Goal of making a film is to boost the educational system. Agree or disagree.

Through which, Homer living, begged his bread. These lines, indicating the harsh treatment the world reserves for men of genius and its celebration later of their triumph, could well have been written for mathematician Srinivasa

Ramanujan

t

oo.

in the direction of

to

Kumbakonam

, where he studied, claims him as her son. Residents of Triplicane take pride in the fact that

Ramanujan

resided there. Yet

Ramanujan

’s

life

, whether in

Kumbakonam

or Madras, was fraught with difficulties. Poverty (while a student in Pachaiappa’s college, he could not afford to buy a cap that cost less than 50 p

aise)

give pleasure to or be pleasing to

please

, dejection (he ran away from home in 1905), lack of proper guidance, and i

nability

Suggestion

the inability

of others to comprehend the magnitude of his genius - any

one

of these could have totally smothered

Ramanujan

’s brilliance. In the

book

on

Ramanujan

by Dr. S.R. Ranganathan, father of library science in India, N. Raghunathan,

Ramanujan

’s classmate in school and later a professor of mathematics, said that none of the “mathematical higher ups in India correctly gauged the extent and nature of

Ramanujan

’s capacity.” Would it be possible to make a commercially successful

film

on

Ramanujan

? S

rivatsan

Nadathur, Sharanyan Nadathur, Sindhu

Rajasekaran

and Sushanth Desai, founders of Camphor Cinema, think so, and their

first

production is a

film

on

Ramanujan

. Director Gnana

Rajasekaran

, whom they approached, had three scripts ready, but the

one

on

Ramanujan

was their unanimous choice. The

film

is being shot simultaneously in Tamil and English. Sindhu and Roxanne Derouen from the U.K. a

re

Suggestion

Are

assisting

Rajasekaran

with the English script. The

house

in which

Ramanujan

lived in

Kumbakonam

has been bought by SASTRA University and is being preserved as a museum. The crew is just back from a shoot in

Kumbakonam

when I meet them, and they’ve had many interesting experiences. “Visiting the

house

where

Ramanujan

lived has become a sort of pilgrimage for students,” says Sindhu. “SASTRA University has installed a bust of

Ramanujan

in the

house

, and we had to cover

this

during the shoot. A student disappointed at finding it covered, took the blessings of the actor playing the role of

Ramanujan

!” s

he

Suggestion

She

elaborates. S

rivatsan

says that he was moved b

y

Suggestion

with

the help they received from the residents of

Kumbakonam

. “A postman said, ‘I will not accept payment. I am proud to belong to the same town as

Ramanujan

’.” Director

Rajasekaran

has to his credit two popular biopics,

one

on Bharatiar and the other on Periyar. There are a lot of dramatic elements in the lives of Bharatiar and Periyar, but the world of pure mathematics is far removed from most people. Romancing numbers Can mathematics be the point of orientation of a

film

? It is always lonely at the top, and

Ramanujan

was at the top of the heap. So how does

one

make a successful

film

on

one

who was romancing numbers? “It is certainly not easy. But it is not impossible,” says

Rajasekaran

. Why

Ramanujan

? “I want people to think about how we as a society view a genius in our midst.” Is his

film

based on any particular

book

? “No, but of all the books on

Ramanujan

that I read, I found Ragami’s

book

the most interesting. It has

life

, and it’s only

such

books that can help a script writer conceive a

film

. And

Ramanujan

’s wife, Janaki Ammal, had observed that Ragami’s

book

painted a vivid picture of

life

in

Ramanujan

’s family.” Details about Janaki’s

life

i

n

Suggestion

of

Ramanujan

’s family are sketchy. So will there be romantic moments in the

film

? “Actually, the lack of information appealed to my creativity, and I enjoyed imagining conversations between

Ramanujan

and Janaki. These were among the most challenging portions of the script.” A

bhinay,

the grandson of Gemini Ganesan and Savitri, is the hero of the

film

. “I chose Abhinay, because his eyes have the piercing look that

Ramanujan

’s eyes are supposed to have had,” points out

Rajasekaran

. A

bhinay

who is being tutored to speak Iyengar Tamil, says, “The director suggested that I should not read any

book

on

Ramanujan

, but just gave me some notes and gave me the freedom to fix the character.” P. Krishnamurthy, who has won four National Awards, is the Art director. He says, “I had to modify the setting in

Ramanujan

’s

house

in

Kumbakonam

, because it is no longer a living

house

. Every small detail mattered, even the m

arapaachi

b

ommais,

which every Brahmin

house

had in those days.” While a genius like

Ramanujan

may appear once in a century, or perhaps not even that, what would happen to a modern day

Ramanujan

?

Ramanujan

was refused a scholarship in the

Kumbakonam

college, because he failed in English composition, and things have not changed today. We still have a system that would try to fit a genius into a p

rocrustean

of or relating to the mythical giant Procrustes or the mode of torture practiced by him

Procrustean

bed of conformity. In his

book

, ‘The Conquest of Happiness’, Bertrand Russell writes, “There is a comfortable doctrine that genius will always make its way… It is like the theory that murder will out. Obviously, all the murders we know of have been discovered, but who knows how many there may be which have never been heard of? In like manner, all the men of genius that we have heard of have triumphed over adverse circumstances, but

that is

no reason for supposing that there were not innumerable others, who succumbed in youth.”

Ramanujan

became internationally renowned, albeit after many reverses, but who knows how many will, if we continue to provide the most discouraging education system? If after seeing

this

film

, people begin to think about the changes needed in our education system,

then

Rajasekaran

may be said to have achieved his goal in making

this

film

.