Vetrimaaran and Suriya's 'Vaadivaasal' sets a new benchmark

With director Vetrimaaran paying novelist Chellappa’s son and his publisher a handsome sum for the film rights to his famous book, we might finally see a more fair auteur-author relationship

Strange are the twists of literary fortune. When veteran Tamil writer Ci. Su. Chellappa (1912–1998) published Vaadivaasal, a novella centred on jallikattu in 1959, he priced it at one rupee and even gave it free to subscribers of his newly-launched avant garde literary journal, Ezhuthu. It was only decades later, when India Today (Tamil) published it in abridged form in its annual literary number, with K.M. Adhimoolam’s sketches, that it evoked new interest. In 2003, it was published under Kalachuvadu Pathippagam’s imprint with Chellappa’s brilliantly shot jallikattu scene on its cover. . It is now in its 26th impression — the jallikattu agitation in January 2017 giving it a big fillip — and has sold over 50,000 copies, remarkable by Tamil book-publishing standards. In 2013, Oxford University Press published it in translation (Arena, trans. N. Kalyan Raman). Now, award-winning filmmaker Vetrimaaran has entered into an agreement with C. Subramanian, the author’s son, and Kalachuvadu for a reported seven-figure sum for a film based on Vaadivasal starring Suriya.