Author Ruskin Bond on Thursday admitted that Bollywood director Vishal Bharadwaj’s reel adaptation of ‘Susanna’s Seven Husbands’ in “7 Khoon Maaf” wasn’t always to his liking.
The Priyanka Chopra-starrer released in 2011.
“We did talk about it when Vishal Bharadwaj made the ‘Blue Umbrella’. In the other story Susanna’s Seven Husbands, I actually helped with the script and that changed considerably, not always to my liking,” Bond, 82, told a packed audience at the Tata Steel Kolkata Literary Meet here.
Bhardwaj is an ardent admirer of Bond to such an extent that the “Haider” director bought a cottage beside Bond’s in Mussoorie, Uttarakhand.
“Fortunately Vishal Bharadwaj now has a cottage next to mine in Mussoorie. So when he is up in town, I throw stones on his roof and if he is not being helpful when making films (from Bond’s books) the stones get bigger,” Bond said, sending the crowd into a fit of laughter.
Besides “7 Khoon Maaf”, Bharadwaj has made a film based on Bond’s novel ‘The Blue Umbrella’.
Bharadwaj had also acquired a couple of more stories from him, including ‘Mr. Oliver’s Diary’, which revolves around a school teacher.
“There was ‘A Flight of Pigeons’ which Shyam Benegal filmed as “Junoon” and was very true to the story. So I have been lucky in a way. But sometimes a film can have too many changes. You can be disappointed at times in what finally comes on screen,” Bond continued.
Talking about his latest offering — ‘Death Under the Deodars’, where his protagonist Miss Ripley-Bean happens to be at the centre of all adventure, Bond said Bollywood superstar Salman Khan could “win an oscar” by playing Ripley-Bean on screen.
“For Ripley-Bean you have to find a seventy-year-old lady unless well known actors go into drag. You could have Salman Khan playing Miss Ripley-Bean, I don’t know. He could get an Oscar for it I’m sure,” he said.
Talking about blurring the lines between adult reading and children’s books, he said: “As a boy I went quickly into adult books. It is hard to decide what’s suitable.”
