Beyond form and time

Dr Chandraprakash 'Chanakya' Dwivedi is back in form - doing what he does best - exploring and recreating the glory of India's past...
Trust Dr. Chandraprakash Dwivedi to do what others of his ilk normally wouldn't even consider material for film or television. Best remembered as the man and brain behind one of Indian television's biggest successes Chanakya, Dr Dwivedi is back to doing what he does best – exploring and re-creating the glory of India's past for contemporary thought.And what can be more contemporary than the concepts of Upanishads, which the medic-turned-filmmaker was shooting in recently for, in Varanasi? "The youth of today which is going global will identify with the Vedantic philosophy, because it speaks of concepts like dharma, arth, kaam and moksha. What can be more contemporary and universal than that?"
Approached by the creative division of the Chinmaya Mission Trust for a tele-series (though a television channel is yet to be approached for airing it) Dr. Dwivedi's first reaction was a straight out "No.' I said, 'nothing can be done on Upanishads because they aren't an epic, drama or a fairy tale.' The Upanishads have no characters, no stories and no dramatic happenings to narrate. And yet, another part of me began thinking that it would be a challenge to narrate the Upanishads in story form." And so the concepts came alive as stories from different eras of Indian history. If on the one hand, there was Raja Harishchandra whose tale speaks to us of dharma, there is the story of Satyakaam who epitomised truth itself." Then there are stories of still others like Dara Shikoh, Aurangzeb's elder brother and the heir apparent to the Mughal throne, who was murdered for his liberal ideas by his younger brother. But he finds place in the series because "he was a scholar of Upanishads, who'd come to Varanasi to study here and had translated the works in Persian." Others like modern Hindi writers like Premchand also find themselves a part of the opus.
In effect, what Dwivedi is doing is recreating only the concepts but not so much the time itself. "The Upanishads," he says rightly "are timeless. We're not looking at a period reconstruction. Only to create an impression of Indian images that will reach out to any number of people. We're beyond form and time." And yet a format to make the concepts recognisable is essential. "Yes, the format exists. There is the concept of a travelling theatre unit, which is doing these stories. And the conflict (so essential for any drama to come alive) is within the unit. The actor is transported into a period and then we cut to real time in the next shot." So, the transition from theatre to real time is a only dramatic device which may start to pall after a while. "There is a risk that the tone may become preachy at times but then as filmmakers we should be allowed to take that liberty. We're trying to recreate the scriptures; the enactment is only the vehicle."
Whether it will be picked up by television channels and become as big as Chanakya did 17 years ago, remains to be seen. But then like Dwivedi says, "I know how to make my product saleable. Television isn't the only medium. There are so many options that are available to us today. And I know there are audiences who enjoying watching these kind of works."
With inputs from Rehaan Bukhsh