ABSTRACT
Literature has been a powerful medium to critique society and also unmask time and again the functioning of state-sponsored violence. Equally, cinema is a powerful medium to display realistic issues that affect society. There have been film-makers who have used cinema as a tool of protest against injustice and to sensitize the masses. Many critics, however, view that the film adaptations of literary texts result in loss of the essence of the original work, and even the best of film-makers are unable to show on the screen different underlying layers that constitute a text. In this context, this chapter intends to critically analyse the film adaptation of Mahasweta Devi’s novel Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Maa, by Govind Nihlani, and demonstrate how the screen adaptation of the literary text depicts the enforced identity crisis of a tormented mother. Written against the backdrop of the political upheaval of Bengal, India, in 1974, Mahasweta Devi’s Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Maa is a documentation of the trauma of fragmented identity due to the power dynamics of a patriarchal society. The novel deals with the psychological trauma of a mother whose son is lying dead in the police morgue, reduced to a mere numeral. The chapter will therefore assess how far the film director has been successful to put up on screen the journey of self-discovery and identity of the mother, and whether or not the film captures the spirit of the book while portraying the trauma of political violence.
