Geeking a li’l on Agatha Christie!

The one time Irsquove felt terrible about an Agatha Christie novel is when I actually didnrsquot read it Having picked up a copy from college library I was walking towards my room when a sadistic moron passing me by read the title on the cover said ldquoOh the narrator is the murdererrdquo DamnSo I sent that book right back to the library Which isnrsquot saying much given that Christie 18901976 wrote frickinrsquo 66 murder mysteries besides 14 short storiesrsquo collections at a pace that presumably involved a book between breakfast and bedShe of course dominated bookshelves much after she diedmdashoutsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare apparently And among Englishspeaking Indian kids of the 1980s and rsquo90s in particular rivalled at best by Enid Blyton and the syndicate that wrote Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew seriesThe desi phenomenon had a lot to do with an Indian bookstore chain founded in Allahabad in the late 1800s called AH WheelerStationed in every Indian railway platform it singularly encouraged kids to pick up a book with just the size and depth to last a longdistance train rideIdeally a Christie to go and another for the way back So what if it concerned crimes in posh polite societies quite far away from where the train was chugging throughCloser home with Hindi the older lot probably picked up racier novels by the likes of Surendra Mohan Pathak with snazzy titles in cheap paperback The influences of which we continue to observe in popular entertainment stillFor what are the latest films and series like Haseen Dilruba and Yeh Kaali Kaali Aankhein if not an ode to the AH Wheeler paisavasool pulp Not that Christie has been left aloneThe film Gumnaam 1965 was a thriller loosely based on which Christie novel that in a worldwide poll on the authorrsquos 125th anniversary in 2015 got rated her best ever And Then There Were NoneOnly if you watch the stale chewing gummdashGumnaam as I just did on Amazon Prime Video all you ever hope for is a lsquoSkip Songrsquo button to get to the bloody end Not that the rest of it makes much senseTo be fair to composers ShankarJaikishen they ended up delivering a relatively obscure song in Gumnaam lsquoJaan pehchan lorsquo Irsquove come across at least two firangis in my life who claimed itrsquos the only desi track theyrsquod ever heard lsquoJaan pehchan lorsquo developed a life of its own in the West appearing first in an LA TV station in the rsquo90sFeaturing thereafter in opening credits of the Scarlett Johansson black comedy Ghost World 2001 a Heineken commercial a video game Far Cry 4 an Australian coverhellip Either way Gumnaan was no Agatha ChristieIrsquoll tell you what is In the most heartwarming moment for desi Christie fans Bollywood actor Ali Fazal showing up as Uncle Edward personal lawyer of Linnet Gal Gadot while the egghead Belgian supersleuth Hercule Poirot Kenneth Branagh investigates in Branaghrsquos own directorial Death On The Nile 2022 playing at a theatre near youHow Ali best known as Guddu Bhaiya from Mirzapur qualifies as the pucca British uppercrust stiff upperlipped Edward is only matched by the fullon Urduspeaking desi Tom Alter who played a Brit almost all his life Nobodyrsquos complaining You viscerally root for him soon as he shows up at the cinemas in Bombay The period film itself remains faithful to the original text from 1937 Hardly a reduxremastering heremdashas has happened with Sherlock Holmes chieflyThere is a sort of adult serenity and cinematic scale that you inevitably find reserved for Poirot over whatrsquos really a childrenrsquos seriesCan tell you this from experience the kind of pastoral beauty and enchanting landscapesmdashnever mind the classiness of the Nile cruise itselfmdashis hardly what you encounter visiting Cairo anymore But thatrsquos immaterial of courseTo give you a sense of how filmmakers have taken Christie seriouslymdashconsider reading Sidney Lumetrsquos Making Movies arguably the best book on filmmaking by a filmmakerThe peerlessly eclectic Lumet made about 75 movies many of them masterpieces Network Dog Day Afternoon 12 Angry Men etc He devotes perhaps the longest passage in his book on how he pulled off Christiersquos Murder on the Orient Express 1974Which Branagh revisited as well in 2017mdashthat you watch on HostarDisney only to be stunned by the quality of the castmdashPenelope Cruz Michelle Pfeiffer Johnny Depp Judy Dench onwardsmdashfor what are obviously walkon parts But these actors are fans Branagh wants a chance to examine the symmetry of boiled egg in Orient and eat only dessert in the Nile He wants to play PoirotHow can some audiences not watch still Itrsquos nostalgia Nile and Orient are quite similar as well besides all suspects sequestered in the scene of crime Brought onboard first to protect his client as if he was Hercules it also reveals Poirotrsquos past love life and why he feels romance never goes unpunishedSay what if I told you all the suspects are murderers Doesnrsquot change a thing Everyone knows the stories Also I didnrsquot tell you that and thatrsquos not Death On The Nile anyway Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper