This writer from Kerala never thought his short story would become an Oscar-league film. Jallikattu’s wordsmith S Hareesh tells us how it happened.
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S. Hareesh is the assistant village officer at Neendoor, a hamlet tucked away in the hills of central Kerala. He’s also the mind behind India’s latest entry to the Oscars, Jallikattu. The film is based on Hareesh’s Malayalam short story Maoist, which he adapted for the screen along with friend and writer R Jayakumar. He also recently won the JCB literary award for Moustache, the English translation of his novel Meesha.
Jallikattu refers to the traditional event of running bulls. But the film is not about the sport itself. It is about the chaos that ensues when a water buffalo escapes a butcher’s hands and the whole village tries to catch it. This main thread interwoven with snippets of the villagers’ lives reveals man’s own bestial side.
The film is set in a village very much like Hareesh’s own. There would…