Guide: The Book, The Movie, and Then the Other Movie

When I first saw the movie Guide, I was enthralled by the arc of Raju: his catharsis, his almost Valmiki-like transformation from a rogue into a sage. It made me wonder why this hadn't been adapted into an Oscar-winning Hollywood movie.

Well, some people did try. Let's just say that some designs look good on a blueprint but, in their brick-and-stone avatar, leave a lot to be desired.

The seed for both movies was R. K. Narayan's novel The Guide, set in his fictional town of Malgudi. For any kid of the nineties, Malgudi is the home of Swami and his friends, thanks to Malgudi Days on Doordarshan. It's a childlike world of stories with a quiet marma, a hidden core, delivered with a very soft punch, in a town best described as "innocent."

So it came as a big surprise that the story of this town's tour guide is full of mature themes: infidelity, moral corruption, and borderline religious fraud.

The book follows the arc of Raju, who starts out minding his father's shop at Malgudi station. The novel moves between two timelines, Raju's present and his past, but the story underneath runs in a straight line. It's almost a birth-to-death biography of Raju.

Since I read the book after watching the movie, I heard every word Raju spoke in the wavy, boisterous voice of the great Dev Saab. In my mind, Raju is Dev and Dev is Raju, much as, in Jewel Thief, Amar is Vinay and Vinay is Amar. (No relation, I promise, despite the name.)

We begin with Raju under his father's tutelage and watch him grow from a sweet-talking shopkeeper into "Railway Raju," the guide every tourist asks for. Raju is the quintessential Indian and, dare I say, the quintessential Punekar: he passes off fiction made up on the fly as deep, insightful fact. The Indian guide isn't satisfied with plain facts, like Shaniwar Wada was once the residence of the Peshwas of Pune. He has to embellish. On every full-moon night, at the third hour after midnight, you can still hear the cry "Kaka, mala vachva!" ("Uncle, save me!") as young Narayanrao Peshwa is assassinated all over again. And of course it all ties back to the Marathi proverb "Dha cha Ma karu naka," which, fittingly, warns against twisting words. Artistic license or misconstruction? The jury is still out.

Raju the guide is a sweet-talking mercenary after his clients' money, and his motto is "Sabse bada rupaiya": money above all. Then this free spirit gets entangled with a married woman. Enchanted by Rosie's beauty, Raju pursues her and becomes the reason her marriage to Marco falls apart. When Marco walks out on her, Raju takes Rosie in and begins living with her, which today we would call a "live-in relationship." It would still raise eyebrows today. Imagine the disapproval it must have drawn in 1958, when the book came out.

Divergence from the Book

It makes sense, then, that when the Anands adapted the story into a Hindi film (Dev Anand producing, his brother Vijay "Goldie" Anand directing), Raju had to be whitewashed to suit their leading man. The film's Raju sheds his materialism and becomes kind-hearted, mellow and generous. He is the saviour, and Rosie needs saving from her cold-hearted, ever-suspicious, abusive and treacherous husband. The film even makes Marco the womanizer, who seeks out other women while neglecting his wife. In the book, the infidelity was Rosie's; on screen, it is moved onto Marco.

The Marco of the book, by contrast, is an academic with liberal values who dared to marry a woman from a family of temple dancers. He is no philanderer. His failing is indifference, not cruelty. He is absorbed in his work, the higher purpose of uncovering the region's archaeological history, and family matters, Rosie's love for dance included, bore him and weigh him down. But he is not abusive, and at times he even comes across as considerate. In other words, the Marco on the page is more human than the Marco who glowers on the silver screen.

The Guide is the story of the "Discovery of Raju," so you might think that whitewashing his grey shades does a disservice to his journey. The genius of the film is that it adds colours to the palette instead of taking them away.

To make Raju the saviour, the film needs Rosie to be truly wronged, so it gives her a fuller arc of her own. In the book, the Raju–Rosie relationship defies both moral and social norms. In the film, the battle lines shift: society's orthodoxy on one side, Raju's moral generosity on the other. And the film asks a question that was bold for 1965: shouldn't a woman abandoned by her husband get a second chance?

Take Gaffoor, the taxi driver. The Gaffoor of the book tells a few cautionary tales to warn Raju off, but he's happy to slide into the background once he's been paid. The Gaffoor of the film is a friend who misses and longs for his pal. In ways like this, the film becomes the journey of several characters, not just its lead.

In the book, Raju's relationship with Nalini (the stage name of the successful dancer Rosie becomes) never finds any reconciliation. Built on lust, laced with opportunism, and marked by a constant tug-of-war over who holds the reins, it seems doomed from the start. R. K. Narayan's Raju is always drifting from the shore. His greed and self-obsession are the rip current, and however hard he paddles, every stroke takes him further out. His destiny is to break every bond and end up completely adrift. We never learn what becomes of the other characters, because we are invested only in Raju's journey.

