Bollywood actress Tabu (Photo | PTI)
Mumbai, May 8 (PTI) For someone whose childhood was all about listening to the radio, actor Tabu says narrating the Hindi audiobook adaptation of the popular graphic novel series "The Sandman" was an opportunity to further explore her strength as a voice artiste.
"The Sandman" marks Tabu's second collaboration with Audible post Thriller Factory (2019), a 10-episode series directed by Anurag Kashyap.
Reminiscing about her childhood days when she would hear different stories from Vividh Bharti's famous radio show Hawa Mahal , Tabu said she has always had a special place in her heart for the audio medium.
"I love podcasts and as a country we have grown up listening to the radio, we got television and this electronic media much later. At least (with) my generation, childhood was all about listening to the radio.
"There is a lot of strength and power and even for an artist to create there's a lot of space, there's a lot of stuff that you can do with your voice. Every actor has a distinct voice and it conveys different things, Tabu told PTI in a Zoom interview.
Audible, a leading producer and provider of spoken-word entertainment and audiobooks, last month launched Act I of "The Sandman" in Hindi.
Originally created in English by Neil Gaiman alongside artists Sam Kieth and Mike Dringenberg, the DC graphic novel was adapted in Hindi by Neerja Chittaranjan and Nirupama Kartik.
While Gaiman served as narrator for the English version, Tabu is the voice for the same in Hindi.
Regarded as one of the finest Indian actors, the National Award winner said she is honoured to be associated with "The Sandman".
"'The Sandman' occupies a very important place in my repertoire. It was a huge responsibility. You just have to be fair, do justice to something that somebody has created out of their own imagination. So, I had a huge responsibility, but it was a challenge," she said.
"I am honoured to be associated with Neil Gaiman and be part of the universe where there are graphic novels, especially like, creation of DC comics, the fictional characters that have so much relevance to the world and to the world we live in and to our immediate personal life," she added.
According to the official plotline, "The Sandman" begins with an occultist who attempts to capture the physical embodiment of Death in a bargain for eternal life.
But he mistakenly traps Death's younger brother Dream, another of the seven god-like siblings known as The Endless who oversee aspects of human existence, including Desire and Despair, Destiny, Destruction and Delirium.
After 70 years of imprisonment, Dream finally escapes, embarking on a quest to reclaim his lost objects of power and rebuild his kingdom, the world of sleep and imagination called The Dreaming.
In addition to Tabu, the voice cast of the Hindi version also boasts of talented actors such as Vijay Varma (Lord Morpheus/Dream), Manoj Bajpayee (Dr Destiny), Adarsh Gourav (John Constastine), Kubbra Sait (Death), Tillotama Shome (Calliope), Neeraj Kabi (Lucifer) and Sushant Divgikar (Desire).
Tabu, known for films such as "Chandni Bar", "Andhadhun", "The Namesake", and "Maqbool", said the Audible team approached her for the project in 2020 but things got delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
"This (project) required many more actors and a very big mounting and so we all decided to wait. When everything started opening, we started recording."
Describing narration as an "exhaustive and extensive" process, Tabu said the entire voice cast wanted to do well.
"I was most concerned about whether Neil would like it or not. So, apart from the Audible team, I have to get the go ahead from the author. Since Neil has himself narrated the English version, I had big shoes to fill in. Hence, I had to get briefed constantly if there was something not fitting the narration, if something was not coming across the way the story demands... I wanted to also bring in my own flavour to it, take some liberty," she said.
She also termed the method of recording the audio as a "very solitary" task as one sits alone in a studio, reading the lines without any visual stimulus.
"You don't know how it is going until you hear it in totality with the other characters, and give the sound and the music. It is difficult to judge for yourself," Tabu said.
