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Vikram Chandra has fun with my opening question. I asked him where was one of his protagonists in his 2006 Black Bombay novel,
Sacred Games
– A divorced policeman with a big name, Sartaj Singh. Chandra bursts out laughing, "I tried very hard not to think about what he was trying to do." Many readers [love Sartaj] and especially women have a special relationship with Mr. Singh. "He tormented this way," he replies with dancing eyes and an indulgent look.
Singh is ready to play in the world of streaming with actor Saif Ali Khan who is trying to inspect the sardar on Friday. Khan with Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Radhika Apte topped the first original Netflix show to come out of India that is adapted from Chandra's novel. The book, steeped in Mumbai's politics – gangsters, the police and the film world – has an epic scale, neat intrigue, is plot-driven and abounds with endearing characters – including Singh and gangster Ganesh Gaitonde (Siddiqui). Recently, I reread the book in anticipation of watching the show and I feel possessive of its vast and well-researched material, of its inner look on a city we all love to hate. How will this result on screen with integrity, I ask Chandra a little concern. He responds with a surprising detachment: "I decided very early that [I] was to drop the book. When [you] translates from one medium to another, if you make a literal translation, you will leave all the poetry behind you. It must be a recreation. Even that's a bad word – it's a transcreation for something like [
Sacred Games
] where [the Netflix show] exists in its own universe in its own right. They did a fantastic job to achieve it. It's pretty convincing, "he says convincingly. This reminds me of Chandra's description of a Buddhist mandala drawn by Tibetan monks, which Singh remarkably remarked in the book. The mandala, representative of the universe, is meticulously stretched and then destroyed.
Square to Ambition
Chandra settles in Mumbai after a long stint at Mayo College, Ajmer, "I was fed up with internship, discipline and sealing, "he shares. He spent three years at St. Xavier's College and fell in love with the city. "It was like home, thousands of people come from all over the country from different clbades and statues every day and everyone finds their place, and then they develop this strange attachment to hate and hate. love [to Mumbai] There is an energy, it is very convincing and you thrive there.There is room for ambition – all [which] make a very heady mix, "Chandra shares all highlighting why Mumbai feels like home.At one point he came to Mumbai several times in a year, now reduced to two annual trips due to school and teaching schedules. and his wife, writer Melanie Abrams teach at the University of California at Berkeley and have two children ages eight and 10. Chandra is also busy with her software company, Granthika who is in her beta phase. The software connects the text with the knowledge created there es – born of the need for & # 39; an author like Chandra who writes a novel, as saying
Sacred Games
– can be applied to legal writing, journalism, business documentation and scientific publication.
Writing an Epic
So, from where comes the spark for
Sacred Games
comes from? "I had this very strange and persistent image of Sartaj talking to a gangster on an intercom.I had no idea who this guy was inside," he says. The picture was recalled from a visit to a gangster pit during the nearly ten years of research that Chandra has undertaken for the book. "He had CCTV on the street and this bank of monitors. He had been able to see us walking down the street for half a kilometer. He had an armored door and an intercom. That's where it started, "he says, describing the process of writing. "I'm starting to ask questions about the characters – who's the guy inside? Why is there there? [was a] very slow discovery process." A discovery that was helped by friends like the journalist Hussain Zaidi and police officers, many of whom have been recognized in the book.
Chandra had watched – like everyone in the city during the 80s and 90s – the growth of organized crime, the rising levels of violence. "This [in] famous shooting (1991) in Lokhandwala? We were living [in Lokhandwalathen] and my father and I were coming home one day." Suddenly, there was this fire of automatic weapons
echo of the buildings. It was about three blocks from our house and we had no idea what was going on. Chandra has close ties with the film industry, which was under threat of extortion at the time. "I had colleagues and friends who were targets.I knew people who had paid, I knew people who had been injured.I was curious to know why this was happening.J" I asked my friends, Hussain Zaidi and some cops with whom I was friends to introduce myself to people so that I could understand what was happening [en[was]. "Intensive research led to a sprawling novel that crisscrossed the country (and sometimes the world) in his story and yet tied up all his ends in Mumbai.As he says, "It's not like [I was] was making a documentary but [I did] wanted to convey the feeling of texture of someone's life. "
Pivotal to Narrative
The show is ongoing 12 years later
Sacred Games
has been published. So is it still relevant? Chandra's answer is quick, "Crime and corruption are ongoing, the use of religion and modern media in politics – which are still alive. [The writers and directors] have done a great job of integrating all this into a re-visioning of [
Sacred Games
] As stated before Chandra was not a part of the series writing, but attached as a consultant for the show. "They have a wonderful team of extremely talented writers [Varun Grover, Vasant Nath and Smita Singh] and they send me ideas and I react to them, I think long-term TV is the way to [
Sacred Games
] – we live in the golden age of television. Chandra attributes this kind of feature-length content to what Victorian novels do, exploring a whole culture, but cinematographically. He is also delighted that the series has proved to be multilingual. "There are whole scenes in Marathi and Punjabi, that's how we, Indians, live and talk, the writers did it effectively." And what about the casting? Chandra's approval is fast, "Everyone's performance, all the characters [are] just great. I am very happy and happy. "
Mumbai as a character
Did he ever think of the city of Mumbai as a character in the book?" Not consciously but I knew how much the characters had a relationship with the city. Especially Ganesh [Gaitonde] in that he comes from the outside as an orphan and tries to use this
karmbhoomi
While Singh is the son of Partition refugees, another central figure of Zoya Mirza comes from Lucknow. "Then the local people have a very special relationship with the city." Katekar is an old Maharashtrian man, I was trying to get their understanding of the city and in that – this inadvertently created Bombay as a character. "For Chandra, the beauty of the city lies in its details," If Sartaj spent his day driving his motorcycle from one end of the city to the other, what is it like? when you do this naturally, the city comes in, "he says
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