisible yet real alleys of urban neighbourhoods and stumble upon weird, dark yet kind characters. Ronny finds himself embroiled rescuing abducted girls and bailing out his friends from legal frets. Victor shares a strange yet deep friendship with Ronny. Leela, a kind hearted young woman, who, also happens to be a sex worker stumbles upon Victor and mutually realizes the light of their hearts. Despite their bitter encounters later, they both silently be the solace each other. Ronny instigates a suicide and Victor reluctantly joins to dispose the body while the latter wonders about the putrid of the body and it becoming an oyster pearl eons later. Leela leaves them all in an accident which Victor has almost witnessed. Though shaken inwardly yet accepting the death, Victor entrusts Usha to inform Leela’s mother. We see a mother who loves and accepts her daughter along with her so called dark livelihood and she gracefully accepts Leela’s death as well. Victor helps us encounter a beam of blissful light that emanates from the compassion of all those characters who all are, more or less, seemingly living dark, marginal and mysterious lives.
Director’s Statement
With just twelve short stories written in a span of two decades, Victor Leenus depicted human relationships devoid of any set patterns, created life situations in a new order to reveal the compassion of ostensibly shady human beings and presented an idiom that refreshed not just the reading experience but exercise of imagination itself.
These stories, which are sewed together to accomplish this script, challenged established notions on good and evil, morality, man-woman relationship and life and death. The film is an attempt at excavating the experiences of love, selflessness, kindness and camaraderie from apparently dim lit alleys of human minds as well as urban spaces. This possibility of a counter life or an alternate life, which is soaked in solitude as well as being shaped by deep convictions of humanity and mutual trust, practiced by the characters outshine the conventional conceptions about love, trust, death, friendship, life et al.
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