A long while ago, Sajeev Pazhoor had sat at one place for hours, waiting for a political leader who was coming down to Kerala from Delhi. He was working as a journalist then, and along with other reporters, whiled away the time, doing nothing but wait. That evening he put in his papers. He didn't want to be a journalist any more, he just didn’t want to waste so many of his hours doing nothing. After a few years, he wrote Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum, the movie that would fetch him a National Award in 2018.
Today, days before the new feature film he has scripted – Sathyam Paranja Viswasikkuvo -- is about to release, Sajeev sits in the shade of a tree in Tagore Theatre, Thiruvananthapuram. He is putting things together for a programme by the state’s Department of Information and Public Relations. That’s where Sajeev works now, as Assistant Cultural Development Officer. When he wants to write or go to film shootings for which he has written scripts, Sajeev takes leave.
Sathyam Paranja Viswasikkuvo happened long after Thondimuthalum, Sajeev wanting absolutely no similarity between the two. “There’s already a Thondimuthal. Why would you need one more?” he asks. If there has to be a signature style that is the writer’s, it would be the flavor of life that’s present in both his scripts.
Location still
“There are these layers we go to, and the people we interact with. You find interesting bits in those layers and interesting characters everywhere. In Sathyam Paranja Viswasikkuvo, there is Suni (Biju Menon) who does masonry work along with his uncle (Alencier) and a few others. It is about their life – the interesting details of their life, conversations, home and family,” Sajeev says.
His face brightens up as soon as he mentions Suni. You can see how much he enjoyed creating the character. “We don’t know the kind of interesting life different sections of people have. I happened to witness it when there was construction work at home – how the masons interacted with each other, how much fun they had. In the movie, something happens to take away that fun,” he says vaguely.
You imagine, as a journalist, Sajeev would get his stories from the world around him – years at the job making it a habit to notice what no one else does and pen it down later. But all his stories come straight from his imagination, Sajeev says. However, there’d be characters he notices with that journalistic nose for news, and the small things people say may find a space in his script. The words bring Thondimuthal back to mind, but Sajeev rubs that picture away. The new one just should not have parallels.
“It is a family entertainer. When Suni comes home, there is his wife Geetha and their daughter, there is love. Samvrutha plays Geetha.”
Still from Sathyam Paranja Viswasikkuvo
Samvrutha Sunil, who has played quite a few memorable characters in the last half of the 2000s did not act for years, post her marriage. This would be her comeback. “It is Biju chettan who suggested Samvrutha’s name. We were looking for someone new for the character. And the shooting had already begun. One day Biju chettan said that I should call her and tell her the story. I did on a call to the US, where she lives. And she immediately agreed,” Sajeev says.
And she has been much more effective than anyone else they had imagined, Sajeev says.
He had given his script to G Prajith, to direct. Sajeev has known him for long, even before Prajith made his first film Oru Vadakkan Selfie. “We had planned several projects together but nothing worked. This one, as soon as it got written, I called Prajith.”
This is Sajeev’s third script. The first, which he co-wrote with Harikrishnan, was Shaji N Karun’s Swapaanam. Thondimutha