Conversations with Mani Ratnam

by Baradwaj Rangan

I saw a bit of Dayavan [the Nayakan remake]. I didn’t get past the childhood portions. I think it was the point where the kid was trapped into betraying his father; I’m not sure, but if I see the film again, I can point it out. They didn’t get the point at all. Feroz Khan came here before he was to do the film, and I felt I had to tell him how I would go about it and then leave it to him. To me, Nayakan is the story of a man going to an alien zone and establishing roots and becoming somebody in that territory. It is really an underdog’s conquest in an alien zone. So for the Hindi version to root the story in Bombay was itself odd. I said I would have either set it in Calcutta, or even in London. He had a different perspective. He felt that the identification with Varadaraja Mudaliar was the key to the entire thing, whereas I thought the key, the story, was really about the alien man making it. That was the emotional chord. We differed, so I said fine, and we left it at that.