It was painful for me to watch this film, says Gyan Prakash

Author Gyan Prakash who has researched extensively on the Nanavati case, tells

Subhash K. Jha

how Rustom deviates from facts Author Gyan Prakash, who is a visiting professor at Princeton University, has researched rigorously on the historic K.M. Nanavati Case for his episodic novel Mumbai Fables. That novel also formed the basis of Anurag Kashyap’s Bombay Velvet. The author, however, isn’t impressed with Rustom, which is centred around the Nanavati case. In a freewheeling chat, he delves into the departure that Rustom is from the real case.

What did you think of the way the case has been presented in Rustom I understand that Rustom is not a dramatisation of the Nanavati case but merely ‘inspired’ by it. But it takes a story that is dramatic enough and sees the need to embellish it with jingoism and a silly plot of conspiracy. It is fine to take creative liberties; one doesn’t expect it to be a documentary. But the ‘creative liberty’ in Rustom is to take the patriotism angle and blow it up. What is creative about that

How do you think Nanavati’s wife was portrayed The film’s explanation of her adultery shows timidity. Rather than dealing with the real sparks between her and the lover Vikram, it exonerates her. She slipped momentarily and then returned to her wifely duty. The film’s interpretation of her infidelity is reminiscent of the timidity showcased in Yeh Raaste Hain Pyaar Ke and other 1960s films on the Nanavati case. Fifty years later, Bollywood still can’t deal with female sexuality outside marriage. Thus, Vikram had to be a villain, not an attractive Lothario that she might have actually found exciting.

So what really happened The real story is more complex. Nanavati’s wife Sylvia wrote love letters to Ahuja. The film flinches from dealing with real female desire and takes the easy route of showing a momentary lapse of judgment. To take the real Nanavati case as your reference, but only focusing on its public staging and not exploring the emotional and journalistic complexity, is neither being true to the story nor being creatively fictional. The film also misses the opportunity of showing how the jury system ended — how the judge found the jury’s decision perverse and referred it to the High Court. As someone who researched and wrote on this in Mumbai Fables, it was painful for me to watch this film.

What did you think of Akshay Kumar as Nanavati Akshay Kumar shows no spectrum of emotion — he has just one emotion throughout the film. It is just too much to believe that being an upright Naval officer is all there is to him.