The Old Man Who Directed the Puppets

 

It was a December in the early seventies, the month of the winter holidays, and the restless Ambi had at long last reached his Nana’s village of Kollenvilai in Kanyakumari district, on the southernmost tip of the peninsula, after a long and arduous journey by train and bus all the way from the township. Hardly had the aches of that journey worn off when the boys grew fidgety, and then positively naughty, as boys will in a village home where the days are long and the grown-ups are preoccupied.

The last of Ambi’s maternal uncles, Mr Subramoni, was the typical prodigal son of an indulgent father. He had made a habit of failing his college examinations, with a regularity that bordered on devotion, and Nana was growing anxious about his life and his future. But Subramoni had a passion, and it burned for the celluloid world. He kept himself abreast of every development in Kollywood and Mollywood in the manner of an ardent student preparing for the most punishing quiz ever set, on actors and actresses, producers and directors, on-screen matters and off-screen lives, and the doings of all the heroes and heroines of celluloid. His room lay strewn with Bommai, Filmfare, Cineyug, Stardust and Pesum Padam.

Whenever Ambi and Kalyan went racing up the stairs to the only room on the first floor, the one that housed the family’s granary, there he was, either attending to his coiffure before the mirror with the gravity of a man due on a film set, or sunk deep in the gupshup that the film magazines narrated so vividly. He never tired of promising Ambi that he would travel with them on their return journey to Sunabeda, as far as Madras, where he would get down to visit the studios at Vadapalani, gather a first-hand account of the proceedings on a film set, and catch a glimpse of his favourite stars, MGR above all, and Manjula. He also considered himself smart and handsome enough to be given a chance to act in Kollywood. But when the hour came to bid adieu at Kollenvilai, the man was invariably missing, no doubt holed up in a cinema house in Nagercoil, or watching a film shoot in progress in some picturesque spot like Muttom, or at the Palace near Thuckalay.

Now, as the days dragged on and the boys grew ever more restless, Nana hit upon an idea: he would take them along to watch the evening sunset at Kanyakumari. The folks at home were not exactly enthused about this onerous task that Nana had shouldered, and they suggested, rather pointedly, that the unemployed, starry-eyed undergraduate might as well stand in for Nana and take the boys out.

Subramoni, for one, was not up to the idea at first. But it soon dawned on him that he could profit from the trip after all, since he could cadge some good money from Nana on the pretext of covering expenses and keeping the boys in good humour. So Nana agreed and pressed a Gandhi note of those days into Subramoni’s palm. Then the plan took an unexpected turn. The two elder boys, Swami and Ganesan, bowed out of their own accord, having resolved to complete the elusive eleven of a local cricket team that was raring to take on a side from neighbouring Tiruvithamcode. These two were the self-styled opening pair, Fredericks and Greenidge of Kollenvilai, and no excursion to the sea could hope to compete with that.

So it was Subramoni, the mischievous Kalyan and an unruly Ambi who resolved to make a day of it to Land’s End. But the note stayed snug in Subramoni’s pocket, and looking at Ambi, he rubbed his palms with glee as the two opening batsmen withdrew.

They set out for the local bus stand, since express buses would not deign to stop at Kollenvilai, and asked Moses to drop them there in the Ambassador. Moses had been Nana’s driver in the late sixties, and when the car was sold to an acquaintance, Nana had sent him off along with it. He was still at the wheel of the same Ambassador for its new owner, and gave the three of them the lift as a favour.

Soon an express bus to Nagercoil came rolling in from Marthandam. Subramoni ushered the boys aboard, and finding them haggling over the window seat, instructed them to sit tight and quiet in an empty seat line. Before long they saw him haggling in turn with the conductor for two half tickets, swearing solemnly that the two boys were tiny enough to merit the special concession. He was, of course, counting every paise he could save for a “filmy” day. The conductor, naturally, had to yield, if only to buy peace.

The bus wound its way through green paddy fields, with rocky hillsides rising to the west and small hamlets strung along the road, past Puliyoorkurichi, Kumarakoil, the Villukuri viaduct, Chunkankadai and Parvathipuram, and finally, after about thirty minutes, swung into the city bus stand at Vadasery. The boys leapt down, ran, and installed themselves on the cement benches of the terminus. Their hero descended last, with the unhurried dignity of a star stepping out of a studio limousine, scanning the terminus for the admirers who must surely be waiting for him to set foot on terra firma.

But the seventy-odd people waiting for buses in different directions were all engrossed in a tamasha at one corner of the stand, which the boys could view clearly from their benches. A mini screen had been put up under a low roof, and the organisers were working half a dozen puppets from behind the back screen. It was a bommalattam, a puppet show put on by the local social welfare unit, with a large red triangle displayed as publicity, urging people to take to family planning. The song that accompanied the puppet dance was a Tamil song 

நான் எங்க போனாலும் நீயும் கூடவே வர்றியே,
யாருக்கும் தெரியாம மெல்ல என் நெஞ்சுக்குள்ள குடியே புகுந்துட்டியே.
சொல்லு பாரு, நீ எனக்கு யாருடா?
பேர் வைக்கவும் தெரியல, விட்டுப் போகவும் மனசு வரல.

