In conversation with John Paul
Let me introduce John Paul to you. He is a writer and a freelance journalist, he started his career as a bank officer at Canara bank. He has written scripts for almost 100 movies. Some of the them have won state, national and international awards. Currently, he teaches students belonging to media and cinema, he also hosts a show in Safari TV and takes up assignments which ignites his curiosity. He says, there is no retirement for those who take up media as a career.
Today, we the students of SH School of Communication got the opportunity to interact with him. He began with the story of Satyajit Ray, one of the greatest film maker of the 20th century. Once Satyajit Ray was asked, “Why Cinema?” His reply, “I would want to reach to maximum people through my stories and cinema is the best medium”
John Paul went on to explain the importance of inborn curiosity to imitate the experiences you had in your life, be it a story, movie, painting or a sculpture and the ability of lyrical exaggeration which comes from your soul.
He quickly moved onto Basheer who once said, the stories are mostly half truth and half lie and about a conversation with Plato and Aristotle, where Plato said, “All those who write about future are liars, they haven’t seen tomorrow” and how Aristotle responded by saying, “It may be a lie, however it’s beautiful.”
The crux of his talk was the importance of how an artist should create from within, he termed it as “ഭാവം” , he cited examples of Oru Vadakkan Veergatha , Vaishali and how magic is created by Shakespeare, Keats and others with the same number of alphabets we use in English language.
He advised us to keep our senses open 24 hours, 365 days an year citing the example of how O N V Kurup couldn’t sleep a night because of heavy rains, wind and a bird chirping all night near his door. The experience however gave birth to one of the best evergreen songs in Malayalam.
He concluded the session by giving us the best piece of advice. “Learning is a continuous process until you die”.
