A lifetime of becoming

A new documentary traces Paul Zacharia’s journey from a quiet village in Kottayam and the many worlds that shaped his singular literary imagination

How do you translate a writer’s inner world to the screen in just an hour? A new documentary, ‘Zacharia’, on Malayalam writer Paul Zacharia attempts to answer that question by tracing the people, places and books that shaped his literary imagination—from his childhood in the quiet, hilly village of Urulikunnam in Kottayam to his encounters with the works of Kafka and Camus during his postgraduate days in Bengaluru, and later his camaraderie with prominent Malayalam writers in Delhi.

That extraordinary arc of transformation, or “repeated reinvention”, as Zacharia himself describes it, was shaped by growing up in a home where his parents read, and by his access to a well-stocked village library and its well-read librarian.

He recalls his parents as avid readers, an unusual habit at a time when independent reading was discouraged in many Christian families.

“My father was a fellow-traveller and a friend of the local communists. I don’t know what inspired my parents to read, but from my childhood I remember seeing books such as The ‘Arabian Nights’, ‘Kathasaritsagaram’, stories of Vikramaditya, and works by Ponkunnam Varkey, Vaikom Muhammad Basheer and S K Pottekkatt at home. I saw my mother reading them, while my father would take me to the bookshop,” says Zacharia.

One striking memory, he recalls, is of people queuing up to buy ‘Chemmeen’ by Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai when it was published.
Built around a series of interviews and evocative location shots, interspersed with animation based on eight of his works, the film, directed by award-winning documentary maker Shiny Benjamin, follows Zacharia through the places that shaped his imagination—his favourite library in Urulikunnam, his school, St Philomena’s College in Mysuru, where he studied English Literature under writer Gopalakrishna Adiga, and Bangalore Central College, where he pursued postgraduate studies.

The film shows him walking among the shelves of the village library. “It is an extraordinary library. Whenever we visit, Ravi, the librarian, shows us the new arrivals and recommends books. He is 90 now. I am a prime beneficiary of the Grandhasala Prasthanam.”
Zacharia says the librarian used to say anyone who has read ‘Marthanda Varma’, ‘Dharmaraja’, ‘Ramaraja Bahadur’, ‘Kapalkundala’, ‘Durgesh Nandini’, ‘Desa Sevini’ and ‘Gnanambika’ could consider themselves a true reader. “I have read all these books,” he says.

His brother, too, played an important role in shaping his literary sensibility. He introduced Zacharia to English books, inspiring him to study English literature and eventually join St Philomena’s College in Mysuru.

“When I reached Mysuru in the 1960s, it was the golden age of Hindi film songs. For me, it was a major leap in terms of my imagination, my emotional sensibility and my instinctive enjoyment of the world,” he says in the film.

The documentary also revisits the period Zacharia spent as a postgraduate student at Bangalore City College.
“Bengaluru was my first mega city. The students were much more advanced in terms of reading.

It was there I first heard about Jean-Paul Sartre, Franz Kafka and Albert Camus. I got introduced to modernism that breached the boundaries of European literature.”

His first story, ‘Unniyenna Kutty’ (Unni the Child), published in 1964, emerged from the coming together of the new knowledge he gained from Adiga and the Malayalam books he had read until then.
“I wrote it in an outhouse of a hotel in Mysuru,” Zacharia says.

The story marked the beginning of a literary journey that would establish him as one of the most important Indian writers living today.

Among the significant influences on Zacharia’s life were filmmakers John Abraham and G Aravindan. His years in Delhi brought him into the orbit of prominent writers such as O V Vijayan, V K N and Kakkanadan.

“Delhi was a magical city for me. The biggest takeaway was my political awareness.”

One of the documentary’s striking recollections concerns the Bible. Zacharia remembers that, in those days, many households did not own a Bible. As he recalls it, the prevailing view of the Catholic Church was that people did not need to read the Bible independently; they only needed to learn from the priest’s sermons. Later, after returning to Kerala and taking up a job in Kanjirappally, he was introduced to the Bible as a book to be read like any other, and to Jesus Christ as a good human being.

For Shiny, translating a writer’s inner world to the screen was a challenge.

“The film consists largely of interviews, so much of the thinking that went into its making centred on how to enhance it visually—what to place in the background when he talks about communism, Jesus Christ and other subjects. The documentary follows a chronological structure, interspersed with animation and narration based on eight of his books,” she says.

“It took a year and a half to make and involved visits to the places where he lived and the institutions where he studied, as well as filming his walks through the bustling cities of Mysuru, Bengaluru and Delhi.”

Zacharia says the documentary was accidental. “The producers, Achu Ullathil and K M Gafoor, met me and told me that they want to make a film.”

Renowned filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan, who watched the documentary when it was screened in Thiruvananthapuram, said: “It is a well-researched and well-made work, executed imaginatively. A film on a Malayalam writer like this is much needed.”

The documentary ultimately shows how, in 81-year-old Zacharia’s life, reading became the first step towards writing, and eventually towards creating a world of his own. And he continues to do so with elan. Author of more than 50 works spanning short stories, novellas, travelogues and essays, his new story, ‘Ramaniyum Thangavum,’ appeared in Mathrubhumi magazine’s Onam special edition this week.

END OF ARTICLE