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Clown prince

Sreenivasan. Click for bigger pic!

For a comedian there could be no greater accolade. For the minute people see Sreenivasan on screen they begin laughing.

The poker face and the subtle jokes, many directed at himself, combined with a cutting intelligence made his humour really appealing. It isn't surprising, therefore, that he's far more than just a clown on screen -- he is a writer of stories and screenplays who also directs movies.

His new directorial venture, Chinthavishthayaya Shyamala, is the most talked about movie in Kerala now, praised by both critics and cretins.

Shobha Warrier therefore expected she would be meeting an man on a high. But, to her surprise, he appeared almost callously indifferent to all the adulation. She also found she'd made a big mistake, estimating on the basis of the roles he played, that Sreenivasan would be a funny man. He wasn't.

Excerpts from the interview.

Did you know even when you were young that you could make people laugh?

I don't know the answer to your question.

Come now, don't you know you can make people laugh?

But that's only through my films. In real life, I could never make anyone laugh at my jokes. You will be surprised, but the jokes that you hear and the hilarious situations that you see in my movies are created after a lot of deliberation and preparation. I think, think and think hard for the dialogues that can raise laughter in the cinema hall.

I cannot believe you. Can anyone create humour like that? Shouldn't it come naturally?

You have to believe me. I have to think a lot to create those funny situations. They do not come easily to me. Even the dialogues are also not spontaneous.

You mean your dialogues are also not spontaneous! I don't think anyone who has been your films will believe you. They do not appear so in films.

That is because I try hard to create a very natural atmosphere. Do you know how I write? I shut myself up in a room for days together and write the dialogues. I will first see whether those situations appear funny to me, whether the dialogues can make me laugh.

Do you laugh while writing the dialogues?

Yes, I do. I have to enjoy them first, only the will I know whether it will be enjoyed by the others or not. I believe if I can enjoy a joke of mine, all those people who are like me, who belong to my level, can also enjoy them.

What do you mean by your level? Your intellectual level?

I don't know what my intellectual level is. Then, how do you expect me to judge the intellectual level of others? See, I may see a person of my level as an intellectual. At the same time, he need not be an intellectual. At the same time, he need not be an intellectual according to another. You may call someone an intellectual, another person may call him dumb. So, you cannot judge people like that.

With Mohanlal in Pattana Pravesam. Click for bigger pic!

Do you feel it is intellectually inferior to make people laugh?

Again, it is not for me to make a judgement. Let others say whether I am intellectually inferior or not. I don't think of the intellectual level of myself or others when I write those dialogues. I only want others to enjoy them. Simple.

Could you write humour when you were young itself?

In my case, it was not humour that came first. When I was young, I had to encounter a lot of problems, I had to face a lot of hardships. Later on in life, you don't even like to be reminded of all those hardships.

Is it painful to remember the past?

Sometimes, yes. Some memories are very painful, some are shocking. You have to have the courage to face all those painful and shocking incidents. So the humour that I have now may be a route for me to escape those bad vibrations.

Your characters tend to look at situations, which may appear quite painful to others, in a very humorous way. Instead of getting hurt, they get above such situations. Do you also do that?

I was forced to change my attitude. It did not come automatically. I tried to give a funny or naughty angle to all the painful situations that I had encountered so that I could tide over such incidents. It changed my attitude too.

Escapism?

Could be.. Could be...

When did you learn to laugh at painful situations? While experiencing them, or, when you looked back?

Of course, not when I was experiencing them. Only after the experience is over, only after the bad period is over, can you view pains and shocks with a balanced mind. In fact, you learn to look at them differently and from a different perspective only after everything is over. Then you try to convince yourself that all those incidents are very valuable experiences in life, and you need to experience them to grow and understand life better.

This attitude will enable you to look at all the problems in a lighter way. Sometimes I feel I might have developed this ability consciously. Now I know that I can laugh at even the darkest side of life and even the most terrible experience in life.

I don't think you can label it as escapism. It is an ability to control your own mind and emotions so that you become indifferent to all kinds of mind and emotions so that you become indifferent to all kinds of emotions ultimately. See, I am not running away from truth, I am not running away from reality too, I am only tackling them in a different way. I learnt from experience that it was better to view life from this perspective, that's all.

I will give you an example. A man falls dead on the road. A poet moans his death through a poem, a short story writer writes a story based on the incident and a journalist reports the news... Likewise, people react differently to different situations. This is the way I learnt to react to various situations in life. Like you described, in a lighter way, in a humorous way.

A still from Chinthavishthayaya Shyamala. Click for bigger pic!

How did you react when you faced those situations?

Not like this. I do not wish to expand on that. I believe that my strength, if at all I have any strength, is my experiences. Now if I were to encounter such difficult and painful situations, I can tell myself, "These are all a part of life." I believe that if we train ourselves to expect the worst, nothing affects you, nothing will create a deep scar in your mind.

You have been mentioning about the shocks that you had experienced in life. Are they in anyway connected with the film world?

I think the attitude is more important, not the reason for the attitude. The shocks that I have experienced are immaterial. It may appear too trivial to some, too grave to some. It all depends on how you look at it. Just think that little shocks are enough to shake our little mind, okay.

Okay. But when did you come to know that you have this great sense of humour?

I still do not know whether I have a sense of humour or not.

Don't be too modest. You know very well that you have a sense of humour and you also can make people laugh.

The truth is, I still am not convinced about my ability. See, I forget about my film the moment it reaches the audience. After that, it is time for me to sit back and brood about the new film. If I had the so-called sense of humour in me, I need not struggle at all. But the fact is, I have to struggle hard to make people enjoy and happy. You will not understand how much I struggle, you will not understand how many sleepless nights I have... Just to make people laugh.

So, when you try to make people laugh, you don't laugh inside.

I don't laugh inside. On the contrary, I struggle hard; very, very hard. If you think it is easy to make people laugh, you are wrong. It is a very difficult job. But when people see such funny situations on screen, they think it is very easy to create them. Nobody will understand the struggle behind all that.

But all those situations appear quite natural and spontaneous. How do you achieve that?

It is a trick.

When did you start writing?

Ever since I could remember, I had a very strong association with paper and pen. Shall I tell you what I used to write then? Love letters. I've written hundreds and hundreds of them.

Could you give them to any girl?

No.

Were they not intended for real characters?

Of course.

'I am basically a very lazy person, so I like to act'