Innocent’s chubby cheeks could spread the most heartening smiles you have ever seen. His laughter was highly infectious, too.
Nobody could hold off a belly laugh just as he cracked another joke.
Jokes defined his persona, even during the most difficult period of his cancer treatment.
Minutes after his death on the night of 26 March, a leading TV producer in Kerala was heard saying: he often came straight from chemotherapy to our floor.
How he could manage it is beyond anybody’s guess.
Just imagine, going into a chemotherapy and coming out dazed from dispiriting procedure.
He could have been in a state of storm, but he pulled himself together and headed towards a TV show.
At the studio he would be the same vivacious Innocent again whose jokes still flowed out, despite exhaustion, spicing up the show.
Millions watched him on TV at home wondered: wasn’t this man fighting cancer and still laughs? Is this an act?
Many harboured similar thoughts but there were others who pined for his laughter. Yes, the cancer patients themselves.
He administered them with the most powerful pill—laughter.
His book ‘Cancer Wardile Chiri’ (Laughter at the Cancer Ward) has been more inspirational than any doctor’s wooden counselling.
Those suffering from the difficult disease had a living example of how to fight it, or rather how to accept the disease.
He wasn’t fighting it in usual terms of fighting a disease.
He laughed it off, hence the disease despite raising its head again, backed away, reassuring millions of his new fans who were learning to laugh like him.
He died, according to the doctor who cared for him, not of cancer but complications from the post Covid 19 infection.
Few actors in Kerala achieved unblemished praise and love as Innocent.
The moment people saw him on screen, a radiating feeling of goodness flowed into their hearts.
It had to do not just with the jokes he cracked but his whole body emanated a sense of well-being.
His face, which was more expressive than a Kathakali artist’s, reeling off a seamless flood of feelings and emotions.
Have you ever noted how skillfully he expressed a surprise with his dilated eyes showing their white?
There was a great actor in him which was rather glossed over in the title of a comedian.
Comedy for Malayalam movies industry is something ‘extra’ that a few actors are managing, despite lead actors perform it.
Their skills are taken for granted with the trite title of comedian, while they were acting spontaneously, timely, delivering dialogues that could hit on the nail. Otherwise there wouldn’t be any comedy.
Innocent came along early in the movies beginning as a producer before turning to acting.
But he rose to wide attention in the 1990s with a slew of movies that made him a household name.
Though ‘ extra’, there was no dearth of comedians in Malayalam movies.
There have been the pioneering ones like SP Pillai, Adoor Bhasi, Bahadoor, Kuthiravattam Pappu, Mala Aravindan, Jagathy Sreekumar and Mamukkoya, and most recently several others including Salim Kumar, Jagatheesh, Suraj Venjaranmood.
Innocent stood apart from others, often peaking in stardom at one point close to the versatile actor Jagathy Sreekumar.
They paired in some movies and stunned Malayalees with their diverse forces.
Innocent brought his acting skills that often veered between slapstick and natural expression, while Jagathy stirred up audiences.
In the trend setting ‘Ramji Rao Speaking’, Innocent became its backbone with child-like purity in a middle aged man who looked like an uncle in the neighourhood in a white vest and mundu.
The movie catapulted him to close to stardom among comedians, and there followed comedy albums by mimicry artists.
In the 1990s his voice that came as the voice of mythical Mahabhali in comedy albums was staple diet for laughter for the ‘new generation’ of the time.
We used to try his voice modulation and wondered where the slang actually came from, whether people out there spoke so or was he just experimenting.
It was much like Mamukkoya’s bewitching Malabar slang that hit deeply the generation back then, and has remained there indelible since.
Among veteran actors and comedians, Innocent found a place that was too hard for other’s to claim.
He was highly imaginative and even helped shape screen plays, coined character names that struck a chord with people.
In a career spanning over five decades, he reportedly acted in more than 750 films—that is something.
More than being a comedian he proved his riveting acting skills in negative roles as well.
Perhaps readers might remember movies like Mazhavilkavadi, and Ponmuttayidunna Tharavu.
In these movies, he was not the Innocent we came across in many other movies.
The rustic middle-aged man suddenly gotten into a scheming man with ideas to captialise on others, especially in Ponmuttayidunna Tharavu.
His death came when we were least expecting it, because Malayalees had the feeling that he would return to life to tell his suffering with a laugh. But now his radiating laugh only remains with us.