In P.J. Udayraj’s debut film, Katu Pootha Malay (Wild Flower Garland, Tulu language), an offscreen male character descends from the sky and takes viewers on a journey through the spaces of an abandoned house. The experimental film blends voiceover narration and bucolic visuals for a nostalgic tale of objects, memories and fate. In this interview, Udayraj discusses the influences of folklore in Katu Pootha Malay and his collaboration with technicians.

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Dipankar Sarkar: What are your early memories of cinema, and when did you first think of yourself as a filmmaker?

P.J. Udayraj: My earliest memories of films are Armour of God (1986) starring Jackie Chan, where he [fights] gigantic Amazonian women with swords the size of spears, and Ulagam Sutrum Valiban (1973), where M.G. Ramachandran [beats up] the villain played by [M.N.] Nambiar. What I like about Ramachandran’s films is that the villains have redemption, turning into good people in the end. I also remember watching a VHS copy of Home Alone (1990) at Alagappa Preparatory School on television.  But what’s etched in my mind are Abhayam (1991) and Momo (1986). I loved watching Children’s Film Society India and National Film Development Corporation of India films on DD National on Sunday afternoons, which were called “Award Padam” and were telecast before the Sunday evening blockbuster films. 

I worked as a CT scanner engineer at Siemens when I applied for a Post Graduation Diploma Program in Design in 2006. Considering filmmaking as a pursuit, I was inspired by the experience of making a short film on a colleague’s early Nokia camera mobile. Between toy design and filmmaking, I chose the latter since it seemed less predictable. I fancy myself as a maker or a craftsman rather than a filmmaker. For me, a “filmmaker” is someone with a voice, spine and a heart. I might get there someday. I still can’t completely think of myself as a filmmaker.

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DS: What is the role of folklore in your life, and what made you think you could incorporate it in your films?

PJU: While studying at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad (NID), filmmaker Amit Dutta introduced us to films negotiating with folklore such as Duvidha (1973) and Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965). There were also courses on Indian Narrative Structures with Arshia Sattar and Dr. Shilpa Das, where I came across two important films: Girish Karnad’s Utsav (1984) adaptation of the Sanskrit play Mrichakatikam, and Nagamandala (1996), a Kannada film based on a folktale by Nagabharana.

I vaguely remembered my maternal grandmother’s tales, which we as children listened to, and were enamored by their magic. The Flowering Tree by A.K. Ramanujam helped me revisit those Tulu stories like Princess Kamasandige. This culminated in my diploma film, Pollena Kathe, guided by professor Arun Gupta.

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DS: The idea for Katu Pootha Malay was developed from a short film. Tell me about the process.

PJU: I had some experience dealing with folk forms and narratives with Pollena Kathe. The cinematographer of my film, Prahlad Gopakumar, who was teaching cinematography at NID in 2018, had taken some time off to shoot a film on HMT factory machines in Bengaluru. The film didn’t fall through for bureaucratic reasons. He offered that shoot time to some of us if we had any ideas. I shared some ideas in the form of sketches to make a series of sketch comedies around my native place. By the time we neared shooting, I’d dug into some narratives about my family and found several stories. They were strung together like a “wild flower garland” that children tied during summer vacation. These were fully as well as half-remembered accounts. The half-remembered ones were completed with a folklore-like imagination. There were objects in the house whose tales are also fabricated in a similar bent that I would fancy to call “folk realism.” A folklorist doesn’t tell stories; they retell stories, at least according to me.

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DS: The voiceover plays throughout Katu Pootha Malay as a commentary. Rarely do characters speak to one another. Why did you choose such a narrative device?

PJU: The original format of the film was thought of as a photoplay or a video essay with a voiceover in a show-and-tell manner. The images are used only to support or illustrate the oral telling of the tales in a Hari-Kathe-like manner in Hindu tradition. The characters speak and act for relief. The voiceover is used to emulate the experience of listening to a grandmother’s tales. Moreover, the voiceover script evolved with every step of the process. It improvised until dubbing. It is also a matter of resources and the economics of independent filmmaking. They directly dictate the film’s form. 

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DS: The story of Katu Pootha Malay rapidly shifts from one character to the next and informs viewers about the key events. But why were scenes narrated from the house’s point of view?

PJU: It is always interesting to hear how people remember the same stories. Within my family, there were different versions of these stories. While aiming to do justice to history, the idea was to let it flow. The details didn’t seem as sacred in a folklore-like form; the teller could be inventive. By the end of the second schedule, we had shot several subplots without a clear main plot. The common thread was the house, and thus the narrator became the house.

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DS: In Katu Pootha Malay, Sharadama gets enchanted by a deer and asks her husband to catch it for her. It is a reimagining of a pivotal moment from the epic Ramayana. What is the significance?

PJU: The only truth in that episode is the deer horn hanging on the wall of the ancestral house in Padubidri, belonging to Anantarama. It is imagined to be Mareecha’s horns. Similar to Sooraj ka Satwan Ghoda (1992), McGuffins were created for the stories out of the objects in the house.

