An ode to The Godfather

Film critic Raja Sen captivated the students at his alma mater, Don Bosco School, Alaknanda with the launch of his book, The Best Baker in the World, says uma nair

At first glance — his twirled moustache and his curly crop of hair belies his felicity with the world of films and words. Film critic Raja Sen looks straight out of a Vishal Bhardwaj film, chuckling in his new-found glory as a children’s writer.

“I based the story on The Godfather,” says Sen, and adds, “My protagonist is a  tribute to Francis Coppola’s, Don Corleone and is called Don Cannoli in the book. He is a big grey owl, who bakes the best desserts and Michael Cannoli is a floundering crow, who is trying to get his footing in his father’s business. And the Don “bakes a cake that you cannot refuse.”

Having created the characters along with illustrator Vishal K Bharadwaj, Raja developed a fondness for his characters who have human instincts but animal attributes. “I especially like the fact that Connie’s character was a cat since the Don has a cat in the film and this way, the Don also got to pet her,” he chuckles.

But Raja does not tell the story in prose. He uses lithe limericks, plays on the beauty of rhyme and tailor-makes nuances from adult fiction to make it a part of the kingdom for kids. “As a great fan of the nonsense poet Edward Lear, I wanted to create these boundaries or lines to colour within. It’s a different format, cheeky perhaps, that I wanted to put in a different context,” he affirms.

When asked about children’s fiction of the days of old he says, “ These books sometimes seemed pretty dry and they were often very moralising and pious. But they were clearly meant to please their readers — whether with entertaining stories and appealing characters or the pleasant tone of the writing or attractive illustrations and eye-catching page layouts and bindings. I remembered all that and kept it in mind while working.”

On the need for more child fiction stories in the modern millennium Sen says, “Whenever I explore a new bookstore, I spend some time in the children’s books’ section. This is where imagination reigns supreme and one is sure to unearth something magical and unique.”

Explaining the USP of his debut and the idea of looking at an Indian backdrop for future books, Sen elaborates, “My First Matinee is a series where mature movie masterpieces are retold for children of all ages and I don’t see us tackling a Hindi film, not immediately at least. For one thing, most of the popular Indian films are immature and appear pretty much made for children anyway, so the adaptation wouldn’t pose much of a challenge. That said, I’d love to try working on a Bimal Roy or Shyam Benegal film someday... but I don’t see it happening sometime very soon.”

As a schoolboy, his English teachers remember him as a voracious reader with a love for classics both Indian and foreign. He was always the quintessential Bengali who wrote great essays, they say. Sen corroborates, “Growing up Bengali means a certain necessary grounding in the classics, which means an early and reverential exposure to the greats of world cinema, from Ray to Kurosawa to Truffaut. Cinema has always been something I have put on a pedestal and this series of books intends to pay tribute to the classics instead of desecrating them.”

When asked about his favourite children’s fiction authors Sen says, “The book that changed my life was Salman Rushdie’s Haroun And The Sea Of Stories, which I read when I was 13 and which, thrillingly enough, appeared both for children as well as for adults. It was fun and fantasy and make-believe and fabulous. But it was also actual literature, deep and satirical. That book made me aware of how a book can have various levels and mean different things to different people. Other terrific authors of fiction I’d recommend to bright young people would be Terry Pratchett, PG Wodehouse, Roald Dahl and of course, Dr Seuss.”

For the moment Sen’s book is garnering interest and intrigue.  “Children’s books are like ice cream. Everyone has their favorites — and very likely more than one! And why shouldn’t we? After all, the books we read when we’re young have the remarkable power to carry us off to faraway lands, introduce us to unforgettable characters good and bad and in the process help us discover who we are and how our world works. I think books reawaken our own fondest literary memories. There are a wide range of books — toddlers to teens, prairie girls to crown princes, to deserted islands,” says Sen. My friend Khushwant Singh once said, “These Bengalis are born with poetry on their fingertips!” Raja Sen’s book reaffirms just that.