Meeting an Old Friend - G.S.Panikkar

While I was in Ottapalam recently for the shooting of the film YUGAPURUSHAN, I rang up an old friend from my Institute days, my Senior, G.Sadasiva Panikkar ( G.S.Panikkar – 1970 – Direction Batch ). For the past few years he had been away from Trivandrum as he had settled at Cheruthruthy on the banks of the picturesque Bharathapuzha river, a popular location for many Malayalam films.

He had graciously come down to my hotel along with his son and we spent a few hours together reminiscing about our friends, films of the past and the present trends in the Film Industry.


I was the cinematographer for his maiden venture as Producer and Director of the Black and White Malayalam film AEKAKINI ( 1978) It was a tiny budgeted film made by a bunch of Film Institute graduates – Ravi Menon ( actor) , Suresh Babu and Raman Nair ( Editors), Panikkar and myself.


It was based on a short story by eminent Malayalam writer M.T.Vasudevan Nair. The film was well appreciated and acclaimed when it was released.

Myself and G.S.Panikkar

Friends from Kerala

Having come from the South and with little knowledge of Hindi, I was looking forward to find birds of the same feather. As I have studied in Tamil Nadu I was more familiar with Tamil Language and was looking for some Tamil sounding names. There was Bala Mahendran ( who later changed his name into Balu Mahendra) from Ceylon in Motion Picture Photography and he appeared to be a Tamil guy, but in his French beard, he was found to be mostly mixing with the Foreign students. I tried speaking to him in Tamil, though he understood it, he mostly replied in English. Then there was Swaminathan in Editing from Calcutta with whom I used to strike up some conversation.

Of course there were many Keralites and since my mother tongue is Malayalam I could easily communicate with them all, even though I could not read or write the language.

We even presented a group song on stage, on some special occasion


Standing from L to R : John Abraham ( Direction) M.Azad ( Screen Play Writing), Ramachandra babu ( Motion Picture Photography) , Kabeer Rowther ( Direction), K.G.George ( Direction), Suresh Babu ( Editing), Bhaskar Unni ( Editing & Direction) and G.S Panikkar ( Direction)