For a Mother’s Day special edition of a regional daily, Lohithadas had spoken at length about his mother. “I always found it baffling that my mother verbally abused us. She was always tired and irritable, too busy working round the clock to shower us with love and affection. I always longed for her affection. Years later, I realised that she was struggling to make ends meet, to put food on the table, and that at heart she adored us.”
For someone who made an art out of gritty dramas that spoke to a particular class of Malayali family audiences, parenting and parent-child bonds often became the central peg, or even the entire narrative. Here we tease out some archetypes from the Lohithadas stable of cinema.
The mother who never shows love
It comes as no surprise that a lot of his on-screen mothers were textured around his real mother. The ones who hid their marshmallow hearts behind a tough exterior. In Sallapam, Divakaran and his mother share a love-hate relationship—he is extremely surly with her and she in turn verbally abuses him. He doesn’t even address her as “Amma”; for him she is that “old woman”. Yet she is the first one who rushes to comfort him when Radha spurns his marriage proposal. Similar is Susheela (Bindu Panicker), the foul-mouthed motherly figure in Joker, who rarely displays any love. Yet we know that at heart she is a tender woman.
In Kasthuriman we see two extreme representations of motherhood—one, a loud, obnoxious manipulative mother who is easily bought with a bottle of alcohol, and the other who is unable to fight for her daughters.
Though she appears for just five minutes, Viswanathan’s mother (KPAC Lalitha) in Kanmadam is an unforgettable character. When she sees her son, who is also the reason behind her husband’s paralytic condition, after two decades, her first impulse is to warmly engulf him with love. But the minute she hears her bedridden husband’s voice, she freezes, distancing herself from her son. In that one scene, we see a woman flitting in and out of the multiple responsibilities, letting her sense of justice prevail over everything else.
Lalitha’s Maryppennu in Veendum Chila Veetukaryangal is all but turned into a spectator to the complex, volatile bond between her husband and son. Ditto in Kudumba Puranam.
Reportedly based on a real-life character, the mother in Venkalam turns out to be unfathomable, with her ancient theory of happy bigamy that creates a rift between her own sons. She is more a symbol of regressive mores than a genuine troublemaker, making it easier to forgive her.
The mother who only gives
Balan’s mother in Thaniyavarthanam remains a lingering trauma, as much as the mother in Thulabharam. Both women, completely self-sacrificing and giving, lead a life solely for their children. In many ways they remain the stereotype of a celluloid mother, almost impossible to break. The mother who poisons her children and herself to save them from a lifetime of misery and pain.
Kireedam’s mother, on the other hand, is a mere onlooker in her son’s misery. The mentally ill queen in His Highness Abdulla sees her dead son Unni only in the hero, thereby helping the latter gain entry into the king’s chamber. In fact, ‘Unni’ is a name weirdly linked to prodigal sons in Malayalam cinema—the ones who usually perfected the disappearing act. And in all those instances it was Kaviyoor Ponnamma who gave them a face, making her the unshakable symbol of sacrificial motherhood. In Arayannangalude Veedu, Ponnamma’s mother isn’t quite as malleable and is unable to pick the rotten apple from her own children. But with time, she accepts her folly and finds redemption through the very son she treated unfairly.
Let’s also not forget the surrogate mother in Dasharatham who refuses to part with her child, despite having signed a written clause.
The father who struggles to fill in for the mother
Lohithadas worked equally on making the father a layered character. They were all men trying to emotionally, and at times physically, fill in a void left by the mother and often take charge of their lives. Amaram’s Achutty is a resilient, selfless father. After his wife’s death, his daughter remains the epicentre of his universe and he dares to weave dreams that seem hugely ambitious for a man of his capacity. But when Muthu selfishly decides to choose love over her father, his world comes crashing down. Somewhere during this, you are made to feel that the events wouldn’t have gone out of hand had the mother been around to anchor them.
Kireedam’s Achuthan Nair is, in many ways, an elderly version of Achutty—the father who lived to see his dreams attaining fulfilment through his son. Both Achutty and Achuthan are unable to come to terms with the failure of their carefully drawn out plans for their child. While Achutty still manages to hold on, Achuthan crumbles.
It’s the reality of having a child to love and cherish that thaws the heart of the hardened criminal Antony in Kauravar. In one split second, the man who was on a mission to vanquish Inspector Haridas and his three daughters finds himself reduced to happy tears when he is told that one of them is his own, leaving us in no doubt that the hatred he was carrying all these years was a façade.
Bhoothakannadi’s Vidyadharan remains the most multifaceted father. He is cowardly, shows his fatherly love not in typically ‘manly’ ways. When a local goldsmith is piercing his daughter’s ears, an agonised Vidyadharan walks aimlessly in another room, feeling powerless and unable to watch her cry. An anxious Vidyadharan huddles with his daughter in the attic after witnessing Sarojini’s daughter’s death. He is that father who can only hold on to his daughter’s life even as the world is cruelly tearing apart another. Lohithadas skilfully and emotionally blends this vulnerability and his mental instability when he creates the allegory of the bhoothakannadi for Vidyadharan. That’s why Vidyadharan still remains the picture of a loving father.
Rajeev Menon (Dasharatham) is the unlikeliest of fathers—a rich spoilt brat who one fine day desires to have a child, but minus the societal conditions attached to it. When surrogacy is suggested he agrees and that process to fatherhood is a sort of self-discovery for him. In the end when he bravely hands over the child to Annie, we are witnessing a lonely, unloved man, who always missed having a mother around. More than being a father, it seems to us that Rajeev hoped to be loved unconditionally by his own child.
Mudra’s reform school inmates all come from broken homes and they live in the agony of that memory. Ironically, the man who brings sunshine to their life is an orphan, an erstwhile inmate himself who was later adopted by a kind man.
Padheyam tries to go beyond blood ties. Even though we are heartbroken when the daughter eventually chooses her stepfather over her biological father, there seems to a sublime sense of justice in that. Thooval Kottaram’s Murali is that rich helpless father who uses money to buy happiness for his daughter, selfishly overlooking others’ feelings in the process.
Thirumuttathu Kochuthomma, some may say, was the revolutionary dad who deliberately allows his son to despise him to make a man out of him. Can there be a more “selfless” show of love than that? Not if you want to be an archetype *wink wink*.
This article was originally published on Fullpicture.in. The News Minute has syndicated the content. You can read the original article here.