Malayalam cinema’s first superstar Jayan - and ‘Sharapanjaram’ - rewrote rules about villains

Everyone remembers the moment Shah Rukh Khan rewrote the rules of stardom – when his character ‘Rahul’ in 1993’s ‘Darr’ stammered out his enduring love for Juhi Chawla’s ‘Kiran’ in the death scene. There was nothing endearing about this particular ‘Rahul’ – he stalked and murdered his way through the Yash Chopra movie in hopes of getting through to his lady love. In the end, he didn’t.

Not that it mattered to audiences – who just loved the energy and whimsy that Shah Rukh brought to the character. And ended up putting the hero, Sunny Deol, right in the shade. The SRK journey right to the top started there, though he had given flashes of the ‘bad boy’ skills in ‘Baazigar’ a year earlier.

It was the time when Bollywood audiences and their tastes changed…

But tell that to a Malayalam movie goer and all that you would get for your trouble is a shrug – and a smirk. Because in Kerala, such a phenomenon had already happened 15 years before – in the form of the unparalleled Jayan.

Yes, it was on March 2, 1979 that Jayan’s career-defining ‘Sharapanjaram’ released – and made him an instant star. A superstar, to be precise. Because, as has been said enough times before, there had been none before him went on to generate that kind of hysteria among Malayalee film-goers.

Definitely not through a film where the character Jayan portrays – ‘Chandrasekharan’ - in Sharapanjaram is an out and out villain. This was a chap who wants to get rich in an indecent haste, has no qualms in duping Sheela’s rich widow into marrying him and, one that’s done with, taking over that household in full. Fall foul of him, and you are dead. That’s how Jayan spun his magic in that movie.

And it wasn’t even supposed to be like this. Sharapanjaram was supposed to install Sathaar, who plays the ‘conventional’ hero, as the next big thing in Mollywood. He had the looks, the ruggedness, and the cool-dude vibes. But none of it mattered when Sharapanjaram released – because the movie ended with Chandrasekharan’s death and Jayan as the first superstar in Malayalam filmdom. (The one other memory from that movie is, of course, that horse…) 

Yes, fate ensured that Jayan’s stint at the peak was to be short-lived. His movies ahead of his death were star vehicles for him to show off his physique and belt out dialogues and scare the living wits of the baddies. This phase had one other movie – ‘Angadi – where he got to bring out some acting chops. But that’s about it.

Yet, he endures. Jayan is the legend that keeps getting passed on from one generation to the next. He has been mimicked endlessly, trolled and made a caricature of. But watch Sharapanjaram and you will realise there was more to Jayan than his stilted dialogues and rippling muscles (he made being well-muscled fashionable well before six-packs came into vogue.)

The re-release of Sharapanjaram – in glorious 4K – is a reason to hate Chandrasekharan as the face of evil. And laud Jayan the actor and superstar…