NAVODAYA STUDIO
pitch deck of
CHUNDAN
This is a subject rooted in ethnic nativity. It has the potential for a global appeal.
The Snake boat - Chundan, is an icon that denotes 'God's Own Country' - Kerala on the global tourism map.
The Wood Architecture of South India has the most glorious heritage in the world (coming only second to the Japanese).
With its plethora of drums, the South Indian Rhythm Syncopation is the most complex in the world (even surpassing the African beats).
All the above combined, this subject CHUNDAN would be fascinating for audience anywhere. This is the story of a war machine purpose-designed for inland water battles. This is the story of the genius who made it.
based on novel by Jijo
A Tribute to the Material Culture and Traditions of Pamba river basin
A historical, socio-political, mathematical, gastronomical, musicological, geographical, linguitic, military-scientific and naval-architectural treatise on how the chundan boat of Keralam came to be.
CHUNDAN BLUEPRINT
k.sheker
Chundan, an inspired design of stealth and maneuverability, could turn on the proverbial dime and ram the opponent and shred it.
Iruttukuthi had
one shortcoming - poor maneuverability.
A turn was executed by having the rowers turning around in their seats.
"Chundan" is our latest film project.
It will combine the nostalgic charm of Navodaya's Vadakkan-pattu and Kalaripayattu movies with the historical fidelity of our "Stories from the Bible".
The Chundan vallam has a special place in the hearts of Malayalis.
This boat features prominently in the annual festival calendar of Kerala.
The long sleek craft can rouse many emotions in the beholder including competitive fervor during boat races and devotional ardor during temple festivals.
What is not so well-known is that once upon a time the Chundan had a more belligerent role to play in our history. It was a time when the Iruttukuthi ruled the backwaters with its lightning speed and the ability to carry out blitzkrieg raids on the paddies of Kuttanad.
The Chundan was an inspired design of stealth and maneuverability. It could turn on the proverbial dime and ram the opponent and shred it. Over the years the Chundan has of course changed in shape and form to reflect more the functions it has to fulfill today.
Kottarathil Sankunni's Aithihyamala records a tale of espionage and intrigue between the competing kingdoms of Ambalapuzha and Kayamkulam for possession of these water-borne implements of war.
The Iruttukuthi (aka Oadi), the warhorse of kings and pirates, wreaked havoc on the Kuttanad waters for centuries.
It harassed the common man, plundering his home and harvest by sheer speed and surprise.
However the Iruttukuthi had one shortcoming - poor maneuverability. A turn was executed by having the rowers turning around in their seats.
Chundan was an inspired design to counter the menace of the Iruttukuthi.
Since we are recreating the material culture of a region and a people 300 years back in time, every detail has to be extensively researched and developed before it is committed to camera.
Preliminary research into the subject has turned up numerous areas that require such detailed exploration.
These include architecture, carpentry, military science, naval architecture, metallurgy, musicology, etc.
The skill and craft of Kerala architecture that is evident in the structure of the Iruttukuthi and the Chundan are similar to the cunning artifice that defines the palace at Padmanabhapuram and Sree Padmanabha temple at Thiruvananthapuram.
We intend to tell our story with all the grandeur it deserves.
Illustrations by Namboodiri, RK and Narayana Murthy
Iruttukuthi oarsmen turn-around drill
Water-borne Implements of
War!
Chundan maneuver demonstrated to students
Art Director K.Sheker & DoP Aswini Kaul (HoD, Whistling Woods)
The Stage
Two Kingdoms
Ambalappuzha & Kayamkulam.
Their bone of contention - The paddies of Kuttanad.
Kuttanad circa 17th century
Arabian sea
The Weapons
Iruttukuthi war canoes.
Chundan, a love story
Chundan, a love story
It was Uni-chirutha’s Kalarippayattu movements that Chellappan devised as manoeuvres in his design for Chundan.
In the maneuvers of Kayamkulam fighters and oarsmen, Chellappan had recognized Unni-Chiruta's artistry in their movements. While designing the Chundan, Chellappan channeled Unni-Chiruta's sinuous maneuvering into his remarkable creation.
In fact, when the Ambalapuzha Chundan fleet delivered its coup de grâce — ramming into the enemy's flank, it was a re-enactment of how Chellappan had once seen Unni-Chirutha fell a bull at the Oachira bull festival.
She saved festival goers from a berserk bull by delivering a nishchara praharam — a stunning blow, to the head of the crazed animal felling it instantly.