In the film, Raju, his mother, Nalini and his friends all stay intertwined, because this Raju isn't morally decadent. In both versions the break ends with a forged signature and a jail term, but the film's Raju forges out of jealousy and insecurity rather than greed. The rift grows from misunderstandings and old ideas about male pride: Abhimaan, if you will, the woman earning more than the man, a theme Hrishikesh Mukherjee would build a whole film around in 1973. Their love doesn't rest on dependency, so when the break comes, Nalini is just as distraught and reflective as he is.

Fresh out of jail, Raju drifts into a remote village, and here the plots of the book and the film converge. He settles by a ruined temple on the riverbank, and a villager named Velan mistakes him for a holy man. Raju doesn't correct him. With a mix of common sense, borrowed scripture and his old sweet talk, he settles the villagers' disputes, and it takes remarkably little effort for him to be raised to the status of a godman. Isn't that India all over? We are a land forever searching for our next godman: a saviour, a sadhu, someone we can hand the burden of responsibility to. Raju relishes the role. It brings him respect and, better still, free meals.

Then comes a twist of dark comedy that could outshine any modern web series. In the book, an offhand remark from Raju, that he will not eat until the quarrelling villagers behave, passes from mouth to mouth and comes out the other end as a vow: the Swami will fast for twelve days to bring rain and end the drought. Dha cha Ma, all over again. The tall-tale teller is trapped inside a tall tale.

Here the plots split once more. The Raju of the book is comically cornered into the fast, and perhaps it is only the hunger going to his head that makes him take it seriously. The Raju of the film embraces the fast and begins to face his inner demons. As the news spreads, Raju becomes the Swami on a water mission. The film embraces the dark comedy too: the fast turns into a fair, with stalls, crowds, officials and even an American television crew, in an almost Peepli Live way. But underneath it all runs a grimmer current.

As the fast wears him down, the film does something the book never attempts: it puts Raju's inner self on screen, as a second Raju who sits beside him and talks back. The man who once admired his own reflection now has to answer to it. Their conversation draws on the Gita, where the body is only a garment the soul wears and discards. As the inner self puts it:

Maut ek khayal hai, jaise zindagi ek khayal hai! Na sukh hai, na dukh hai, na deen hai, na duniya, na insaan, na bhagwan... sirf main hoon, main hoon, main hoon, sirf...

Death is only an idea, just as life is only an idea! There is no joy, no sorrow, no faith, no world, no man, no God... only I am, I am, I am, only...

Notice the irony. All his life, Raju's main, his ego, was the rip current pulling him away from everyone he loved. In these final days, that same main is stripped of everything else (joy and sorrow, the world, even God) until only the self of the Upanishads remains. The word that drowned him is the word that sets him free.

And it isn't just the dialogue. The film turns to its visuals to dig ever deeper, and one scene in this sequence is philosophical gold.

Nalini sees Swami Raju's photograph in the newspapers and sets out to find him. Her car can take her only so far into the barren landscape, and she has to walk the rest of the way. She sets out as the star dancer, in full pomp and glamour, laden with glittering jewels. But under the scorching sun, in the unbearable heat, the gems become a burden. Longing to reach "her" Raju, Nalini takes them off one by one, at times carelessly, letting them fall to the dust behind her. In a land dying of drought, water is the real gold, and the metal is worthless. Gold and diamonds are what they always were: metal and stone, part of the earth they fall back into.

The scene matters even more because Raju and Nalini's rift began with jewellery: the forged signature, the very pieces he went to jail for. Now she lets them fall without a backward glance. And as Raju sheds his ego on the riverbed, Nalini sheds her gold on the road. Two people stripping themselves bare as they walk toward each other. Not a word is spoken; the jewels do all the talking.

In more ways than one, the last fifteen minutes of the movie add meaning and depth to the entire three-hour story. Raju's inner self finds peace, Nalini and his mother reach his side, and as he slips away the rain finally comes. The book, true to Narayan, leaves us at the edge, unsure whether the rain is real or only in Raju's fading mind. The film answers with a downpour. Those final minutes put everything in context and tie it all together, turning a simple story into a profound meditation on life and the soul.

In a sense, the film becomes a fable, like the Panchatantra: seemingly simple stories with profound conclusions. Remember the marma of Malgudi, that quiet core beneath its soft stories? In the end, the Hindi film finds the marma of The Guide.

And Then, the Other Movie

Oh yes, the English version of the film. It was shot alongside the Hindi film, with the same leads, Dev Anand and Waheeda Rehman, but it was directed by Tad Danielewski from a screenplay by Pearl S. Buck. Same actors, same story, a very different film. And everything we've just discussed about the final minutes of the Hindi film is absent from it.

There is no long walk and no shedding of jewels: Nalini arrives at the final scene in a jeep whose bumper almost touches Raju's feet. In an interview, Waheeda Rehman recalled turning down a request from the director, who wanted a shot of her kissing a cobra on the head during a dance sequence. The makers seemed to be chasing an "exotic" India, bending the story to suit their audience's tastes and pandering to its notions. They lacked the courage to serve an authentic dish. The blueprint was the same; the building simply didn't stand.

Perhaps a revived Guide would fare better today, when an Indian song can win an Oscar and local stories find audiences worldwide. Then again, can we really top an already well-made classic?

The Breakdown