Abrid Shine touched an emotion with his maiden film 1983 . Some would call it a religion, for others it is passion and the prosaic would settle for cricket. The film is probably the first film in Malayalam for which cricket forms the backdrop. The film took us back to a time long ago where there was only Doordarshan, winning the World Cup was the biggest deal in sport, bunking school to watch cricket, and of course, Sachin Tendulkar. And Abrid maintains, “I just hoped to touch an emotion in everybody – fathers, sons, mothers....”
A huge banner on the main road in Thalayolaparambu announces a reception for its ‘son’ Abrid Shine. The photograph of a smiling Abrid seems to watch over life as it happens in his hometown. Posters of his film punctuate the narrow road to his friend’s house where we meet.
Thalayolaparambu is something like the fictional Brahmamangalam, supposedly near Thiruvananthapuram, where the film is located. It is the kind of place which seems to grudgingly permit change. As an aside he adds, “In Kerala people watched the 1983 World Cup ‘live’ only in Thiruvananthapuram because television in the State came there first.” He has even meticulously captured the popular cultural references of the period. There are film posters, the television commercial for a washing powder (with a dancing girl) and even the ‘passing’ reference to diesel prices of the time.
Via photography
Abrid’s route to cinema was through photography. He was working for a popular Malayalam women’s magazine. He assisted Lal Jose in Puramkazhchakal in the ensemble film Kerala Café . When he told the veteran about his film dreams, Lal Jose invoked common sense and dissuaded him. “I had a good job, a family to look after, so obviously, I couldn’t just quit based on an impulse. Lal sir continues to be my one-stop place for anything I want to know about cinema.”
His inspiration, he says, is friend and former colleague, Martin Prakkat. They both worked for the same magazine. “I watched Martin become a filmmaker; I saw the development of Best Actor as a film. Then he announced ABCD …” He saw it as an affirmation of his ambition. “My dream seemed possible…my dreams came closer.”
The cinema bug bit him, and hard. Soon he quit his job in 2011 to make the film. He mined his memories to find that one story which would touch a chord. Cricket has hitherto been untouched in Malayalam cinema. Like the other cricket film, Lagaan , this is also an underdog story. But the parallel ends there.
There is no heroic win for the underdog, Rameshan, essayed by Nivin Pauly. He hopes to find fruition of his dream through nurturing his son’s talent. Cricket touched a raw emotion and unleashed nostalgia. “I wasn’t familiar with the language of cinema but I wanted to tell an honest story from the heart. I worked on the film, ‘wrote’ using the language of the camera.”
The 38-year-old, who was born in Uttar Pradesh where his parents were working at the time, saw his first cricket match when he was in Class IV. “It was this new game which boys played with a rubber ball and a bat. The ball had to be thrown without bending the elbow, there were three sticks…the ball had to be hit hard. And then I saw a version of the game on television and discovered cricket.” The characters that people the film are from his life, from his memories. “Football and hockey might evoke the same emotion in some people but for me it is cricket.”
Cricket passion
Test matches, wins and losses, cricket scores…cricket trivia peppers his conversation – how he ‘discovered’ Sunil Gavaskar and his sudden retirement in 1987 and the arrival of a Sachin Tendulkar. The film begins with visuals of his retirement and concludes with Abrid’s acknowledgement of being a Sachin fan. “I saw myself in Sachin Tendulkar as he played his first match. He was just a couple of years older than I was.”
Abrid is an established name in fashion photography, and has made many friends from the film industry. He started photography while still in college. The commerce graduate completed his education at Thalayolaparambu. He moved on to wedding photography in Poothotta, “I was very busy while in college. I even bought myself a bike while I was still at college,” he adds with a dash of pride. Through all this, amateur cricket was a sort of constant.
It wasn’t enough and he came to Kochi, he worked as photographer with various publications before 1983 happened. Photography continues to be a mainstay, “cinema is all good but I need a stable source of income,” he says with a dash of pragmatism.
Emotional appeal
The film, he says, is about being seen from different ‘emotional spaces’. For him the space is of Rameshan, the father, who believes his child is a prodigy. His 10-year-old son, Bhagat, who has acted in the film as Rameshan’s son Kannan, plays the game and therefore there is autobiography in the film. For instance, the scene where Rameshan takes his son for coaching to Vijay Menon (Anoop Menon), “it happened to me and I watched from behind a gate as my son played, as does Rameshan.”
He is glad the film has struck a chord; the nostalgia the film has unleashed exceeds his expectations. A father called from Thiruvananthapuram telling him how the scene where Rameshan realises he cannot afford the cricket kit wrenched his heart. “This man took his musically inclined son for violin lessons for the first time. The teacher told him to get his son a violin first. He couldn’t afford it and it is exactly what Rameshan felt. These are universal emotions.”
He ponders awhile and then says, “Do you know there is a lost life behind every cricketer? That there is a father, brother or uncle who sacrificed something to make a cricketing or for that matter any sport dream? And that there are so many Rameshans out there who will never play with a hard ball? They will live out their sporting ambition never playing the actual game.”
