From Pattiam to the silver screen, Sreenivasan carried his village wherever he went

Kannur: Long before Sreenivasan became one of Malayalam cinema’s sharpest moral voices, Pattiam had already given him his first script- a village shaped by communism, renaissance politics, small-time theatre, stubborn idealism, and everyday hypocrisies. That inheritance never left him.

The loss that defined much of his worldview came early in his life. His father, Unni ‘Mash’, a schoolteacher, invested his retirement benefits in a bus, an entrepreneurial leap that collapsed under the weight of militant trade unionism. The bus was lost. The bank attached the family house at Kongatta in Pattiam. Years later, that wound would reappear on screen as 'Varavelpu' (1989), a dark comedy in which Mohanlal’s Gulf-returnee entrepreneur is crushed by the same forces that once broke Unni Mash.

After finding success, Sreenivasan bought back the house at Kongatta- an act that felt like quiet defiance, or perhaps a form of reconciliation. But he did not keep it for long. “He didn’t really need it,” said KP Pradeep Kumar (65), a retired teacher and vice-president of the outgoing Pattiam panchayat board. Today, a family from Tamil Nadu runs a scrap business from the house where Sreenivasan grew up, he said. It stands a stone’s throw from the home of CPM leader P Jayarajan, an irony Sreenivasan himself might have enjoyed.

Sreenivasan (69) died on Saturday, December 20, leaving behind a body of work few in Malayalam cinema can rival: acting roles in more than 225 films, screenplays for around 60, and two landmark directorial ventures- 'Vadakkunokkiyantram' (1989) and 'Chinthavishtayaya Shyamala' (1998). The Sreenivasan touch that made his work memorable- and endlessly meme-worthy- carried more than a trace of Pattiam.

The village is the birthplace of Vagbhatananda Gurukkal (1885-1939), the radical reformer who preached idol-less worship and universal brotherhood through the Atma Vidya Sangham (School of Self-Awareness). It is also home to Pattiam Gopalan, the CPM ideologue, and MP and MLA, whose life was cut short at 42 in 1978- two years after Sreenivasan debuted in P A Backer’s Manimuzhakkam, a National Award–winning film.

In a 2016 interview with then chief minister-designate Pinarayi Vijayan, Sreenivasan spoke of growing up without temples nearby and influenced by Pattiam Gopalan. “There were no temples near our house. So going to the temple was not a habit,” he said, when Vijayan asked him about his position on faith.

Pradeep Kumar, the panchayat vice-president, recalls that Pattiam Gopalan’s brother, poet-journalist KP Balakrishnan, also influenced the young Sreenivasan. “But he never joined the organisation,” he said. “He was always with the theatre groups in the village.”

That theatre culture was elemental. After the paddy harvest, farmers raised yellow cucumbers in the same fields, and night-long plays sprang up as villagers kept vigil to protect the crop from wild animals. To stay awake, villagers staged plays. They called it vellari nadakam, or cucumber plays. Sreenivasan acted in them, often alongside his elder brother Raveendran MPK, himself a talented actor who died in January 2024. Those night-long performances, improvised and political, were Sreenivasan’s first classrooms.

Stage artistes in Trikaripur- a theatre hub in neighbouring Kasaragod- recall Sreenivasan forming a troupe called ‘Ghanashyam’ and working out of the town. He also worked with Trikaripur National Kala Vedi when the late PP Kunjiraman Master was its president. It was here he began writing plays, even as he continued to act.

Even after cinema claimed him, he returned to Pattiam. In March this year, despite failing health, Sreenivasan returned once more, as chief guest at Pattiam West Lower Primary School. He had difficulty speaking, yet he spoke at length.

In the early days, when he came home, he walked through the village and spoke to youngsters. “Their lives and stories eventually entered his films,” said Pradeep Kumar.

That translation from village to screen was rarely flattering. 'Vellanakalude Nadu' (1988), a biting satire on corruption, was loosely inspired by the former Pattiam panchayat president CP Sreedharan ‘Master’, a relentless crusader who dragged public works officials to court. Sreedharan, who served as panchayat president from 1979 to 1984, succeeded in getting at least four corrupt officials suspended through sustained legal battles.

'Mutharamkunnu PO' (1985), Sibi Malayil’s directorial debut, was written by Jagadish and bore Sreenivasan’s stamp. His screenplay placed its wrestling-obsessed village at  Pathayakunnu, less than a kilometre from Pattiam.

Sreenivasan’s politics were always contentious. His films criticised the Left from within its own moral universe, a position often misread as hostility or coming from the Right.

By college, he was consumed entirely by theatre- so much so that his grades slipped.

After doing BA Economics at Pazhassi Raja NSS College, Mattannur, his mother’s place, he joined the MGR Government Film and Television Training Institute in Chennai, popularly called the Adyar Film Institute. After early acting roles, he drifted back to theatre before returning to cinema decisively in 1984, when Priyadarshan asked him to write the screenplay if he wanted a role. The result: 'Odaruthammava Aalariyam'. The screwball comedy was a runaway success and announced the arrival of a formidable screenwriter.

The year 1984 also marked a personal milestone. Sreenivasan married Vimala, a teacher and fellow Pattiam native, after an eleven-year courtship. They had met while he taught at a private tutorial college. Years later, recalling those days at a public event, Sreenivasan spoke with characteristic candour. Penniless then, he said actor Innocent pawned his wife Alice’s bangles to give him ₹400 for the journey home from Madras. In the evening, his mother insisted he tie a gold thali around Vimala’s neck. “When my mother insisted, I went to Mammootty’s house at night and told him I needed ₹2,000 because I was getting married the next day,” he recalled. He tied the thali around Vimala’s neck outside the Registrar’s office. “All I’m saying is this,” he added. “With ₹400 from a Christian, and money from a Muslim Mammootty, I tied the thali around my Hindu wife. What religion, whose religion, where is religion? It is better not to believe in any religion, or to believe in all of them.” In hindsight, the thought echoed- perhaps subconsciously- the spirit of Vagbhatananda’s Pattiam.

‘A mentor’
When Sreenivasan got married, Vimala’s brother Mohanan M was 19 and keen on becoming a filmmaker. Sreenivasan mentored him and placed him as an assistant director under Sathyan Anthikad, his long-time collaborator. Years later, Mohanan directed Katha Parayumbol (2007), written by Sreenivasan, a gentle story of ordinary lives briefly touched by stardom. Like several of Sreenivasan’s scripts, it was remade in Hindi as ‘Billu Barber’, starring Irrfan Khan and Shah Rukh Khan.

His 'Sandesham' (1991) is an evergreen political satire- and an all-time source of memes ruthlessly mocking the CPM. But ‘Prabhakaran Kottappally’ is not Sreenivasan’s best political outing. His searching political work came as ‘Cuba’ Mukundan in 'Arabikatha' (2007), says Iyju Abraham, a Thiruvananthapuram-based techie and a fan of dark humour. ‘Cuba’ Mukundan was written specifically for Sreenivasan, he says. He played a communist forced to confront the ideological rigidity when the party itself benefits from the systems it once opposed.

Few writers asked that question as openly in an industry whose politics often lean safely left. “We have to give it to Sreenivasan for calling out political hypocrisy without fear,” said Abraham. “But the downside was that we sometimes saw Sreenivasan the man in every role- his anger, his politics, his disappointments.” Perhaps that was Pattiam’s parting gift to another son, it celebrated, even if reluctantly.