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The ageing of a legend

Shobha Warrier

Sreekumaran Thampi. Click for bigger pic!

It is very difficult to say who the real Sreekumaran Thampi is. He is a lyricist who has penned over 3,000 film songs, a screenplay writer who has written 78 screenplays, a producer who has made 22 films, a director who has directed 30 films, a music director who has a golden disc to his credit -- and a civil engineer by profession.

And this Jack of all trades has been masterly at them all, bagging awards and accolades in plenty.

You can switch on the radio and never have a day pass without hearing a song written by Sreekumaran Thampi. People in Kerala still remember his most memorable films, Mohiniyattam and Ganam, both starring Lakshmi. His book on films too won him a National award too. But, if ever any part of him dominated, it was that of the poet in him.

He was born in a rich, royal family, but after his family lost every bit of land in a court case, he had to share a life of poverty with them. And despite having 22 films behind him, he still lives in a rented house. The experiences have made him philosophical, strong, and detached.

"I had a very troubled childhood and adolescence. I suffered a lot then. If I were to narrate what I had gone through, nobody would believe that it was real. It is like an unbelievable film story. But then it is my real life," he says.

And it was to escape from that reality that he wrote. But, he admits, "when I wrote poems, I was in a different world, a fantasy world. If I had not written poems, I'd have gone mad, I'd have become schizophrenic, I'd have erupted like a volcano one day."

He gained some pleasure from what the small theatre before his house provided. The colours in the film posters, the music that flowed from the loud speakers, the people who came on and left the screen, all helped him forget the depressing and gloomy reality.

That was the time people used to go around the town announcing the arrival of the new film to the accompaniment of drums.

a still from a Sreekumaran Thampi film. Click for bigger pic!

"The moment I heard the drums, I used to rush out to see the new posters. As the theatre belonged to a relative of mine, I used to go and collect pieces of films from there. With these pieces of films, I made films to show my friends.

An electric bulb was my lens. (If you remove the filament from the bulb and fill it with water, it becomes a lens). My projector was a mirror reflecting sunlight and I diverted the light through the bulb. If a film is kept on the other side of the bulb, its image is projected on a wall. That's how I made my first film, joining together pieces of films in a meaningful way. So, knowingly or unknowingly, at the age of eight itself, I became a film-maker." He looked up and laughs.

But his mother demanded only good performances in school and college. Poetry could wait, films could wait but not studies.

"My mother had instilled in me the feeling that unless I am educated, I'll not achieve anything in life. We were poor, and education was the only way to escape poverty. But even when I was studying, I used to write a lot of poems; all of them got published in the magazines too. I believed that my karma was to write, write and write. And I wrote."

How did an engineer from a small town of Harippad end up a film-maker, I asked? He wanted that question reframed.

"You should have asked me how did a poet become an engineer? I was not an engineer first. I was a poet first. That is, ever since I can remember. And it was poetry, which brought me to the film world. At ten, I started writing poems and my first poem appeared in the Balapankthi of the Mathrubhumi weekly. That was when I was 11. So, it has been a long innings as a writer. I wrote hundreds and hundreds of poems during my adolescence."

A still from a Sreekumaran Thampi film. Click for bigger pic!

Now he doesn't even write one per cent what he did in his adolescence. Distractions in the form of films changed his course when he was 26. It was quite by accident that the poet and storywriter was asked to write a screenplay based on his own novel. But the screenplay had to remain on paper for long, till he became competent enough to make a film on his own.

It may sound funny but the reason was the producers didn't want a heroine to remarry. Thampi refused to change the story and insisted that the end was necessary. But they were so impressed by the songs that he wrote for the film that they made him a lyricist. Soon, Thampi was writing more songs than poems.

"The main difference between writing a poem and a film song is that I can write a poem only I really feel like writing. Poems originate on their own, like a rivulet taking its birth somewhere in the mountains and flowing down quietly. The rivulet is there within the rocks but it comes out only when it is fully developed. Poems remain dormant inside to come out one day.

"That's not the case with songs. You write a song bearing in mind a theme -- it could be unhappiness, it could be sadness, it could be anger too. Its birth has an artificial touch to it, in the sense that you have to give it a shove, while poetry flows on its own. But without a source, nothing is born, whether it is poetry, film music or light songs.

"All my writings are nostalgic in nature. I can't erase the images of the ambience that I grew up in, I can't forget the temple yard where I played for hours together. I still have fond memories of the trees I loved, the pond I became so fond of, and the birds that I talked to... So, what else can I write about, except all these images?"