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DS: The cinematography invites viewers to scrutinize and survey the history of the Mallet House and the surroundings of Padubidri village. It projects an environment that was once dreary and exotic, vast and imprisoning. Katu Pootha Malay also begins and ends with an aerial shot. How did you and your cinematographer, Prahlad Gopakumar, plan the visual design?

PJU: Prahlad is an architect by qualification and has shot several architecture films. He approached the house from that perspective. For every space, I narrated the stories behind it to Prahlad as he filmed, helping him conceive shots on the fly. However, things took a turn during the editing process.

K. L. Kundanthaya, a Tulu scholar and an expert in Bhootha and Naga worship traditions, once told me that the shamanic ritual performers, [when] enacting spirits and demigods, speak from neither a human nor a divine state. They speak from a middle-conscious state called “Nadu Nile,” which resonated with me like a dervish or trance-like state. So, we used aerial shots to symbolize the “Nadu Nile,” a middle state between the earth and the sky in which the house narrates.

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DS: As an editor, what was Ujjwal Utkarsh’s contribution to shaping Katu Pootha Malay?

PJU: The edit of the film was a mammoth task for Ujjwal Utkarsh, a Vienna-based visual artist who is also my classmate from NID, Ahmedabad. He had several challenges because of the language spoken in the film. The edit was done with a pilot voiceover. He arrived at a structure after making paper edits. We had a rough cut that he broke apart and put back together for a better balance between the narrative and non-narrative portions of the film. He was instrumental in the sequencing, montages and infusing humor into the film. He retold the tales in his way. At the same time, he was also ruthless in discarding segments, and a lot of disagreements happened with him about retaining certain segments. He still doesn’t agree with some of our creative choices. According to the audience feedback, the film is poetic and rhythmic in nature, which is entirely his doing. It was a herculean task for Ujjwal since he edited a film in a language he didn’t know. But he made it possible because he is a filmmaker himself.

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DS: The treatment of Katu Pootha Malay primarily depends on the voiceover to create an aural space. At the same time, we hear the humming of a devotional song, the drawing of water from a well, the rustling of coconut tree leaves and incessant rainfall, which makes the film atmospheric. What was Dhanush Nayanar’s approach to creating such a restrained and balanced sound design?

PJU: Dhanush is spot-on and resourceful. He created the soundscapes of the film wherever there was no music. He has a great technical team that gave us a theatrical-quality sound. We went through rounds of discussion on the specific sounds we wanted. A lot of cleanups were required, and like most of the crew, I was the only one who knew Tulu. His sound design took cues from the visuals for ambience and continuity.

Bindhumalini Narayanaswamy and Sridhar Varadharajan, the two music directors of the film, also played an important [role] regarding the sound design. While Bindhumalini is also responsible for the atmospheric nature of the film, she had many brilliant ideas, some of which she edited out herself because she aimed for something better. But the biggest surprise was Sridhar Varadharajan’s Koova soundtrack, which appears in the children’s summer vacation play sequence. He arranged it from the sounds of children playing.

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DS: Katu Pootha Malay is an independent film with no foreign co-production involved in its making, and had its world premiere at the Moscow International Film Festival. How was the experience?

PJU: We applied for NFDC Work in Progress labs, Busan post-production funds and IFA. We held onto our belief that we made a half-decent film and continued to apply. However, none of these applications were successful. Sometimes, it feels like a lottery system, where state organizations charge exorbitant amounts and fund only a limited number of films. Moreover, film festival submissions come with their own costs. So, I thank Unni Vijayan, Don Palathara and Dr. Nina Kochalyaeva. It is because of their efforts that the film premiered at the Moscow International Film Festival, and I consider Russia to be the cradle of cinema. Kochalyaeva introduced Katu Pootha Malay as a “gem of a film.” The audience had an awareness of cinema. One of them asked about certain symbolism, such as the significance of crows. I explained that there is a belief that ancestors return and visit as crows.

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DS: Since Katu Pootha Malay is a niche film, what are your plans to expand its reach to a wider audience?

PJU: Tinier birds seldom fly sky-high. For a film of this nature, festivals are the primary audience. We will apply for the Central Board of Film Certification and National Film Awards. In the absence of a marketing budget, these are the avenues for PR for the film and to generate interest from OTT platforms for digital exhibition. I hope it finds a theatrical release. But it’s not easy unless a distributor, a production house or a champion of the  cause of the Tulu language wants to get involved.

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DS: As a faculty member teaching filmmaking at Srishti Manipal, Bangalore, how do you balance your time between teaching and filmmaking?

PJU: I finished shooting the film two years before I joined Srishti Manipal Institute as a full-time faculty member. Without the institutional support of the Institute, Prahlad and I would have missed attending the film’s world premiere in person. For middle-class, non-mainstream filmmakers, a job — teaching or otherwise — can offer stability. As a film educator, you are also vested in the students’ work. This helps us become more objective [while articulating] about our capabilities and limitations. However, I will be able to offer a precise answer to this question only after my next film.

Dipankar Sarkar (@Dipankar_Tezpur) is a graduate in film editing from the Film and Television Institute of India and currently based in Mumbai. As a freelancer, he frequently contributes to various Indian publications on cinema-related topics.

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