The Genius Craftsman
“Ahem ... Behold!”
says Naval Commander Mathoor Panicker
“...meet Venkatan Aasari (alias Chellappan), the royal carpenter’s apprentice.
Prankish and insubordinate rascal
is full of practical jokes. He is thick as thieves with Poet Kunjan, master of sarcasm & diatribe. Together the rouges were caught whacking unniyappam (sweet bread) and payasam (sweet porridge) from the royal cuisine”.
The royal carpenter gaped!
For, .. . there is something unsettling about it.
It evokes a snake with its hood raised.
.... a horse with its forelegs frozen in mid-gallop.
There is tremendous visual tension in its lines ... as if the next moment it's going to roll over.
Behold Chundan!
Twenty-eight kols (60 feet) long and fifty angulams (palms) wide, almost twice the length of Iruttukuthi boat.
It was a long solid log of kadampu (burflower tree) wood with a jutting nose and dug-out cavities.
The stern, chiseled and reinforced by iron riveting, was as a gracefully ascending blade rising two man-heights above the waterline.
The audience snickered ...
What is this contraption ? !!
The designer, deeply hurt, yelled
"… You idiots ... this is not a boat …
It's a device … to defeat the enemy.
… If you want to have a long thing that can carry lots of combatants on water,
.... if you want a thing that is strong and won't capsize or sink, .. if you want something that turns quickly around … so that your swordsmen get a second chance to slash ...
Then … then … whatever you call it, .... this contraption is it!!
Yes, that's what my contraption is
..... A battering ram on water”
Author's Note
It is not speed that you need for combat.
What you need is ... maneuverability ... Speed is for men who flee from combat!
It was for maneuverability that the Chundan has such a solid superstructure at the stern.
A single stroke of the helmsman's long steering oar will whip the vessel around to desired position. The heavy, towering head did the trick.
It was like a man pivoting and turning on his heel.
Another important fact that merits our attention in this story is the Chundan - Iruttukuthi rivalry.
How could the sleek and fast Iruttukuthi, a celebrity those days in the theatre of backwater battles, be upstaged by a slower upstart Chundan?
The answer is simply a matter of battleground reality (errr…, a battlewater reality).
The speed of the vessel doesn’t really matter during the actual combat.
Because, almost always, when hand-to-hand fights take place, the combatants are stationary. Pushing the case for a slower Chundan, a designer in the 18th century would have had lot to argue against the faster Iruttukuthi that had been around for many centuries.
Even with 50% more oarsmen onboard, the Chundan is far slower. A criticism its designer would have had to address.
Long back (287 years to be exact) before Battle Simulations, CAD Graphics and Power Point Presentations were in vogue, poet Kunjan Nambiar used his body language and histrionic skills in Ottam Thullal - a performance art he had designed, to demonstrate in the royal presence what the contraption CHUNDAN was capable of!
An act of high treason!
Of Spies and Occult !
The priests kept chopping rhythmically at the flaming plantain tree. Soon a slaughtered chicken lying amidst the embers rose flapping wildly over them, its featherless burning wings.
OTTAAL, the Kayamkulam spy, had insinuated himself between the twelfth and the thirteenth Occultist Brahmins - who, due to their venality, came ostracized from Palakkad.
Ottaal started furiously scribbling down every heinous adharva mantra curse chanted against his own Kayamkulam king. Little did the spy realize that the entire performance was meant to divert attention from a crucial state secret ... the building of the secret weapon - CHUNDAN.
The Battle at Kandomkary
1. Along Pamba river there came a huge Kayamkulam armada spearheaded by their dreaded Iruttukuthi boats. Coming up behind was the larger group of utility boats - Veppu & Kettu-vallam. In those came Kayamkulam harvesters singing joyfully in anticipation of the plunder they were about to partake at the Kuttanadan paddies of Ambalapuzha.
Oars were striking the waters on every drum beat.
When the invaders reached Pullangadi. suddenly the lookouts noticed a small Ambalappuzha fleet at the other end of Pullangadi thodu (canal) which joined river Manimala. The singing and shouting became still boisterous as the invaders moved towards their quarry.
But, with oars held motionless, there were twelve Chundan (six on either sides), waiting, as they drifted silently in the flow of Manimala river.
