It was the most celebrated scene in the 1965 Malayalam classic Chemmeen—Karuthamma is about to be married to the fisherman Palani, while her heartbroken admirer Pareekutty, played by Madhu, comes to see her for the last time. Serenaded by the sound of the waves crashing against the shore, the young lovers bid farewell.
“I will always sit here and think of you,” Madhu tells her. “I will sing loudly for you. I will sing and sing until I die of heartbreak.” Who can forget that scene with Madhu in the red shirt and mundu, hair slickly parted, voice cracking, handlebar moustache quivering? All you wanted to do was smooth away the frown creasing his brow.
It has been 55 years since he joined the industry, and that frown has stood the test of time. Even in his movies today, his habitual expression is one of careworn worry, deep introspection. As though he’s carrying the weight of the whole world.
It is this innate melancholia that made him such a great onscreen lover in the 1960s and 70s. I wonder how much of it spilled over from his offscreen persona. Perhaps not much, since he seems to have lived the good life. He became an actor after getting acquainted with director Ramu Kariat at the National School of Drama, where he studied. Kariat invited him to an audition in Chennai, where he landed his first role in N.N. Pisharody’s Ninamaninja Kalpadukal. Since then, he has acted in over 300 movies.
Actor Madhu | Russell Shahul
He seems to have had a loving relationship with his wife Jayalakshmi, who died a few years ago. He’s said earlier that he’s never met a woman with a more beautiful soul than his wife, whom he called Thankom. They had a daughter, Uma, after whom he named his production company Uma Film Studio. He went on to produce many hit films like Mini, which won a national award in 1995.
Madhu, 84, lives and breathes cinema. When he completed 50 years in the industry, he said it came as no surprise to him. “The only reason I have completed 50 years is, I have not died till now,” he said. He did not even have hobbies other than acting. “When I get bored these days, I accept a role and act in a movie,” the veteran actor joked in an interview.
He entered films at a time when Sathyan and Prem Nazir were the reigning heroes. I think Madhu was able to carve out a niche for himself because he brought with him something unique: an air of ‘goodness’. Madhu, like the Pareekutty of Chemmeen, was essentially an good man. He did not possess the suaveness of Nazir, or the machismo of Sathyan, but he had the soul of a stoic; a person so morally incorruptible that he’s willing to make the supreme sacrifice that love demands.
I was too young to watch Madhu, the lover of the 60s and 70s. In the movies I watched, he was mostly Madhu, the father, in films like Varnapakittu and Ezhupunnatharakan. What stays with me is Madhu’s face twisted in pain, because of all those sudden heart attacks with which the director chose to end his life on so many occasions, most often after hearing some shocking news. (It is a technique which Malayalam movie makers have used to the point of exhaustion—killing off a vital family member with a sudden heart attack to mark a turning point in the hero’s life, when he’s either moved to remorse or revenge.)
I remember a joke from the Malayalam parody of the movie Titanic called Titanenic. When the ship with all the film stars is sinking, a man shouts: “Hey, somebody put Madhu in the middle so that the ship doesn’t tilt to one side.” They’re referring to his heavyset frame. But in so many ways, Madhu has been at the centre of the Malayalam film industry, anchoring it to a set of values that he embodies, not just as an actor, but as a person.