For a long time, A Song for Eresha existed only on the page.

It began as a novel, something I could return to, reshape, and sit with over time. The world of Aalayam, its rhythms, hierarchies, and internal tensions were built through language and accumulation. Writing allowed a certain control over pace, interiority, and what remained withheld.

Adapting it into a film became a different process altogether.

What works in prose does not carry over directly to the screen. Much of what the novel holds internally—thought, memory, hesitation—needed a new form. Scenes took on the weight that paragraphs once carried. Gesture replaced explanation. The structure had to be reworked from the ground up.

At the centre of both forms is the same premise. An institution, Aalayam, approaching its fiftieth year. A production mounted to mark the occasion. The arrival of an intern, Anvesha, into an already structured environment.

What follows is a gradual shift in relationships and roles, within the production and within the institution itself.

In writing the novel, the focus often stayed with duration, how a state of mind develops over time. In the film, duration is shaped through images, repetition, and absence as much as presence. Some elements come forward more clearly. Others move into the background.

The production within the story, The Mortality of Urvashi, also shifts in meaning through the adaptation. On the page, it functions in one way. On screen, it reflects the narrative more directly, as a structure the characters move through.

Working across both forms reveals their differences, along with the points where they meet. The novel and the film approach the same material from different directions, each shaped by the possibilities of its medium.

Seeing them exist together now, released at the same time, has been a distinct experience. The story no longer belongs to a single form, or a single way of being read or seen.

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Essay. April 2026.