'Sandesham': 30 Years of Sathyan Anthikad's Satire on Family and Politics

30 years of 'Sandesham' the Malayalam satire starring Jayaram, Sreenivasan, Thilakan directed by Sathyan Anthikad.

Jayaram, Thilakan, Kaviyoor Ponamma and Sreenivasan in Sandesham.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube)

“Poland-inekkurichu oraksharam mindaruthu!” (Don’t you utter a word about Poland!) – Sreenivasan’s retort to Jayaram in the Sathyan Anthikad-directed Sandesham (1991), released 30 years ago, remains fresh in Kerala’s collective memory. The film, centered on the state’s bipolar politics in a typical family setting, is as relevant today as it was back then, with the political issues of the day, too, pretty much remaining static.

Sandesham was made in the backdrop of the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) winning a shock mandate in the 1991 Kerala assembly election following Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, on the back of the EK Nayanar-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) government advancing elections by a year after sweeping the elections to the district councils and the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) nearly walking out of the UDF. As a consequence, there are many references to the political issues of the day, from global to local, including India’s Balance of Payment crisis, the end of Cold War and the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union.

Jayaram, Thilakan and Sreenivasan in Sandesham.

The protagonists – Sreenivasan (who also scripted the film) represents the Left and his younger sibling played by Jayaram typifies Congress, two major political forces in the state even today. It isn’t uncommon to come across siblings (and other members of a family) being vocal supporters of rival political fronts in Kerala and, Sandesham captures it perfectly. The film opens with a just-retired Thilakan returning to his home state after 30 years in Tamil Nadu. He quickly realises how his professionally qualified sons waste all their time on political activism as lower-level functionaries of rival parties without earning a livelihood on their own. While Thilakan imagines that his sons would eventually make their mark as politicians, things only take a downward spiral.

Even as Sandesham is hailed as a classic for its highbrow satire and continued relevance, there is a contrarian opinion that the film runs down politics altogether. While there may be some merit that the Sandesham (message) of the film is to prioritise family over society, it only reinforces the Gandhian maxim that ‘work is worship’. Today, in an age when politics has become synonymous with corruption, the message is much more striking, as it is important to not make politics one’s source of livelihood. Although sections of the Left contend that Sandesham promotes an ‘apolitical’ worldview, there is absolutely no merit to that argument.

A newspaper ad for Sandesham.

Sandesham's dialogues get featured regularly on Kerala’s satire shows in news channels and phrases such as ‘sajeeva anthardhara’ often make it to primetime debates. The Left ideologue played by Sankaradi whose ‘thathvika avalokanam’ (theoretical review) on why his party lost – “Even though the separatists and the reactionaries seemed to have been opposed to each other, we have to assume they had a mutual understanding. And the bourgeoisie were waiting for an opportunity to strike” – frequently feature in memes.

Sandesham continues to be a source for memes.

Had Sreenivasan known that the film would be rated so highly (9/10) by the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB) and feature among the top 100 Indian films by few media someday, he would probably revisit some of the dialogues involving politics – although it might well be the case that he wrote it purely as satire, mocking the doctrinal approach of the Left. While the satire never stoops to caricaturing, it raises many uncomfortable questions, especially on the inconsistency in talk and action and the sheer hypocrisy of it all. Yet, the protagonists are shown to be extremely loyal to their respective parties and there is no doubting their integrity.

Most of the other parts in Sandesham are also played by Sathyan Anthikad regulars, with Oduvil Unnikrishnan cast in a pivotal role. Mamukkoya as the ‘Mandalam’ president of Congress and Innocent as ‘national leader’ Yashwant Sahai are a laugh riot. Jagathy Sreekumar was originally cast as the brother-in-law of the protagonists but Mala Aravindan had to be roped in at the last minute on account of the former’s unavailability. Among the cast, it is Siddique who steals the show as the antithesis of the protagonists. While Siddique played a character with a similar background in Grihapravesham (1992), his turn as the self-made agricultural officer Udayabhanu is reflective of his true range as an actor.

Jayaram and Mamukkoya in Sandesham.

As with Kerala’s politics then and now, there aren’t many female characters in Sandesham apart from Kaviyoor Ponnamma as the mother of the protagonists and KPAC Lalitha and Maathu playing their elder and younger sisters – playing their parts admirably. While their parts may not stand up to the scrutiny of feminist readings, all of them have their distinct personalities and that is what matters.

Coming back to the theme, both Sathyan Anthikad and Sreenivasan have reiterated how they would tackle the twin vices of communalism and corruption had it been made today but the fact that Kerala politics, by-and-large, steered clear of such tendencies back then made Sandesham focus more on ideology.

Many of the scenes conceived in Sandesham including the claiming of a bystander’s dead body as ‘martyr’ by rival parties and the ‘strategy’ of trapping promising young politicians in sexual harassment cases have since played out in Kerala, underlining the prophetic nature of the film. Sreenivasan had once stated in jest that his biggest contribution to Malayalam Cinema was not succumbing to making a number of mediocre films. The jaded nature of the 2018 Fahad Fazil-starrer Njan Prakashan (by the same duo) underscored the importance of Sreenivasan’s previous statement. Sandesham is a testament to the keen observer in Sreenivasan and the slice-of-life films he wrote in the late ‘80s and ‘90s, where he would generally cast himself as an idiosyncratic character.

And finally, why Poland got the Communists’ goat back then was the victory of Lech Walesa – the trade unionist who was the first democratically-elected president of Poland since 1926, in 1990.

(Anand Kochukudy is a Kerala-based journalist and former editor of The Kochi Post. He tweets @AnandKochukudy. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)