A new lease of life

The success of PK has generated renewed interest in Malayalam films with similar themes.

All the madness of religious fanatics that has helped the Aamir Khan-starrer PK become the highest grosser in Indian cinema history has sparked off a renewed interest in films dealing with subjects related to atheism and rationality.

One of the beneficiaries of this is the Malayalam film Prabhuvinte Makkal directed by Sajeevan Anthikkad.

The film, released in 2012, follows the lives of two brothers, one an atheist and the other a believer, and asks the same difficult questions about religion that

PK asked.

It also uses similar methods to lampoon god-men and expose some of their ‘tricks.’

But the three-hour-long film sank without a trace back then, as it did not have the necessary commercial elements, most importantly a marketable face. Incidentally, none of the fanatics targeted it too.

With the film’s name popping up in various discussions online after the

PK controversy, the film-maker decided to release it on YouTube on Thursday, and it has already been viewed by around 3,000 people.

The film could end up finding the intended audience in this second stint.

Another film which was cited in most discussions on PK is M.T. Vasudevan Nair’s Nirmalyam , which could face the ire of the ‘hurt sentiments’ gang if it were to be released now, especially for that iconic sequence of the oracle spitting on the deity.

He is equally emotional in real life as in films when things seem not going as he would have liked, especially, when it’s related to something close to his heart like tree planting.

The actor may have launched the now viral ‘My Tree Challenge, ’ but from the look of it, he is least impressed about the way the noble cause is being pursued by many.

Those who handed him a sapling of an ‘Ashoka’ tree ( Saraca asoca ) at the Forest department’s ‘Agri Fest’ initiative recently got a taste of what it is like being on the receiving end of the actor’s fury.

The actor refused to plant the sapling, leaving the organisers on a panic hunt for another sapling and managing to somehow find a sapling of the banyan or the Ficus benghalensis (‘Almaram’).

Even that didn’t please the actor though he planted it as he publicly said that it did not qualify as a tree. In his book, trees are those which either give shelter or fruits and hence those are the ones to be planted.

With frustration still lingering, he asked those interested to plant saplings on their own and not to invite him for every such function. Unsurprisingly, the netizens were not amused by the actor’s ‘show’ and lost no time in criticising him for his lack of knowledge about the ashoka and banyan trees.

The greens on the Net even posted a clipping from the actor’s movie Sethuramaiyer CBI , where his character is seen sitting under a banyan tree eulogising over its many ecological advantages.

They also recalled that the ashoka tree had found place in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of threatened species and is regarded as vulnerable.

Now, whether that knowledge would have changed the actor’s response remains in the realm of conjecture.

(Reporting by

S.R. Praveen and

G. Krishnakumar)