*Spoiler alert*
Neelavelicham or The Blue Radiance, Vaikom Muhammed Basheer’s short story which inspired his script for the 1964 horror classic film Bhargavi Nilayam, is only 12 pages long. Yet it got widely read, loved and passed on through generations, coming as it did from Basheer, a most beloved writer in Malayalam. For one, it gave rise to the iconic film, a first of its kind in Malayalam, mixing horror with a love story and presenting it so sensitively. For another, it represents everything that Basheer is loved for. He presents himself in the first person narrative in Neelavelicham, while in the film, we see a reflection of the writer. The language is also typically Basheer’s, with its adorable endearments and timeless humour. Nearly 60 years later, when the story is once again being made into film, and this time with its original name Neelavelicham, let’s revisit the pages Basheer wrote (almost like the writer revisiting Bhargavi’s tale in the film).
Basheer begins Neelavelicham by citing an albhutha sambhavam — an astonishing event, which he makes sound like really happened in his life. He invites the reader to try and explain it with logic, because he had tried and failed. No, you don’t actually see or hear a ghost in this short story. Bhargavi, the woman of the house that the narrator moves into is said to have died years ago. But everything in the air makes you fear she will appear any moment, behind the writer as he writes. The short story is innocent of her physical presence, although it ends with Basheer’s ‘albhutha sambhavam’.
The movie script is not so. Neelavelicham only forms an outline of Bhargavi Nilayam. In the short story, you learn about Bhargavi through what the writer hears of her. She will slam the doors of the house, open the taps, and strangle the people who stay there, the writer is told. The writer thinks, “Oh great, I have already paid the rent for two months in advance.” But he tells everyone who asks him to move, Bhargavi won’t hurt me.
Half of his fears fade when he hears the ghost in the house is that of a woman. More so when he hears she was a 21 year old graduate who died by suicide when her lover married another. From then on, he keeps talking to Bhargavi when he goes home, giving her the pet name Bhargavi Kutty. In all good humour, he tells her, “We don’t know each other but in my opinion, I am a very nice man.” He tells her to read his books, listen to his gramophone records, and use the cycle in the front yard whenever she feels like it, only, he warns her not to take it outside the house.
We see a friendship grow, with the writer greeting her warmly every time, carrying on with his conversations even as he gets no reply. Rid of his early fears, he begins inviting friends over, but still has a word with Bhargavi: “Please don’t strangle any of them, the police will blame me!” When he leaves the house he tells her, “Please take care of the house. If any burglars show up, you can kill them, just don’t leave their bodies here, but take it a few miles away.”
In this way, Basheer makes you laugh even as you are scared stiff of the horrors of the house. The writer gets so friendly with his unseen ghost that he once chides her for choosing to die for the love of one man who hurt her, when there would have been others to love her so much if she had lived. You wonder if the writer means himself, he seems so much in love with her, the way he calls her Princess. Of course, Basheer is known for his lovey-dovey endearments.
It is magical, the way a relationship can touch you so much even when there is only one person present. After a while you almost wish she showed her presence in some way. And you get rewarded in a small way, just as the writer begins to forget her existence.
But only Neelavelicham ends there. Bhargavi Nilayam has a lot more to tell you. The writer remains the writer, only getting called ‘Sahithyakaran’ throughout the script. No names. He talks to Bhargavi Kutty like in the story. But in the script, Bhargavi does not remain silent. This does not scare the writer away. He decides, instead, to write her story.
Song from Bhargavi Nilayam
Basheer’s script makes this a two way communication. Without words, Bhargavi enacts her story out for the writer to pick up the pieces and fill in the rest. She burns the pages in which he gets it wrong. The writer appears to get all the clues, and takes no offence at her actions. She keeps ragging a man the writer rescues and hires to help him in the house, by hitting him from behind with the bicycle and dancing on his stomach when he is asleep. Some of these instances are actually funny, when you hear the man speak of them as childish pranks of the Kochamma (mistress of the house). He has no idea Bhargavi is a ghost, but assumes she is the writer’s wife. The writer’s response to all this is, do you have to trouble this poor man, Bhargavi Kutty? When she burns all of the writer’s black shirts, he realises, “oh, you only like white.”
Colour is a prominent element in Basheer’s script. Every time the writer, Bhargavi, or her lover from the past appears, the script describes the colour of their clothes as pure white. In contrast, the antagonist is said to be wearing a black shirt in every scene. His green eyes are also particularly highlighted every time. One can argue that since this was a time of black and white cinema, Basheer might have knowingly played with the two colours to add quality to his characters. It is unfortunate that they fell into the problematic stereotype of linking black to bad and white to good.
Around halfway through the script, the writer reads out the story he has written about Bhargavi. The scenes afterward take you to her past, when she was very much alive, young, and in love. She is a dancer, we have been told many times. She has her friends to laugh with. And next door, a man who writes and composes songs for dances, Sasikumar, has moved in.
In the script she is only 19, the songwriter 25. Reminding you of another of Basheer’s stories, Mathilukal, love blossoms between the two young people over a fence. You melt in the way Basheer famously pens romance:
“Did you throw away the flower I gave you?” asks the man.
“What if I did?” replies the woman.
“Nothing, it was my heart,” says the man.
It just does not seem cheesy. Somehow the exchanges of love, despite its staginess, sound fun when Basheer’s characters speak it. And it aches your heart to see Bhargavi’s casual quirks and quips, joking with her domestic worker Pappu who happens to be a playwright, and with her girlfriends, not knowing her days are numbered.
Villainy in the script is nothing much to write about. It is too typical of the stories written back then, a jealous cousin who is in love with Bhargavi will stop at nothing to make her his own. What makes Bhargavi Nilayam stand apart is the way the ghost is portrayed, naughty and friendly and wanting to tell her story to the world. And the way the new inhabitant of her house develops a camaraderie with her. Not that it isn’t scary. But it is also adorable, in a way only Basheer can make it.
