THIRUVANATHAPURAM: This incident happened a decade- and-a-half ago. Lohithadas had been staying at the Shoranur Guest House for over a week, writing the script for ‘Aadhaaram’.
The room boy who knocked at Lohithadas’ room to deliver his usual morning coffee found it open. The writer was not inside. The bed sheet looked crumpled, as if he had got out of the bed in a hurry. Through the window of the room, the boy saw Lohithadas. He was walking outside and looking up at the trees within the guest house premises, as if searching for something. He was talking non-stop to himself.
The boy ran outside. “Sir, what are you searching for?” he asked.
The writer didn’t seem to hear him. The boy ran after him and repeated the question. Lohithadas stopped abruptly. He was panting. “Every day I get up hearing the sweet sound of a bird. Today morning, I did not hear it. I know the bird is somewhere here. But why is it so silent?” Lohithadas asked. The boy stood perplexed.
Lohithadas’ films - the best of them - are like the man. They seem to teeter on the farthest, sharpest edges of sanity: A school teacher trying hard to remain human in a society that insists he is mad (‘Thaniyavarthanam’), a son who suddenly turns killer to protect his father (‘Kireedom’), another son who thinks of killing his father to get a job (‘Karunyam’), a weak-hearted father who has strange hallucinations about children being abused (‘Bhoothakannadi’).
A dozen of his characters, no wonder, have won state and national awards for superstars Mammootty and Mohanlal.
His protagonists seem to hang precariously on the edge of an emotional cliff, with winds of despair swirling maddeningly around them. It is just a matter of time before things could slip into a scream of raw insanity.
Lohithadas’ films are volcanoes waiting to erupt. But all these inner seethings are swathed in a delightful simplicity; in normal village life, in chaste language, in greenery, in the sound of birds.
The simplicity, however, does not come across as a cinematic conceit. It does not feel like Lohithadas has painted this normality to create a contrast that would heighten the consequent derangement. It truly feels as if the madness happens in spite of himself. Like his protagonists, Lohithadas, too, comes across as helpless, as a victim. In films like ‘Dasaratham’ he makes insanity seem normal, even comical, without a hint of sentimentality.
These strange turmoils were lapped up with surprising earnestness by a notoriously cynical Kerala audience. Some of his finest films - ‘Kireedom’, ‘Thaniyavarthanam’, ‘Bharatham’, ‘Dasaratham’, ‘Amaram’, ‘Veendum Chila Veettu Karyangal’ - were huge hits also. A honour Kerala has never extended to other stalwarts like K G George or Padmarajan.