Filmmaker Ranjith had minced no words when he exposed Mollywood’s hypocrisy of showering praises on veteran actor Thilakan after his death. The award-winning director ridiculed the double standards of the same people, who had imposed a ban on the versatile artiste for long.
Similar images popped up two days ago when the Malayalam film industry lost one of its best comedians with the death of Mala Aravindan.
The who’s who of the Association of Malayalam Movie Artistes (AMMA) lost no time to eulogize him.
But Aravindan had faced the organisation’s ban for over a year for acting in director Vinayan’s movie, Yakshiyum Njanum .
“AMMA leadership had then asked him not to act in my movie. But he had the guts to defy their directive and acted in the film. He was banned for nearly a year,” recalled Vinayan.
The filmmaker had decided to cast him in his movie, Reghuvinte Swantham Raziya, but later dropped it after Aravindan told him that AMMA had asked him to submit a letter stating that he would not act in Vinayan’s movies.
Interestingly, a comedian and a senior functionary of AMMA, who was seen praising Aravindan in all television channels after his death, had refused to act with him in a movie during the ban period.
Aravindan had often shared his pain of being sidelined with people close to him but he never made it a big issue.
He stayed away from acrimonious television debates and never threw mud at his detractors.
The actor managed to hold on despite losing out many movies before finally making a brief comeback after a year-long ban. Mollywood failed to utilise the talents of this actor.
He got only a few movies afterwards, one of which was Ranjith Shankar’s Punyalan Agarbathis , where he played the role of a mahout to perfection.
