In the civil engineering classroom of Mar Athanasius College of Engineering at Kothamangalam in Ernakulam district of Kerala, Ranjith Sankar dreamt of making it as a screenwriter. Ranjith, who figures among the young crop of screenwriters/directors in the Malayalam movie industry, has presented a couple of feel-good movies starting with the blockbuster Passenger in 2009, followed by Arjunan Sakshi (2011), Molly Aunty Rocks (2012) and Punyalan Agarbathis (2013) apart from the upcoming flick Varsham, all starring leading actors of the industry.
A back-bencher in college, he met film directors over weekends, enjoyed the white heat of eleventh-hour learning and experimented ‘out-of-the-box’ ways of preparing for exams. “Most often, I would be home in Thrissur till afternoon on the penultimate day of the examination. So, the first thing I did after reaching college in Kothamangalam, was to buy the text books that were required for the examination and study. And studying meant taking tips from studious group of friends in the hostel, as they would be sure of important questions likely to be asked,” he says.
When his peers were racking their brains for lab examinations, what Ranjith did was to make one of the serious learners sit and make him a sketch of the lab, find where to position himself and understand where the equipment and machinery are placed, and then familiarise himself with the names of the equipment and their basic utilities.
“In the lab, it is external examiners who conduct the examinations. Once, my classmates who had their turn before me failed in succession. When my chance came, the examiner asked me to name a machine of my choice and compare it with another. My explanations added one more to the failed league,” he says laughing about the incident. Yet, he managed to secure a 66 percentage aggregate.
With no qualms, he says it gave him an easy ticket to a cushy posting in the software industry, where he worked for nearly a-decade-and-a-half, and quit only before his fourth venture, Punyalan Agarbathis. “The thing is recruiters preferred people who scored average to the top-scorers,” he quips. But he says, college life taught him how to be independent. “It was for the first time that I stayed away from home. So, the hostel days and life in a new place helped build character and made me independent in decision-making.”
Ranjith says he was talkative and had to wait for two years to interact with his college mates when they were out on a tour, and thus could not claim to have had a big circle of friends around him. He has, however, kept in touch with his English teacher from his higher secondary days, Father James Pathiyil. “In school too I was not a top performer, but Father liked me a lot. He had to leave for Kolkata after my batch. He kept in touch with me through letters, though we rarely met. It went on till his death. That relation really made a writer out of me,” the 37-year-old recollects.
Before entering filmdom, the mini screen gave him opportunities as a script writer, and his first was Nizhalukal, a horror tele-serial in the late 90s. His latest movie Varsham is set to hit the screens in November and features Malayalam superstar Mammooty, and Asha Sarath in lead roles.
Meera.manu@newindianexpress.com