‘The Shadow Lines’ optioned by Anupam Barvé

Anupam Barvé wrote to me through my website on May 19th this year.

Hello Amitav,

Warm Regards

Anupam Barvé

This was my response:

Dear Anupam

Thank you for this wonderful letter! I am really glad to hear of your long-standing interest in the Shadow Lines: it is evident that the book means a lot to you (which is very heartwarming for me).

‘The Hungry Tide’ has been optioned by two Delhi based producers, Shernaz Italia and Freny Khodaiji. They now have an excellent screenplay for it too. ”The Calcutta Chromosome’ has also been optioned – by the Italian production company that made ‘Gomorrah’.

‘The Shadow Lines’ however is not under option, and I would be glad to talk to you about it. But I should warn you straight away that my film rights are dealt with by my literary agent in New York (I feel I should tell you this, because I’ve noticed that some Indian film-makers are averse to dealing with agents and the like).

If you would like to take this further I would be glad to meet with you in London. They are going to keep me quite busy while I am there, but I could see you on Sunday, June 5 in the late afternoon. Or else before the Asia Soc event on June 8 – they have asked me to be there for an early soundcheck so I’ll have a little time before the start.

With my best wishes

Amitav

Shortly after this exchange, I went to London for the release of River of Smoke. I met with Anupam during my stay and was enormously impressed by his enthusiasm his encyclopaedic knowledge of film-making. I am glad to announce that we recently signed a contract giving him an option on The Shadow Lines.

Last week Anupam sent me a short bio and a synopsis of 44, Lymington Road, the script he wrote with Vaibhav Abnave. They are posted below.

Anupam Barve is a film maker from Pune, India currently based in London. After a brief detour to science college, he opted to complete a graduation in Performing Arts(Dramatics). Before moving to London to pursue a career in Film Direction, he also spent a few years doing drama, making documentaries and running an environmental organisation. He is currently teaching on the University of Westminster’s MA in Directing: Film and TV course in London. His most recent Short Film- ‘Fresh Suicide’ has been very successful at various festivals and competitions all over, including a nomination for the ‘Golden Palm Tree Award’ at the 42nd International Film Festival of India and a special screening at the 13th London Asian Film Festival 2011, amongst others. Anupam is currently in development of future film projects.

Film Synopsis

44, Lymington Road

“….a place doesn’t merely exist… it has to be invented in one’s imagination…”

Ghosh, A. The Shadow Lines (p.21).

?

Migration implies one’s encounter with the alien, the unknown, the unseen.

Yet when one migrates from a past colony to a current metropolis, a land that promises

opportunities, one is already filled with the anticipation and intense desire of what one

is going to encounter. A lot of the so-called unseen and unknown has already been

constructed essentially within one’s imagination. The actual physical encounter with

the unseen merely completes the act of seeing/knowing something or some place,

thus, becoming an encounter with one’s inner self. Migration, ironically thus, instead

of uprooting the postcolonial subject from the homeland, fulfills its desire of actually

encountering one’s invented and intensely desired inner landscapes. It is this inventive

imagination of us humans which makes even the alien an integral, indivisible past of

one’s self.

44, Lymington Road, a short film, tells the story of how one invents any place in

his imagination without ever visiting it. The protagonist, a young filmmaker from Pune

(India) is an avid fan of Amitav Ghosh’s writing and has passionately read The Shadow

Lines over and over again. 44, Lymington Road in West Hampstead, London is not just a

place that merely exists, it’s a mystery, a myth and an invented reality which also exists

in the imagination of the anonymous protagonist in the novel, who has already ‘seen’

this place through his uncle, Tridib’s, eyes, who has stayed in this place as a child and

has absorbed the minutest of its details. Through Tridib’s passionate recounting of 44,

Lymington Road and the other places around it- Mill Lane, Sumatra Road, West End

Lane etc., the protagonist in the novel as well as the readers, have invented each and

every corner of these places in their imagination

Our protagonist has now gotten an opportunity to come to London and pursue further

education in film making. He is haunted by the idea of searching for the actual place

in present day London. In his imagination he has already visited the place twice before

through the book, firstly through Tridib and secondly when the protagonist of the novel

visits it as a young man coming to London for education himself. One day he sets out to

actually look for the place, carrying a small digital film camera with him. As he steps out

of West Hampstead station, he notices a stranger, an English woman in her mid thirties

sitting in a roadside café by herself. The woman strongly reminds our protagonist of

May, Tridib’s love and one of the enigmatic female leads from The Shadow Lines. He

goes and tries to start a conversation with her. As their dialogue unfolds, she is intrigued

by the myth of 44, Lymington Road and they decide to step out of the café. As she starts

guiding him through all the places in the neighborhood that he refers from the novel, she

is astonished by how much the young man already knows without ever having been there.

The film juxtaposes their walk through the West Hampstead neighborhood of

today with the images of the same locality in two different visual textures from two

different time periods from the book, as imagined by our protagonist. The present,

the memory, the imagination and the intense anticipation of the actual encounter

all seamlessly gets interwoven in to each other in the narrative of the film. As the

narrative progresses we experience our protagonist’s excitement about shooting his

actual encounter with the place of his imagination but when they actually hit the place

the protagonist goes quiet. He decides to switch off his camera before entering 44,

Lymington Road. He wants to preserve the mystery of the place, which he believes each

reader of The Shadow Lines has to invent for himself. To each his own 44, Lymington

Road.