'Chief Minister'-designate V D Satheesan can be likened to a bookish kid who got placed among a group of disorderly boys.  

In January 2025, when in scholarly fashion Satheesan came up with 'Plan 63', a blueprint to win a record number of Assembly seats in 2026, it was met mostly with sneers. 

Such boardroom-style advance thinking was unheard of in the Congress party. Some like Wandoor MLA A P Anil Kumar was reportedly outraged at this scale of ambition. For many in the party, Satheesan's plan to improve the Congress tally from 21 to 63 was merely an exercise in vanity. That it was not was eventually proved on May 4. 

Many more of Satheesan's predictions came true with breathtaking precision. "Recently I have seen some students jokingly asking him to predict their future," said Ranjith Thampi, one of Satheesan's closest friends. "If at all there is a secret behind what people now call Satheesan's sixth sense, it is this. His natural resolve to go deep down to the root of a problem and then systematically work up. So when he declares that he would court 'vanvas' if the UDF fails, we know he is driven by supreme confidence that stems from his exhaustive understanding of Kerala's electoral scene," Thampi said.

Satheesan hits jackpot
It was this granular understanding of a subject that felled then Finance Minister T M Thomas Isaac in the 2010 lottery debate, the only official political debate held in Kerala outside the Assembly. Satheeesan was then an opposition backbencher. 

It was a time when other-state lotteries run by lottery dons like Sandiago Martin were duping the poor with spurious four-digit lotteries. 

Isaac's ploy was to heap the blame on the Centre and throw up his hands in dramatic despair. The strategy had worked till then, inside the Assembly and outside. Isaac argued that Kerala was just a powerless supervisor who could do nothing more than complain to the centre about any lottery violations.

Satheesan's response was swift like the pounce of a cat's paw. "If what the minister said was true, how could the State Government come up with an ordinance which would put restrictions on other state lotteries," he said. 

The V S Achuthanandan government had by then issued the Kerala Paper Lotteries (Regulation) Amendment Ordinance, and Isaac perhaps thought no one had noticed. 

"Was he trying to say that his government's ordinance has no value," Satheesan said. Isaac had the lazy smile of a man who acknowledged that he had been upstaged. 

Debater's crucible
Ranjith Thampi recalls a weekly discussion titled 'Dialogue' that was organised during his college days by his father P V Thampi, a reputed journalist and Chief Minister K Karunakaran's press secretary in the early 80s. The cream of the society - doctors, thinkers, political leaders and stalwarts like Philipose Mar Chrysostom - were regulars. 

"None of us students were allowed, except Satheesan. He was not just given an entry, my father insisted that he speak. My father used to say that Satheesan's words had a clarity and sharpness that he had very rarely encountered," Thampi said. In the eighties, Satheesan won almost all the debating contests that he participated in at various colleges across Kerala.

Ajith, another friend, said that Satheesan considered Thampi sir his mentor. "Whenever Thampi sir adds a new book to his home library, he would first call up Satheesan," Ajith said.

For the last 28 years, Satheesan has been the chief organiser of the P V Thampi Memorial Award that recognises "extraordinary conservation efforts of ordinary people". For instance, Lakshmikutty Amma who kept water in mud pots for birds. Satheesan had picked her for the P V Thampi award long before she was conferred the Padma Shri.

Paravur's bystander
It is not knowledge or oratory skills that drew Ezhikkara grama panchayat member M S Ratheesh to Satheesan. "You cannot come across a kinder person," Ratheesh said, his panchayat falling within Satheesan's Paravur Assembly constituency.

"It is usual for him to spend the whole night as a bystander if an old man or a woman who lives alone in his constituency is hospitalised. He will also take care of the expenses. Even last year, when he was the opposition leader, I had seen him sitting in the hospital verandah late in the night with a group of people who had brought a poor snakebite victim to the hospital," Ratheesh said.

It is this combination of sharp intellect and empathy that was on show inside the Assembly. Satheesan has this rare ability to maximise the emotional pain of a ward-level tragedy that in the normal course would not have caught the attention of the rest of the state.

Post-pandemic onslaught
Take, for instance, the suicide of twins, Nazeer Khan and Nizar Khan, in a remote village in Kottayam called Kaduvakkulam on August 1, 2021. This was Satheesan's first year as opposition leader. The twins committed suicide, allegedly after Kottayam Urban Cooperative Bank began recovery measures for non-repayment.

Congress's Kottayam MLA Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan moved an adjournment motion against the government on the issue. Thiruvanchoor adopted what can be called a 'soap opera' approach to the issue: The orphaned mother and the treachery of the cooperative bank. 

Minister for Cooperation V N Vasavan had facts at his command. One, the bank did not initiate recovery proceedings even 90 days after the twins defaulted. Two, the bank had sent the twins a recovery notice seven months before their suicide. End of argument, or so it seemed.

There was a satisfied smile on Vasavan's face as he sat down and when opposition leader Satheesan began by saying that the government was not be blamed, the minister nodded in appreciation. He was unprepared for what was coming.

"But when a government refuses to listen to the problems of the poor, refuses to keep its eyes and ears open, it has to be put in the dock," Satheesan said. "Tens of thousands of recovery notices are reaching the poor from various banks. From nationalised banks, scheduled banks, non-banking financial institutions and cooperative banks. Notices are being issued even if there is a default of just three months. Why is this happening at a time when there is so much devastation", he asked. This was just after the pandemic.

Satheesan called for the immediate suspension of all recovery proceedings in Kerala. All of a sudden, a shadow of worry crept over Vasavan's face.

Dual personality
Satheesan can be far more ruthless with his own MLAs. If there is even a whisper at his side or behind him while making a speech in the Assembly, Satheesan can turn around and rudely tell the source of annoyance to keep quiet. In such moments, he does not care for seniority. 

He is a man of contradictions, too. Satheesan is without doubt one of the greatest debaters in Kerala's legislative history and yet, on occasions, he turns away from a duel. 

During Assembly debates, for a rival to ask a question the member who is making the speech should first sit down, signalling that he is willing to spar. Some of the best debaters - say Oommen Chandy or Thomas Isaac - are quick to plop down on their seats whenever a rival stands up with a poser. Not Satheesan. He has generally shown a reluctance to engage a rival mid-speech. Probably, he dislikes being interrupted.

"He is too focused and emotional. It has happened often with us friends also," said Ajith. "I remember him scolding me during a song recital by Devadas, one of our friends. There is nothing that Devadas sings that we have not heard. So sometimes I can be distracted. One day I was cracking a joke and Satheesan immediately asked me to shut up," Ajith said.

Devadas laughs at this recollection. "Satheesan is a keen listener. 'Manatharil Ennum Ponkinavum Konduvaa (Yesudas/Raveendran) is his favourite song. Whenever I sing this, he will tell me the changes I have made to the rendition. Some changes he encourages but some he despises," Devadas said.

Satheesan's deeply emotional nature can at times be embarrassing. "I remember watching 'Aakashadoothu' (Sibi Malayil) with him. He couldn't stop crying. He kept sobbing even when we came out of the theatre. Nothing that I was telling him was calming him. So I stood at a distance and let him cry his heart out under a tree," his best friend Thampi said.