While in sixth grade, Sreenivasan wrote a skit, ten minutes long. Kambi Adicha Koran, a story he heard somewhere. At the end, he saw all the students and teachers laughing. That’s probably when he realised he had that rare gift to make those around him laugh. He kept doing it, at home, at school and college, writing, directing and acting in dramas.
Cinema was not even in his dreams. But Sreeni — as he is fondly called — believes you can’t stop destiny and destiny wanted him in the movies, acting, writing scripts, directing, winning awards. If the few who had a preview of his newest character — lead in Sajin Baabu’s Ayaal Sassi — are to be believed, Sreeni has done an award-worthy performance as Sashi Namboothiri, a little fraudster of an artist.
“Sajin had shown me the script and I feel that was even better than the film you saw. It was all new, the things discussed in every scene, the idea of a man who so wants to make a name for himself, he even celebrates death,” Sreenivasan says. “It was different from acting in other films. There, you have to act to make some characters effective. In this film I didn’t even think where the camera was. I have acted —rather behaved — like the old days when I worked with Aravindettan (director Aravindan) and in my first film Manimuzhak-kam by PA Backer.”
In commercial cinema, there is little scope for it, Sreeni admits. “You have to do a bit more to make it appealing. People think a director teaches acting. But in good films a director doesn’t. They don’t say do this,” he says.
He laughs heartily so often that it is infectious. “There is no life without laughs for me.” And he is willing to go extra lengths to bring in humour to his films. Sreenivasan would often have some shade of negativity in the characters he writes for himself. “It is all for humour, not to make me a villain.”
Even in the two films he directed — Vadakkunokkiyanthram and Chinthvishtayaya Shyamala — he is downplayed. That becomes worthy of discussion at a time when there is talk of addressing misogyny in cinema. “Women in our land – our daughters — are handled with fear. Abroad, parents worry if their teenage child doesn’t have a boyfriend or a girlfriend. But in our conservative society, it becomes a problem when a man talks to a woman. And people look at sex education as a big taboo. When Vineeth (elder son) was five to eight years old, he asked me how he was born. I started explaining in detail and my wife was upset. She ran away screaming she doesn’t want to listen to this. But isn’t it better than him hearing it from others?”
Sreeni goes on to say how Americans let their children move out at 18, to make them independent. “We are not in America and I never asked Vineeth or Dhyan to move out, but they had to go away for studies, to Chennai. It did them good, they became independent. I have not done anything for them in cinema. I don’t try to give lessons. I share my life experiences with them. They know I have struggled, and now they are struggling harder than me.”
The only time Sreenivasan sounds serious is when he talks of destiny. Once as a young lad he spoke to a man who predicted that he will make it big in cinema, win an award from the head of the nation. Sreeni ridiculed him because cinema was not in his mind then, he loved theatre. But years later, after Shyamala won him a national award, he remembered the man’s words. “My belief that it was all because of my talent and work, was destroyed. It seems all that had already been decided. That is destiny. But I am not a god believer.”
When you tell him Shyamala was 19 years ago, when is his next directorial, he says playfully, “Let destiny decide.”
All his focus had been on organic farming, he had no time to think stories. “But this year, Sathyan (director Sathyan Anthikad) and I are doing a film.” Sreeni has also scripted the film Paviettante Madhura Chooral, where he plays with Lena an aged childless couple. It is more serious than Sreeni’s typical humour-rich scripts. With satire he had taken a dig at politics for a long time. “At a programme in Kannur, I was asked who I wanted to be in my next birth. I said I don’t believe in rebirth but if we should imagine it, I wished to be born in a world without religion or politicians.”
The talk obviously moves to the national anthem and playing it in cinemas. “I don’t believe there is substance in that. Does patriotism come by standing for the anthem? You shouldn’t insult the anthem, but when you force something one would lose whatever patriotism one had. It is a feeling that should come from within. To love one’s country, the governance should be good. But politicians are addicts of power. It is because they don’t read that they have become so inhuman. Reading is what makes humans, humans.”
