Recent filmic portrayals of alcoholism in Kerala are a mixed bag–they do much to shed light on the condition and address the stigma around it, but also fall into tired and problematic stereotypes. Sreejith Varma writes.
R. Sreejith Varma
Malayalam films from Kerala have always been noted for their social commitment, stark realism and thematic diversity. Vellam: The Essential Drink (2020) directed by Prajesh Sen is the third Malayalam feature film to be released in the last ten years to take up the problems of alcoholism as its dominant theme. Spirit (2012), directed by Ranjith, and Paavada [The Skirt], (2016) directed by G. Marthandan, featuring Malayalam superstars Mohanlal and Prithviraj Sukumaran respectively, are the other two. All of them were commercial successes. However, unlike the other two films, Vellam is a biopic about the life of a Malayali entrepreneur named Murali Kunnumpurath who overcame his alcohol addiction and launched a successful business of floor tiles tellingly named Waterman.1 In addition to much critical acclaim, Jayasurya also received the Best Actor Award at the 51st Kerala State Film Awards for his brilliant portrayal of the alcoholic protagonist in Vellam.
Alcoholism is a kind of drug-dependency syndrome in which ‘the patient’s drinking…damag[es] [their] mental, physical, or social health’ (‘Treatment’ 184). Giorgio Lolli argues that ‘Irrespective of the type and timing of the cause, addiction can be said to set in when alcohol begins to represent the most cherished source of pleasure and the most appealing means of wiping out pain’ (Liolli 505). Interestingly, Lolli also compares an alcohol addict to an infant as their ‘supreme interest lies in the bottle and in their helpless reaction to the lack of it’ (Liolli 505). Though the crux of Lolli’s analogy is that an infant and an alcohol addict share a similar preoccupation with the bottle, an alcoholic’s obsession is fundamentally self-destructive whereas that of the infant is life-enabling and physically advantageous.
Vellam repeatedly shows Murali nervously wandering around in a single-minded quest for a drink. The film convincingly presents alcoholism as an egregious and depraved habit as it follows an unscrupulous Murali stealing, just to buy himself some booze, a radio and a study table from his house, and attempting to rob the gold chain of his feverish daughter lying on her bed. Although Murali’s cousin Saji, in a scene, introduces him to his friends as a ‘floor tile worker,’ Murali is always out of work because, as he himself admits, ‘Nobody will hire someone like me who is a drunkard.’ A failed husband, son, and father till the film’s climactic scenes, Murali is a figure of ridicule as well as a cause of nuisance for his family, relatives, and the public. In Ranjith’s Spirit, the problems of alcoholism are narrated via two characters–Raghunandan (played by Mohanlal), a novelist and media person, and Manian (played by Nandhu), an alcoholic plumber. The focus of Marthandan’s Paavada falls equally on two alcoholics named ‘Paavada’ Babu Joseph (played by Anoop Menon) and ‘Pambu’ Joy Varghese (played by Prithviraj Sukumaran) whose lives are entwined and radically transformed by the making of the titular R-rated film.
The Hero’s Hamartia
The scenes that illustrate Murali’s manic hankering for intoxication–like him trying out cough syrup and, when admitted for de-addiction treatment, licking the spilt alcohol off the hospital floor–offer a haunting quality to the narrative of Vellam. The cardinal message that Vellam, Spirit, and Paavada put across is unmistakable–chronic alcoholism is a disease and it should be treated. Giving the context of the US, James G. Barber notes how, before the eighteenth century, alcohol-dependent behaviour was considered as the drunkard’s ‘choice made for pleasure’ rather than as ‘an irresistible urge.’ It was the American physician Benjamin Rush’s notion of ‘disease of the will’ that played an instrumental role in recognising alcoholism as a medical problem marked by loss of control (Barber 523). In Vellam, Murali is commendably frank to his friend about the compulsive nature of his alcoholism, ‘Nobody loves me, and I know it is because of my drinking habit. I have tried many times to quit [drinking]. But I am not able to control myself…Everybody advises me to stop drinking. But nobody tells me a way to stop it.’ Pambu Joy, Prithviraj’s alcoholic character in Paavada, also makes a similar admission, ‘It is not that I don’t want to quit drinking. Every morning I wake up with a sense of guilt and decide that I won’t touch a bottle of alcohol. But…’ These are not phoney confessions about drunkards’ psychological helplessness but, as Alan Leshnar points out, they have a neurological explanation as well. Leshner explains:
Every drug user starts out as an occasional user and that initial use is a voluntary and controllable decision. But as time passes and drug use continues, a person goes from a voluntary to a compulsive drug user. This change occurs because over time, use of addictive drug changes the brain–at times in big dramatic ways that can result in compulsive and uncontrollable drug use…. The brain changes range from fundamental and long-lasting changes in the bio-chemical make-up, to mood changes, to changes in memory processes and motor skills ‘ (qtd. in Waldhouser 24).
