As Vijayan said, everything has a time of its own. I had fifteen films to my credit before Nadodikkattu, and except the last one Sreedharante Onnam Thirumurivu, all others were hits. Though it was my fourth film scripted by Sreenivasan and the first with Mammootty as the hero, it failed to connect with the audience.
The failure could be the result of my over-confidence that I had found the secret for success. We wanted a hit after that. So the planning for Nadodikkattu took a little more time. We did not aim to make a film to be remembered by posterity as our idea was to make films which will go down well with the audience. Sreenivasan was ready with the script. The dialogue “Ellathinum athintethtaya samayamund Dasa” was there only once and it was in the scene where Dasan and Vijayan dream about a prosperous future after buying a cow. It was planned as a counter to “ Vijaya, why didn’t this idea strike us earlier? (Namukkentha Vijaya ee budhi nerathe thonnanjath). The shooting was at a small room in a house at West Hill in Kozhikkode. Apart from Mohanlal (Dasan) and Sreenivasan (Vijayan) who were on a bed, there were a group with me including camera man, my assistants Vipin Mohan, Rajan Balakrishanan and Shashi Shankar along with the team for lighting. Lal had his expressions ready even before Sreeni’s dialogue. Such was the chemistry between the two, without any ego of stardom. The entire set burst out into laughter as Sreeni finished it. It was an instant hit. Hence, we added the same in a few more occasions. We always use simple words in dialogues from characters with simple names. With a minor twist, it gels with the people well. Here, the same dialogue was used by many others earlier. But the addition of ‘Dasa’ made the difference”.
Thus, the laughter which started from a small room in West Hill reverberated in the cinema halls across the state. It followed us to our rooms through TV and later to mobiles and PC via social Media.
(As told to Chandrakanth Viswanath)