Filmmaker Siddique of Bodyguard fame, has been capturing the hearts of the audience for more than two decades. With over 12 box-office hits in his kitty, this talented director-cum-screenwriter has proved his talent across linguistic boundaries.
Right from his school days, movies fascinated Siddique. The path towards his passion began with a monoact, for which he got a state-level first prize when he was in class VII at Kaloor Government Higher Secondary School. While pursuing his pre-degree at St Paul’s College in Kalamassery, Kochi, he graduated into mimicry from monoacting. “More than being a passion, mimicry was one of the easiest ways to grab the attention of girls,” he admits.
“Bunking to watch movies was a regular vocation. Being the second of eight siblings, I was always wary of my nosy elder sister, who used to be the Sherlock Holmes at home. She would closely scrutinise all of our activities to see if we had been up to any mischief. So I always had to be extra careful to hide all the ‘clues’ that showed I had been for a cinema. While sitting in the theatre, I would not lean back on the chair so as to keep my shirt wrinkle-free,” recalls Siddique. “I also took care to reach home before the second show got over. My friends and I always went for English movies since they got over well before the vernacular ones. The only problem was that none of us understood the language. So we all got together after the movie and discussed what the story would have been. At the end of it, we would return home content of weaving a story out of our fancy,” he laughs.
However, he says that his parents had given him much freedom. They never opposed his interest towards performing arts. All of this made Siddique a highly responsible person. “I never had the temptation to smoke or drink even when my friends forced me to do otherwise,” he adds with a tinge of pride.
However, life changed drastically when he joined Maharaja’s College to pursue his bachelor’s. “I and the national Emergency stepped into college at the same time (laughs). So, college life was pretty dreary except for mimicry and movies,” Siddique says. After the first year of the course, he got a job as a clerk at a school. So he had to join evening college to continue his studies. “It was probably the only case where three professors had to teach a class of a single student!” he quips.
Being a day scholar, Siddique did not have any first hand experience of hostel life. However, during college elections, he and his close friend Lal (who is now a well-known Malayalam actor) went to paint election slogans on the compound walls of the Government Law College. At that time, they got to witness all the ragging in the hostels. All these incidents were later on portrayed in his movies in one way or the other.
— namitha@newindianexpress.com