Significantly, Vellam asserts that being accepted and loved by the one’s family and society is as important for the patient as recovery from alcoholism. Murali’s second suicide attempt is prompted by his realisation that he is still the bête noire among his family and friends even after he quit alcohol. However, once the stigma is lifted and his family and friends accept him, Murali is fully rehabilitated and finds success. Alcoholism, in Vellam (as in Paavada and Spirit), is presented as the hamartia,2 the tragic flaw, of an otherwise worthy protagonist, and his redemption is orchestrated via recovery through medication and the love and support of his well-wishers.
The repetitive emergence of alcoholism-based films in Malayalam needs to be understood in the context of the high rates of ‘alcoholism and alcohol abuse-related health problems’ (Panickar 13) in Kerala. According to a recent newspaper report, ‘Kerala has the highest per capita consumption of alcohol in the country’ (‘Spirited’) as an average of 8.3 litres of alcohol per individual is consumed in Kerala every year (‘India’s’). Johnson Edayaranmula, the director of the NGO called Alcohol and Drug Information Centre in Kerala, points out that 57 to 69 percent of crimes in Kerala that include murder, suicide, and rape are caused by alcohol consumption. 40 percent of road accidents and 80 percent of divorces in Kerala are also associated with alcohol use (Krishnan). High levels of alcohol consumption in Kerala are due to multiple factors like ‘high literacy levels raising career expectations, coupled with a sluggish economy that does not generate corresponding job opportunities in the labour market’, bringing about unemployment and poverty (Mukhopadhyay 23). When Kerala witnessed suicides of multiple alcoholics because of the unavailability of alcohol in the initial stages of the COVID-related lockdown in 2020, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan even spoke about the possibility of distributing alcohol to compulsive drinkers upon producing prescriptions from doctors. Media coverage of this issue has helped generate more public awareness about the problems of alcoholism and the Alcohol Withdrawal Symptoms (AWS) associated with the stopping of alcohol consumption. Vellam, which was shot and released in theatres during COVID-related restrictions, thus becomes more deeply resonant when placed in the context of the unique sociological reality of contemporary Kerala.
The Romanticisation of Alcoholism and the Problem of Domestic Violence
Both Spirit and Paavada show distinct signs of the romanticisation of the drinking habit and its misplaced association with intellectualism. In the opening scene of Spirit, Raghunandan is shown as working on his first novel in English on an old-fashioned typewriter just as the narrator’s voiceover asserts that he can write only after consuming alcohol.3 The compulsive drinking of Sameer, the poet and Raghunandan’s friend played by Siddharth Bharathan, pooh-poohing his doctor’s warning ‘not to even sneak a look at alcohol’ is another case in point in the film wherein creativity and alcoholism are closely juxtaposed. It is also Sameer’s death due to alcohol-related health issues that prompts Raghunandan to quit drinking cold turkey. Later, when one of Raghunandan’s writer-friends visits him and learns about Raghunandan’s alcohol abstinance, he advises Raghunandan not to hate alcohol and reminds him of R. L. Stevenson’s words, ‘Wine is bottled poetry’ which he notes down on the door before leaving. In Paavada, Paavada Babu, played by Anoop Menon, is a college professor who spews Shakespeare after getting drunk and is described as a friend of the acclaimed Malayalam film director John Abraham who was known to be an alcoholic. Such fatuous connections repeatedly drawn between alcoholism and intellectualism help drinkers who fit the intelligentsia bill to drink with impunity and societal approval.
