A couple of years back when I asked Anurag Kashyap, the protégé of Ram Gopal Varma, where did his mentor lose out, he said, “The day he started losing interest in what’s happening around him, he started stagnating.” Cut to 2016, and Varma is showing signs of regaining lost form. Finally, he has moved away from the urban underworld. Once again he is showing interest in real life characters. After a long unsuccessful run at the box office, his Killing Veerappan created some impact among audience and now Varma has adapted the docu drama into a Hindi film. “I have not come back I am just coming, holding Veerappan’s hand and he is leading me out of the wilderness,” says Varma in his typical terse way. With no local sentiments to take care of, Varma says, the Hindi version is darker and more violent. In other words here Veerappan will overshadow the officer who killed him.
It has been more than a decade since the forest brigand was vanquished but Varma feels that Veerappan’s story is important and that he is not glorifying a criminal. “Never before in the history, an independent criminal, without any organisation or terror group, killed 97 policemen. How did an uneducated villager survive for so long in a developed country like India, why did it take governments of three States to eliminate him, merits a serious look.” Varma took a break from Hindi films to do research on the subject. Apart from scanning police files and chargesheets, he met members of Veerappan’s network and his wife Muthulakshmi.
Veerappan is different from Varma’s urban gangsters like Satya, Chandu and Malik. “He grew up in and around a jungle. He is more like an animal. And in a jungle you survive by killing other animals,” observes Varma about the mental make-up of his subject.
Over the years, a lot of stories have evolved around Veerappan. Varma doesn’t deny it and says the film is the truth as he sees it. “From a guy who knew black magic to a paper tiger, there are all sorts of stories that are doing the rounds.” Filmy villains often require some mythical touches but Varma says when you are dealing with a real guy you don’t need mythical layering. He says the guy had a “massive ego” and that pushed him to punch above his weight and abduct a celebrity like Kannada star Rajkumar. “He was essentially a fugitive who didn’t like to be challenged. When Harikrishna, the Superintendent of Police, STF, declared that he would catch him in six months, Veerappan vowed to kill him in six days, and he did it.”
Veerappan could have done without such attention. “When you reach a certain position, for your myth to survive, you have to do certain things.” In that way, he says, Veerappan was no different from the underworld dons. Ultimately, Varma says, he just got carried away. “When Phoolan Devi became a Member of Parliament, he felt he was more famous than the dacoit-turned-politician. If she could become MP, he should be the Chief Minister.”
However, he denies that there was political support to Veerappan and finds his supposed links with the LTTE as far-fetched. “See, support comes for a price. The benefit has to be substantial if you support a guy like Veerappan. You couldn’t get crores from him and he didn’t command a huge vote bank either.” As for LTTE, Varma feels Veerappan was not fighting for a cause. “He had no ideology and, in fact, with so much police presence around the forest, he would have become a liability for them.” Poaching, he adds, could not earn him big money, because tusk has no value inside the jungle. Like cocaine, it becomes precious only when it travels to street.” He says, like the Robin Hood image, it was also one of the myths that were created around him.
On his meeting with Muthulakshmi, Varma says, “She thinks that Veerappan was the nicest guy. She believes whatever he did was for righteous reasons.” One tries to draw parallel between Muthulakshmi and Mandodari but Varma refuses to get carried away. “Of course, she helped me draw the human side of the dacoit, otherwise he would have been reduced to a caricature but I didn’t ask her kitne pyaar se dekhta tha . He didn’t need her support. He used to lie a lot to her as he could not disclose many things that could jeopardise his movements in the forest.”
After a long time Varma’s unconventional editing patterns and camera angles seem to have found a subject. “I did research that is adequate for the subject and in my films technology always emanates from the subject. If the character and content doesn’t work, the technique goes wrong as well. I am a storyteller, who goes by his instinct, I don’t plan as such.”
He has said this before in different ways including his book but I always find there is something missing. It is impossible to believe that the guy who made Satya and Rangeela also made Department and Aag . “You can’t predict success. Success happens. And if you don’t believe me, it is better to say that the real Ramu is the guy who made bad films. And the good ones came from a fake account!”
On his social media behaviour
It is a way to attract attention. We do most things in life to attract attention. I can’t be hiding like Veerappan in the forest and no, I don’t draw a line in my life.
(See also “The image lives on”)