This song was inspired by the Hindi number from the iconic Raj Kapoor’s movie, Chori Chori.

जहाँ मैं जाती हूँ, वहीं चले आते हो, चोरी-चोरी मेरे दिल में समाते हो, ये तो बताओ कि तुम मेरे कौन हो...

Subramoni, who knew no Hindi, had not the faintest idea where the tune had been lifted from. Ambi knew very well. He had heard that song again and again on the valve radio at home, during the noon break after twelve, in the Vividh Bharati programme Aap Hi Ke Geet.

Kalyan grew so rapt in the bommalattam that he abandoned his cement bench, tiptoed up to the screen, and fell in with the bandwagon of little boys capering around the show, in spirited competition with the puppets. A little later he slipped around the screen and discovered that the whole spectacle was being run by two men pulling the strings from behind. He came rushing back to the benches to announce how the entire system was operated by a couple of puppeteers. Subramoni paid no heed. Ambi asked Kalyan to take him to see the string-pullers, and he did see them, but scurried back to the benches, lest he lose his uncle to the buses.

Subramoni’s attention had not stayed on the puppets for long. It had drifted to an old, haggard man in his seventies, who stood watching the puppetry from a safe distance, a little away from the screen. The frail old man gesticulated and gestured the whole time, as though he were issuing instructions to the dramatis personae, directing them to act as he wanted, from moment to moment. The crowd had very nearly concluded that he was insane.

When Ambi got back, Subramoni was still where he had been left, though he had edged slightly to his left, and was muttering to another man beside him, pointing a finger at the frail old man. Ambi had no idea then what Subramoni was up to.

Soon a line of buses filed into the terminus, one after another. Subramoni’s attention was fixed wholly on the old man and on where he was heading. The old man boarded a bus to Kanyakumari, one that took a detour before reaching the sunset point. Subramoni shepherded the boys into that same bus, seated them securely in the middle, and went up to where the old man sat and settled down beside him. He was seen trying to break into a conversation, though the old man was rather reluctant to speak, but Subramoni showed no inclination to give up. He pushed and plodded on until, at last, the old man could be seen nodding gently and answering in single syllables. He looked sick, morose and melancholic. For a full twenty minutes Subramoni kept him engaged, until the bus turned off the highway into a village, Agastheeswaram. Five minutes later the bus screeched to a halt, the old man alighted gently, and Subramoni shouted the boys out of the bus as he got down himself.

He followed the old man to his house, talking to him all the way, while all the man did was nod to his fellow walker. Ambi and Kalyan simply trailed the two of them, until they came to a large, old, tiled mansion, where the old man bade adieu to Subramoni and walked into a tenement on the ground floor.

Then miserly Subramoni marched the boys all the way from Agastheeswaram to the sunset point, a good two and a half kilometres. As they trudged along, Ambi began his round of interrogations. He was told that the old man had been a great film maker, one of the earliest of the early twentieth century, from the days when celluloid entertainment had not yet touched Kerala, though Tamil Nadu had already made some strides in silent movies.

They arrived at the sunset point tired and famished, just in time to watch the Sun sink, blushing and unhurried, into the confluence of the three seas. Then the boys served Subramoni with an ultimatum: take them to a hotel and feed them masala dosa, nothing less, or they would not budge. Left with no alternative, he led them to a cafe and ordered the exotic long dosa, muttering all the while, “I made a mistake in taking these devilish ghouls out of Kollenvilai,” his kutti pisasus, his little ghouls.

*  *  *

Years passed, nearly half a century of them. It was only in 2020, during the covid holidays, when Nambi sat down to watch Kamal’s Celluloid, that the whole scene at the Vadasery bus stand came flooding back to him: the puppets, the red triangle, the crowd, the frail old man at the edge of it all. The “insane” old man was probably none other than J.C. Daniel, Joseph Chelliah Daniel, the father of Malayalam cinema.

Nambi realised, all those years later, that Ambi had seen a forgotten celebrity.

And the strings, he thought. All the characters of Vigathakumaran vanished without a trace, P.K. Rosy among them, and the man who had made them was himself left standing at the edge of a crowd. The truth, perhaps, was that he never did direct the puppet show at all. But he was so passionate about film making that he stood there directing the puppets anyway, lost in it, losing sight of his way home. He had probably come to Nagercoil to see a doctor about his ailments, Nambi supposed, a diagnosis offered, alas, nearly half a century too late. Sitting there on the cement bench all those years ago, Ambi had only wondered where the old man was going, and had never thought to ask him anything.

The Hillranger writes from Dharmarajapuram, where the strings are pulled by hands no one sees, and the finest directors are often the ones who stand a little apart.