I saw the film adaptation of T.Janakiraman's 'Moga Mull' ('Thorn of Desire') sometime back and liked it very much. I've wanted to watch this film for a long time, but couldn't find it before. After watching the film, I thought that I should read the book. The book is long at around 650+ pages and I'd tried reading it before and had given up after a few pages. So I tried again. This time I persisted and finished reading it yesterday.
'Moga Mull' is a love story. It is an older woman – younger man love story. It was written in the 1950s, and so for its time it was unusual and rebellious. It is also a story about music, devotion, teachers, friendship, and desire. It is very beautiful. The relationship between the two main characters Babu and Yamuna is very beautifully depicted. The friendship between Babu and his friend Rajam is also beautifully depicted. Loved these three characters but also loved most of the characters in the book, like Babu's dad, Babu's music teacher for whom music is a spiritual experience like meditation, Yamuna's mother who is such a beautiful person, the young woman next door who falls in love with Babu, the famous musician Ramu who befriends Babu and acknowledges his talent, the disciple of Babu's music teacher who is devoted to him, the old couple who become Babu's landlords later in the story, the woman who runs a foundation and who helps Yamuna – I loved these and many other characters. There were too many of them to describe here. There were no 100% good and 100% bad characters here. Nearly all of them were complex, flawed, beautiful human beings.
The whole story is filled with Indian classical Carnatic music and even if we are not familiar with the technical aspects of it, the book immerses us in it and we experience the highs that we feel in a concert. T.Janakiraman's deep knowledge of classical music shines throughout the book.
Now, the important question. Which was better, the book or the movie? What were the differences between them? I saw the movie first and I loved it, but I think the book was better. There is more space in the book to explore the relationships between different characters, to feature long conversations, to have long descriptions and philosophical musings. But having said that, the movie was wonderful and it was very well made. There were many minor and some major changes in the screenplay, but in general, the movie was faithful to the book. The movie ends with an important, dramatic scene, but in the book there are 70 more pages and much happens in those pages. Babu's friend Rajam is a minor character in the movie, but in the book he plays an important role. Also the musician Ramu plays a very minor role in the movie, and he is not really a nice guy, but in the book he is fascinating and complex. But I'm not a purist and these are all minor quibbles. The movie is wonderful and it is a great adaptation of the book. From what I know, the movie wasn't released in the theatres when it first came out, and it was screened probably only at film festivals and it won many awards.
I loved reading 'Moga Mull' and watching the film adaptation. It is one of the great classics of 20th century Tamil literature, and I'm glad I finally got to read it. I'm happy that I didn't read it when I was younger and I'm glad I read it now, because my reading taste is more evolved now and I could understand and appreciate it better now.
Have you read 'Moga Mull' or watched its film adaptation? What do you think about them?