This is a true story of a life of struggle. Yakub Khadar Gulavady is today a known name but that was not how life was for him. “I come from a poverty-ridden home. My parents would weave thread from coconut fibre for a living. We were five boys and a girl. My elder brother would collect scraps from people’s homes on his bicycle and sell it. None of us completed school as we could not afford an education. When I was 12 years old, I gave up my studies and took up a job in a scrap shop,” recalls Yakub, who would cycle around Kundapur to collect scrap.
“It was a hard life. I don’t remember my school days at all. Yet I developed a passion for literature because of Santosh Kumar Gulavady, who used to write in a paper called Taranga . I loved his writing,” says Yakub, who would read every bit of paper that came to his scrap shop. “They would write brilliantly in Kannada and I would read in my free time. Some of the writers from Gulavady, my village, had made its name famous because of their works and I revered them.”
Changing lanes
It was in 2004 December that his life took a different turn. “There was a tsunami and some of us from Udupi District went to Andaman to help in the relief and restoration work. We were there for 17 days. When I landed there, I felt the whole place looked like a scrap shop – with bottles, plastic, papers, strewn about. The only addition were the bodies. I was heartbroken. I took many photographs, came back and wrote a book about my experience in Andaman, which was released in Udupi.”
His next break came when “out of the blue” he got a call from Girish Kasaravalli in 2006.
Dialect coach
“I was thrilled and wondered what a reputed director like him would want to do with a scrap dealer like me. He was making a film Gulabi Talkies and wanted me to help change the script using the beary dialect. He also wanted me to help the actors with their diction. I worked and helped them select costumes, say namaz and speak the dialect. I mostly mentored Umashree and the film did very well and won many awards. But, I was forgotten after that,” adds Yakub, who returned to scrap and literature.
In 2012, actor-director Nikhil Manju asked Yakub to work on his film Hajj . “When I first read the story, I found it unremarkable. We reworked the script and the film took a different turn. It won three National awards for best story and screenplay and Nikhil won the best actor award.”
The film bug big Yakub and he wanted to make a film. He approached Nikhil with the story of Reservation .
Contemporary tale
“It is about a Brahmin family, who want to send their child to an English medium school. They cannot afford it and try to apply for a reservation. The film talks about the struggles of this family. As the title suggests, the film is about the ill-effects of reservation in various sectors of society and explores how it is often misused. It is not based on actual events, but is a reflection of contemporary issues occurring as an aftermath of reservation. I struggled to make ends meet, so producing the film was difficult.”
Nikhil directed and acted in the film while Yakub produced it. “I never thought I would be able to produce a film. How can a scrap dealer have so much money? I took a small loan and pawned whatever jewellery my wife had and put it all into the film.”
Today Yakub stands vindicated as Reservation won the National Award for the Best Feature Film in a Regional Language (Kannada). He still has to get the prize money, he says, but adds he is in a happy space shuttling between literature and film scripts.