But despite his 3,000 plus songs, he says they aren't necessary in cinema.

With son Rajakumaran Thampi. Click for bigger pic!

"This is my opinion as a film-maker. But in Indian films, it is necessary as much since songs form an integral part of our culture. For example, take any visual art which is connected with our culture, Kathakali, Koodiyattam, Yakshganam, Koothu... I can go on naming them. You see an abundance of music in all of them. The base of all these visual arts is music.

"That is the speciality of our culture. When films took over the place of our ancient arts, music also had to follow. Don't think I'm supporting songs in films. I'm just looking at the way songs became an integral part of cinema. Do you know what was the first theatre in Kerala? The temple. It was there that all these arts were performed; it was the temples that used to patronise the arts."

According to him early success does more harm than good for a youngster. He says it made him very arrogant. He refused to obey anyone and vehemently believed that there was nothing that he didn't know about films and life.

Over-confident, Thampi wanted to defy all rules and laws and conventions, and invested all the money he has made as a screenplay writer, lyricist and engineer in films... And lost everything. When he looked at the balance sheet one day, to his horror he found he had lost Rs 10 million. The funniest thing was that the films he directed for others became big hits but the films he produced himself flopped commercially. But he says he feels no resentment.

"Detachment and contentment... One is a philosophy that's very difficult to follow and the other is a state of mind that can be achieved only through detaching yourself from greed, urges and the craving for material possessions. Ultimately what do you want in life other than contentment? I believe that you can be content in life only through detachment. Not even tasty food lures me these days," he says.

A still from a Sreekumaran Thampi film. Click for bigger pic!

He gained detachment through suffering. And his knowledge in science, he says, helped him go deeper into the philosophy behind the Upanishads. But he feels that most human beings, especially Indians, are just theoreticians, never actually practising philosophy.

"We talk a lot about our cultural heritage and we act as if we are proud of our heritage. Unfortunately, we are the same people who do not practice what our culture says. Americans are not claiming anything about any heritage since they are all immigrants. But they are successful.

"Here, we have two sets of rules, one for you and one for the other person. We never look at anything from the other man's point of view because we are not broad-minded. That does not mean that we should kick away our heritage. I'm an optimist. I feel we at least have a theory to fall back upon."

One thing singularly impressive about Thampi is his portrayal of women, especially in Mohiniyattam. The characters were strong, had individuality and rose above adversity without male support. They dared question chauvinism and the male-oriented rules of society. When other filmmakers wrote and made male-dominated films, Thampi went the other way, influenced more than a little by his mother.

"She was very bold, very courageous and life was a battlefield for her. Even though I am a man, I am 100 per cent with women. But I feel, sadly of course, that women are their own enemies even now. It's a tragedy. A woman is a hindrance to another woman's growth. Believe me, I am a supporter of women. Still, I feel their own attitude has to change if they want to come up."

He is also upset by the state Malayalam films are in now.

"The stars dictate terms, they themselves decide the story, and stories are written with superstars in mind. Gone are the days when beautiful short stories and novels were made into films where film lovers did not see a Prem Nazir, a Satyan, a Sharada or a Sheela... But only the characters. What we see now are the faces of Mammootty, Mohanlal, Suresh Gopi or Jayaram -- the stars.

"Time was when people went to see a film based on Thoppil Bhasi's play or M T Vasudevan Nair's short story or Thakazhi's novel. The importance was on the story and the director, then. But sadly, those who call the shots are the stars.

"They feel they are the most important people in films. I blame only the film-makers for this sad state of affairs. Can you make a film based on a piece of literature now? No, you can't. Because a creative writer writes a novel or a story not with Mohanlal or Mammootty in mind."

The rot is the reason that Sreekumaran Thampi apparently decided to shift to television, where he found audiences for stories of human relationships. His first serial, based on N Mohanan's (the son of the leading lady of Malayalam literature, Lalithambika Antharjanam's) story, was a success.

Thampi's son, Rajakumaran Thampi, who has acted in many of his films, has become an assistant to Priyadarshan. But Thampi himself prefers the old ways.

"The biggest satisfaction I have now is that I do not have to stand outside the doors of the 'stars'.

"With your help, an artist enters the field. With your encouragement, he grows... But once he is a 'star', he doesn't want to look back and see the distance he has covered. That's very sad.

"Can you visualise the mind of an old man forced to sit outside his son's office and waiting for the son whom he loved and pampered once, to come out and give him some money?

"Yes, I feel exactly like the old man when I had to wait outside a star's office for his call sheet. It's very, very painful..."