As someone who had laughed at everything else in life, why couldn’t he do that with cancer as well, Innocent wondered when he saw the shattered faces of his family as they absorbed the news of his diagnosis. It was the early 2010s and Innocent, a precious actor for Malayalam cinema audiences, had just been diagnosed with lymphoma. But he took charge, prescribed himself the medicine of laughter while letting the doctors do their job. And it worked. He survived cancer more than once. In the end, it was COVID-19 that weakened his underlying conditions and took his life on Sunday, March 26.

The most difficult moments are not the ones you live through with a terminal disease, but the moments you wait to know what your disease is, Innocent wrote in Cancer Wardile Chiri, a book about facing cancer with laughter. It would of course take someone like Innocent, a man who had made people laugh all his life, to do that. Hundreds of Malayalam films bear proof of that. So do the speeches and interviews he gave over the years. When he died, the actor, politician, and author of several books left many hearts heavy with grief. If he could have had the final word though, he’d have probably made them laugh one more time.

That was his approach when he was diagnosed with cancer. The laughs had not come easily. He had seemed broken at first, having always thought cancer and he were poles apart, one being a disease of suffering and the other a person who made people laugh. Earlier when his old friend Noordheen had asked him to be a patron of the Alpha Pain Clinic for cancer patients, that was his first thought, he wrote in Cancer Wardile Chiri. But he soon became a regular at the clinic. Dr VP Gangadharan, renowned oncologist who treated the actor, vouches for this in the foreword of the book. Dr Gangadharan titled his foreword: ‘Innocent is now a medicine for cancer’.

The doctor meant the light-hearted approach the actor took to cancer. It must have been a decision he took the night he saw his family shattered by the news of his diagnosis. “As someone who finds humour in everything, why couldn’t I do that with the disease? Let the doctors go ahead with their treatment. I will do mine, with the medicine of laughter. I will not sell that to cancer, for sure,” he wrote.

The book was written 10 years ago, after the first diagnosis and after he got well in a year.

But the early days were not easy. He stayed away from work, became thin, and lost a lot of hair. He was not worried about losing acting opportunities, but feared whether his grandchildren Innu (Innocent Junior) and Anna would recognise him.

Innocent with his family

Bad news never stopped coming, it’d seem. Dr Lissy, who was taking care of Innocent at Lakeshore Hospital, too was diagnosed with cancer. But even in the darkest and painful hours, Innocent would somehow find humour again. To Dr Gangadharan who broke the news, he said, “But Gangadharan, I have cancer. The doctor who treated me got cancer. Now if you too get cancer, who will treat me?” And that of course made Gangadharan laugh.

“Innocent didn’t show the signs of depression in every stage of treatment the way other cancer patients do,” Gangadharan wrote in the foreword. It was this easygoing attitude and his choice of going straight for scientific treatment in place of alternative medicines that worked for him, the doctor wrote.

Innocent with Dr VP Gangadharan (rightmost)

Innocent too makes it a point in his book to stress that. He had visits from alternative medical practitioners, from religious preachers, and others, to whom he politely said no. In his book he, of course, gives it an Innocent touch. He writes about a few Christian evangelists who once came home and told him that Jesus appeared in their dreams the night before and asked them to pray for Innocent. The actor, in words that you almost hear him say, asks them “At almost (imagine ekdadesham in Innocent’s voice) what time would he have come to your place?” When they answer, he says, “But Jesus was with me that time, how could he have come to you?”

It is both heartening and comforting when he manages to make you laugh even during the toughest days of his life. When Congress politicians visited his house, Ramesh Chennithala, then the state’s Home Minister, wished him a speedy recovery. Innocent then replied, “Let it take some more time. I want to see that boy also, please bring him.” Chennithala asked which boy and Innocent said, “Rahul Gandhi. After that, we will see about Sonia Gandhi.” Chennithala left the house in splits.

Another time, as Innocent and his wife Alice left a funeral house, they heard the pastor say that the people God calls back early are the people God loves the most. On their return trip, Alice was shocked to see Innocent making faces at a chapel they passed. He reminded her of the pastor’s words. “My dear Alice, I already have cancer. Imagine what will happen if God loves me more! This is to make him angry with me.”

In between the anecdotes, he also brings attention to the worrisome fact of how cancer treatment can be unaffordable to the commoner. Even as an actor who was doing well, it was difficult for him to sometimes meet the expenses. He acted in ads during his illness to deal with it. Imagine, he asks, what a daily wage labourer would do. This is also a pet subject that he took up when he later became a Lok Sabha Member of Parliament.

Watch: Innocent's speech in Parliament

A year after his diagnosis, Innocent had regained his health so much that he was free of the dreaded disease and ready to celebrate. But by then, Alice was diagnosed with cancer. And as he narrates about that day, when he had just gotten well and she was diagnosed, it breaks your heart. Between all his digs at her, Innocent’s love for his wife comes through in the way he keeps dropping her name into his tales, and sometimes, a little more obviously.

Alice and Innocent

Alice, Innocent wrote, had not been the same since the diagnosis; she’d either be praying or crying alone. “I can’t bear to see any of this, so I would always try to make her laugh with my jokes. Even when I was really unwell and exhausted, I tried to find jokes for Alice. Because I don’t like it when Alice cries.”

Gangadharan too mentions how Innocent took the news of his own disease a lot better than how he reacted to Alice’s. He broke down. Even then, even when he was really upset, he tried to make her laugh.

This documentation of love goes back to the first book of memoirs he wrote: Njan Innocent (1992). After the chapters on his childhood days (his dad named him Innocent because he had the looks of a thief), Innocent goes on to narrate the struggles of his early adulthood. A school dropout, he had taken up running two matchbox factories in Davanagere in Karnataka, but both had run into loss. Hiding this fact, he says, he got married to Alice. Though he makes it all sound funny, the underlying pain can’t be missed.

Younger photo of Innocent (sitting in the middle)

In those early days when they had little money, they planned to celebrate their first Christmas together at Alice’s home. There was a custom in which the newly married husband brought alcohol and cake to the wife’s home. Innocent ran from pillar to post to borrow enough money to buy both, before taking it to Alice’s home on a friend’s scooter. But when he reached Alice’s place, the bottle had broken and the alcohol had spilled over the cake. Alice, the ever understanding wife, told him not to worry. At that point, you simply want to reach out and pat the man and woman in the picture.

Making it to films had been an even bigger hurdle. He spent 2.5 years in Madras, walking to places to try his luck, because he could not afford the bus journey that cost 15 paisa. After a few minor roles, he turned to production with his friend David Kachappally. They made some nice movies that would be remembered for decades – Vida Parayum Munpe, Ormakkai, Lekhayude Maranam Oru Flashback – but which did not bring them any money. He had sold the last of Alice’s gold when another film, Oru Katha Oru Nuna Katha, was made. In his self-deprecating humour, he told actor Nedumudi Venu, his friend and the film’s hero, that the curry he was having that day must have tasted of gold because it came from the last two of Alice’s bangles. Venu shot back saying Innocent always made a joke of his pain and found relief in that. 

Perhaps the relief was not just from easing his own pain, but of the people around him. His books tell you that.