Ajayan, on the other hand, wrote that he realised Mohan’s involvements threatened to dilute the film’s soul. “He wanted to make the film in five languages with the superstars in each industry playing the prince. In Hindi, he wanted Salman Khan for the role. This was a film about children and I could not agree with what Mohan wanted to do. He was thinking like a businessman,” he said in a video interview.
Matters got worse once they returned to India, which Ajayan realised when he attended ‘Good Knight’ Mohan’s party to celebrate Kilukkam. Mohan’s behaviour was cold and the curt ‘good night’ that the producer said to Ajayan would come to mean a lot more with each passing day. Ajayan went home that night to confess to his wife that Manikyakallu might not happen. It was also the first time that he experienced severe heart pain.
A film falling through after some initial meetings is not shocking in the fickle world of show business, but when Ajayan read about rumours that director Priyadarshan was taking over Manikyakallu, he felt betrayed. Having trusted Mohan, Ajayan had shared the original screenplay freely, which meant the producer had a script. Mohan had also pulled a move that left Ajayan vulnerable — he had bought the rights to make Manikyakallu in all other languages expect for Malayalam from Nair. “Something I curse myself about to this day,” Ajayan wrote.
Mohan concurs that he met Edlund again, this time with Priyadarshan. Priyadarshan too confirmed meeting Edlund, although he did not say if it was for Manikyakallu. When the blow landed on Ajayan finally, it came as a shock despite all the rumours. “One day, Mohan sent a boy to get some papers signed. It was to transfer my rights for the Malayalam version to him. Nowhere in that document was my name mentioned as director,” Ajayan says in this video interview. From sitting with Nair to turn the book Manikyakallu into a movie, to being given hope that he’d realise his vision, to losing all claims upon Manikyakallu was too much for the director. Just like how the ruby gets stolen from the prince in the tale, Ajayan’s Manikyakallu too had been snatched away.
“Call it megalomania but the movie business has a way of shattering you when you have to deal with failure,” said Pramod, referring to his own depression after the failure of his film Photographer (2006). “Until then, I had seen a lot of success as a writer. You feel you know best and you try to control all aspects of the movie. But when it doesn’t turn out the way it does, it breaks you.”
Director Mathukutty Xavier, who won the same National Award Ajayan won for his movie Helen (2019, remade in Hindi as the Disney+ Hotstar feature, Milli), feels a filmmaker today must have the strength to move on. “But the emotions are different when it comes to that one, special film,” he said. “It is to make that one film that most of us become a filmmaker in the first place; that’s the idea that gives people the strength to quit jobs, to take loans and to put everything on the line. As a director, you may be capable of making a movie, just for survival. But the absolute classics have been the result of a filmmaker’s lifelong obsession, that is often bigger to them than their life itself.”
Ajayan sank deeper into alcoholism, which had the unfortunate result of making other producers wary of him. No one came forward to take the risk of backing Ajayan’s dream project. At one point years later, Ajayan even considered directing a soap opera when Perunthachan’s producer returned with the best he could offer. The drones of admirers who kept asking Ajayan about his second film, didn’t amount to anything. Meanwhile, his health suffered. Doctors discovered blockages in his heart and said he had approximately five years to live.
Ajayan never got to make Manikyakallu, a dream that lasted 56 years. In Nair’s book, the prince’s best friend retrieves the ruby from enemy territory and saves the prince at the end of the fairy tale, but there was no one to rescue Ajayan. Even so, it was the impossible hope of making Manikyakallu that kept him alive for much longer than the doctors’ predictions. “The film is still playing in my head with images that continue to astonish me,” wrote Ajayan in the penultimate chapter of his biography, written three weeks before he passed away. “I can clearly see breathtaking visuals that could rival the quicksand scene of Lawrence Of Arabia. I can still hear the characters talking. I am the only audience of Manikyakallu.”