After 14 Years, A Stunning Malayalam Novel Is Finally A Film
"The shooting itself was like Goat Life."
When I read Goat Days a decade ago, I loved it. Back then I didn’t know the story behind it. That the protagonist sand miner trapped in an isolated goat pen in the midst of some Middle Eastern desert, tending alone to hundreds of goats that had a better life than him was actually based on a real story of modern slavery.
That in real life he was a fisherman, who like lakhs of Malayalis had cobbled together savings, sold his possessions and got on a plane to Saudi Arabia, where he was treated inhumanly, made to live on khubus dipped in water for 2 years, without a bath, without even water to wash his bottom. Najeeb’s story was real and that’s probably why it hit the reader so hard. It helped that the author, Benyamin, understood the pain of living away from home.
This week the cult book finally becomes a shiny film, Aadujeevitham (Goat Life), with Prithviraj Sukumaran, AR Rahman and Resul Pookutty. I spoke to Benyamin and Sivapriya, who edited the English version of the book for my column on it:
Though Benyamin never named the country where Najeeb’s torture unfolded, the book was banned in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Most of the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council refused to give permission for the film to be shot there too. Eventually, the crew recreated Najeeb’s West Asian sandy solitary confinement in the Wadi Rum desert in Jordan and in the depths of the Sahara Desert in Algeria. When the pandemic hit mid-shooting, a 80 member team, including lead actor Prithviraj Sukumaran, were stranded for months in Jordan. “The shooting itself was like goat life,” says Benyamin.
You can read the full column by clicking on its title: What You Don't Know About Aadujeevitham
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