In addition, these three films implicitly and problematically assume that domestic violence appears as a corollary of alcoholism only in low-income/working-class families. For instance, in Spirit, although Raghunandan has been separated from his wife, he still maintains a close friendship with her and her new husband. However, Manian, the alcoholic plumber, physically assaults his wife all the time accusing her of adultery while Raghunandan focuses an episode of his Show the Spirit television show on Manian’s life to draw public attention to the problems of alcoholism. A similar dichotomy is posed in Paavada between its unemployed protagonist Joy, who makes a quick buck by selling film tickets on the black market and participating in events and rallies that involve payments, and the college professor Paavada Babu. While Joy suspects his wife of adultery and beats her, Paavada Babu leads a bachelor’s life after his fiancée calls off their marriage.4 In Vellam, Murali is a habitual wife-beater ever since he got married until the night his wife hits him back.5 According to the psychiatrist S. D. Singh, the popular perception that domestic violence due to alcohol abuse happens only in low-income/working-class families is a myth. He points out, ‘Education and exposure play an important role in bringing about refinement in person, but alcohol can turn anyone unpredictable. There are innumerable instances of physical violence among the affluent classes which are attributed to falls or other causes. The reputation of the family is considered more important for these classes and the women are conditioned to keep mum to keep the reputation intact’ (qtd. Prakash 2014). With family underscored as the prime enabler of the alcoholics’ return to their normal lives, wives, in all the three films, either stay or come back to their forgiven husbands, mirroring the many real-life situations in Kerala (and also Indian) society.
Vellam, Spirit and Paavada are decidedly narratives of redemption as their alcoholic protagonists quit drinking with or without treatment towards the end of the films. However, the strikingly similar, formulaic roads that the three movies take to achieve their thematic resolution have a diluting effect on their putative anti-alcohol message. Hence, as the films’ end credits roll, the viewers are left with as many unresolved questions as the solutions offered by these narratives.
Works Cited
- Ayal Kathayezhuthukayanu [He is Writing a Story]. Directed by Kamal, 1998.
- Barber, James B. ‘Alcohol Addiction: Private Trouble or Social Issue?,’ Social Service Review, vol. 68, no. 4, 1994, pp. 521-535.
- ‘India’s Kerala High Court upholds alcohol ban,’ BBC.com, 30 Oct., 2014,
- Krishnan, Murali. ‘Alcoholism, crime on the rise in the Indian state of Kerala,’ ABC News, 14 Feb. 2014, link
- Liolli, Giorgio. ‘Alcohol Addiction,’ The American Journal of Nursing, vol. 48, no. 8, 1948, pp. 505-507.
- Mukhopadhyay, Swapna. ‘Understanding the Enigma of Women’s Status in Kerala: Does High Literacy Necessarily Translate into High Status?’ Enigma of the Woman: Failed Promises edited by Swapna Mukhopadhyay, Social Science Press, 2007, pp. 3-31. Google Books.
- Panickar, Varun. ‘State Sponsored Alcoholism in Kerala,’ Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 23, 2015, pp. 17-20.
- Paavada [The Skirt]. Directed by G. Marthandan, 2016.
- Prakash, Asha. ‘Can the liquor ban end domestic violence?’ The Times of India, 29 Aug., 2014.
- ‘Spirited Kerala consumes legal liquor worth ₹523 crore,’ The Hindu, 02 Jan. 2020.
- Spirit. Directed by Ranjith, 2012.
- ‘Treatment of Alcohol Addiction,’ The British Medical Journal, vol. 2, no. 5455, 1965, pp. 184-185.
- Vellam: The Essential Drink. Directed by Prajesh Sen, 2021.
- Waldhauser, Carol P. ‘Identifying Addiction,’ Bumps in the Road, vol. 18, no. 15, 2001, pp. 22-27.
About the Author: R. Sreejith Varma works as an Assistant Professor at the Department of English, School of Social Sciences and Languages, Vellore Institute of Technology. He earned his PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in 2018. Along with Swarnalatha Rangarajan, he is the translator of Mayilamma: The Life of a Tribal Eco-Warrior. His latest publication is “Resource Extractivism and Environmental Damage: An Analysis of Two Extractivist Fictions from Kerala” in the journal ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. He is also a bilingual poet who writes in English and Malayalam, his mother tongue.
Interesting take.