Dec. 21, 2025
He is so familiar to me - as if he were of my friendship circle or neighbourhood. However, I am afraid I have never met him or seen him directly. When I realise that, I feel surprised.
I am glad to learn that he had come to this stature through hard work and hard times. That he had equipped himself for a career in cinema by gaining a diploma from the famed Adayar Film Institute, after his undergraduate programme, comforts me. And that his genius for storytelling was kind of forced out of him by circumstances is also a matter of inspiration - that he ventured into writing a script and a screenplay for the first time, being forced by the famed director Priyadarshan, with the hope of gaining a role in the movie.
I found that 3 movies in which he
plays the lead role close to my heart – not exactly because of their cinematic
quality, but because of the effort to bring certain issues very close to my
heart through the medium. Generally, they don’t get listed among his top movies.
Nagaravaridhi Naduvil Njaan – 2014
movie directed by Shibu Balan, scripted by Srinivasan and Srinivasan himself
playing the lead role of a victim landowner in the city, where his prime plot
of land is turned into a waste dump and his struggle to get that disposed for
meeting his urgent financial needs. While
the plot itself did not win great appreciation, with the solution arrived at carrying
no conviction, the movie brings into the picture the issue of municipal solid
waste management rather well, and touches upon the important responsibility of food production.
Another Srinivasan movie which
appeals to me is Passenger – 2009. This is not his script. He plays the lead role of a public-spirited commoner
getting involved in a socio-political issue by chance, trying his level best
save a change maker, who falls into the hands of gangsters deployed by a
criminal syndicate planning to displace people for financial gains, whose crime
he was likely to bring to light. The very self-effacing character who seeks no
fame or gain other than accomplishing the opportunity for goodness that is
placed before his eyes is Sathyanathan. As he himself revealed on various occasions,
that was his religion, and if there is a God for him, that was revealed in and through
this sort of goodness.
Traffic, the 2011 movie, presents
Srinivasan as Sudevan, a traffic police constable suspended for bribery, who on
his reinstatement, takes up the task of a challenging drive carrying the heart
of an accident victim from Kochi to Palakkad in a very limited time through the
rush-hour traffic. The Srinivasan character accomplishes the feat, overcoming
the unforeseeable challenges that emerge on the way, and regains his lost
self-esteem and esteem before his own family. This also appeals to my heart
for the twin themes presented in it: (1) of organ donation – in this case, cadaver
transplantation and (2) the possibility of self-improvement by seizing opportunities
and taking risk. The movie has certain segments of narration, which is also
done by Srinivasan.
In the last decade or more of his
life, which he lived from his house at Kandanad, this visionary Malayalee tried
to set before the rest of us the importance of soil and safe and healthy food
production. He practised organic farming
and promoted it. My good friend,
agricultural officer Mr Philipji was his advisor for this. Our Kochi-based
platform to promote organic farming (Organic Kerala Charitable Trust) tried to
get him to our annual organic festival twice, without success.
I salute this great Malayalee,
who passed away, winning admiration and adulation from across the various
sections of our Malayalee population, including those whom he has criticised
through his satire coated in humour. He
passes away as ‘nanma niranjavan Srinivasan’, challenging us believers and
non-believers to fill our lives with goodness towards people and planet and to deflate
our bloated egos by laughing at our own puny selves.
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