3. With the maneuverability of the Chundan, Ambalapuzha fleet could block the path of the Kayamkulam boats from fleeing. Within minutes the Kayamkulam navy got routed. The sight of their spearheading Iruttukuthi fleet being smashed to pieces in the Manimala waters, stopped dead the Veppu & Kettu boats in the Pullangadi waterway. The fury of the slaughter makes the Kayamkulam harvesting boats to quickly flee back home. It was to no avail. Those slow freight carrying boats were pursued and quickly overtaken.Then the Pamba river started exploding with a different fury. Hot stoves and hearth fires boiled the waters and steam arose all around as the Kayamkulam utility boats as they got wrecked and sunk. Only bobbing Kayamkulam heads dotted the water surface of Pamba and Manimala.
2.The first among the Kayamkulam Iruttukuthi had barely exited Pullangadi canal, when they heard a thunderclap to their left. They saw in the distance the waters of Manimala erupt in hundreds of oar sprouts .... also hundreds of heron birds, startled by the sound, take flight from the reed thickets. Next, like bull elephants, six Chundan propelled by 360 oars came charging at them. Lo, then came another thunderclap and waterspouts to their right. It was the Chundan war-machines ambushing from both sides just as the Kayamkulam fleet entered Manimala river. Before they could even turn, Chundan’s pointed bows rammed and smashed the sides of many Iruttukuthi boats to splinters. Within seconds, all Chudan war-machines took quick turn-around and were back to ram again.
Chellappan's Mischief
The Spitting Bridge
An enraged upper-caste landlord was there with the palace guards to apprehend Chellappan for a sacrilegious mischief. To forestall admonishments, the rascal, invoking her motherly sentiments, had taken refuge behind the wife of his guru - the royal carpenter.
Chellappan had constructed a wooden bridge for the upper-caste landlord. It was for the lord and his clan folks to cross over from their enclave to the mainland to witness the yearly padayani festivities of the common people.
But with a lever & piston mechanism connected to the floor planks, Chellappan had also crafted a wooden figurine which spat upon the lordships whenever they crossed the bridge!
The reason for Chellappan's prank - the lordship had ridiculed him as one of the lower Asaari caste!
Actually, one only had to duck the water jet to evade the spitting. The pompous landlord like all his upper-caste brethren would neither bow nor bend. So, while all common men who were humble enough to duck escaped the spitting, the upper caste got it squarely on their faces.
The Gusty Shrine
Astrologers, to assure Kayamkulam’s future military conquests,
divine that it is necessary to construct a shrine/ temple for an
appropriate god. That god turns out to be the wind god - Vayoo.
Perumthachan scoffs at the idea of making a deity of 'the one who is invisible' – which is what the wind god is. But while the
discussion is going on, he sees Chellappan engaged in one of his 'inventive leaps’. Chellappan is visualizing wind drafts. This he does with incense smoke ... whereby demonstrating a 'chimney effect'.
Perumthachan catches on the concept to represent ‘a deity’ for the wind god Vayoo’s temple. He publicly announces this idea for the Vayoo temple and Chellappan leads the effort to build ‘flickering lamp flames’ – denoting wind. Perumthachan, a member of the asaari (carpenter) clan but having bestowed the sacred thread, receives royal praise for his genius. But Chellappan and others need undergo
'sudhikalasam' (purification ritual) for having polluted the temple while constructing it! Enraged, Chellappan turns the table on Perumthachan.
He does some fine-tuning in widening the wind drafts that flicker the lamp flames. It causes dust drafts that blow away the umbrellas and mundu (waist clothe) of the esteemed guests when they arrive for the inauguration of the shrine.
Outlined above is the character sketch of the genius who designed the Chundan,
the warfare (action) possibilities and the emotional conflicts that have gone into the scripting.
The Climax / Conclusion
Wars have been inseparable from mankind.
In the social evolution.of humanity, it is part & parcel.
The victorious ones have always commemorated their winning battles with visual depictions of the engagements.
War Films - past, present & future, are mostly that.
As per history, in story Chundan, the two opposing kingdoms - Kayamkulam & Ambalappuzha had finally resolved their conflict peacefully. This happened when the two kings realised the intensity of love between Chellppan - the carpenter of Ambalappuzha and Uni-Chirutha - the female warrior of Kayamkulam.
The bride was commended for the loyalty to her homeland and faithfulness to her man - a conflicting predicament that she handled well. The bridegroom was commended for his love for the bride and his unique presence of mind by which the design secret of chundan was not divulged in full.
(an extract from the novel)
This would be an apt lesson/ moral for today's world which has grown weary of wars.
Battle of Salamis by Andrew Howat
World Wars depictions
Galactic Wars by COLDESIGN