Basheer, an abandoned house, and a female ghost: Malayalam’s timeless Bhargavi Nilayam

An old, haunted house. A cheerful, lonely novelist who sees the world through a psychedelic lens. A smokey-eyed, white sari-clad, beautiful female ghost who lurks in the background. A tragic love story. That’s the narrative that shaped Malayalam cinema’s first-ever horror-romantic-investigative thriller Bhargavi Nilayam (The Abode of Bhargavi), released in 1964 and directed by A Vincent. The plotline is no confounded jigsaw puzzle, especially for avid fans of Vaikom Muhammed Basheer, who cherish the playfulness, romance, and mystique of his short story Neelavelicham, on which the film was based.

Basheer, who developed a screenplay from the short story, positions himself as the novelist in Bhargavi Nilayam. Though Madhu is exasperatingly mechanical as the novelist (it looks so mouldy next to Mammootty’s glorious Basheerian act in Mathilukal), you can’t miss out on the Basheerian traits embedded in him. The gaiety, irreverence, and madness are in full flow as he steps into the mansion. Though unaware of the paranormal presence that awaits him in the dusty, cob-web-spattered Bhargavi Nilayam, the novelist is still unfazed when he comes to know about the Bhargavi fable from the villagers.

The tale of Bhargavi, a beautiful young woman who died for love is so compelling to the novelist that despite the gentle signals of supernatural prowling in the mansion, he decides to befriend her spirit. In the 1964 black and white film, Vincent builds up the fear of the unseen using devices that were radical and fresh in that era. They were later replicated in several horror films over the years. So you have jump scares, the ghost leaving markings (here his shirt is torn), a house with a history, and the philosophical hint that humans are the real monsters.

Here, Bhargavi is something of a kindred spirit. She wants her real story to be told to the world and has found an ally in the novelist. His allegiance to the paranormal is endearing and comical. The novelist’s innate sense of adventure makes it easier for him to view Bhargavi as a woman in flesh and blood. So even when objects move around and the gramophone plays on its own, he remains strangely unaffected, and grows more eager to get to know her.

One night, he plays music for her, offers a chair, and initiates a conversation with her, all with the thought that maybe he won’t survive the night. Since he was told that Bhargavi committed suicide after her lover left her, the novelist tries to reason with her to give up the idea of vengeance.

After a point, you know that he falls in love with her. His tonality has a wistfulness and longing as he stares at her framed portrait. The scares are subtle (it can be attributed to watching the film on a laptop during the day), but strangely poetic—so you can hear the sound of her anklets, followed by her mellifluous voice singing a melody in memory of her lover. She appears in pristine white (heavy makeup, dark eyes) near the well on a full moon night and the sudden imagery momentarily frightens even the novelist. In another instance, he sees a vision in white on the swing. At this instance, you are torn between hallucination and reality, just like the novelist.

Interestingly, in most horror films post Bhargavi Nilayam, it was always about a tortured female spirit possessing the body of another woman to seek vengeance. This template can be seen in Lisa and Veendum Lisa, films which also makes you realise that perhaps while so much of what scares us as people may have changed, so little has really shifted. These two films also reflect on the Malayalee culture and what is typified as a ‘good Malayalee girl’. They give insights into the fate of the non-conformist – banished from life only to become a one-dimensional spirit in pursuit of revenge. Compared to that, Bhargavi’s ghost stays away from the male gaze. She is forlorn and in search of answers. Though she wants justice, there is more to her than being a spirit out to wreak havoc on her perpetrator.

It's the novelist’s growing affinity towards her personality that makes him think that she wants him to know the truth behind her death. Under the pretext of writing her story, he decides to unravel her mysterious passing.

The connection between words and creativity is nicely linked to the main protagonists. Not only is Bhargavi’s past revealed to the novelist through her old letters she had stuffed in a wooden box, but Bhargavi’s lover is also a singer and poet. At times, his conversations with her remind you of Basheer’s impassioned exchanges with Narayani in Mathilukal.

In Bhargavi Nilayam, Vijaya Nirmala is fascinating as Bhargavi—a woman (who is still in college) who knows her mind and doesn’t hold back from pursuing what she wants. A feminist during her time, perhaps. Her romance with poet and musician Shashikumar (Prem Nazir) is charming. Though the attraction is mutual, she is the one who actively pursues him, and he willingly allows her to take the lead.

Her love is all-consuming, so much that she even forsakes her colourful saris when she notices that he only wears white. Therefore, there is an explanation in the narrative to her ghostly attire of white, with jasmine flowers in her hair (a gift from him). Bhargavi’s love for Shashikumar has an incandescent purity and you can sense that she will perhaps go to any lengths to be with him. So it makes her vengeful, spooky form seem almost foreseeable.

But post Bhargavi Nilayam, the stereotype of the white sari-clad female ghost with flowing hair persisted as a horror trope in Malayalam cinema. Maybe rarely, there was a Lisa, in the 1987 Malayalam horror Veendum Lisa, who wears a flowing white gown.

Bhargavi puts up a fight when her cousin, played by a deliberately brown-faced PJ Antony, declares that he intends to marry her. It is bothersome that Antony’s skin colour is made to look many shades deeper than the others to emphasise on his evilness.

Vijaya Nirmala as the restless spirit is a refreshing find, vacillating between gentle, poignant, and insistent. Prem Nazir easily wins you over as the gentle Shashikumar in a role that looks tailor-made for him.

The sub-characters aren’t exactly memorable and are placed keeping in mind that era of melodramatic cinema, except maybe for Kuthiravattam Pappu (who earned the famous moniker after the film) who plays Bhargavi’s loyal aide. There is Adoor Bhasi placed as comic relief. His tryst with the ghost though meant to be funny hardly lands now, though they may have worked back in the 1960s. The other characters who walk in and out are all underwritten.

Shot mostly inside a large mansion that lives up to the imagery of a haunted house, the enclosed, open spaces in Bhargavi Nilayam also pass the spooky test. Even to this day, ‘Bhargavi Nilayam’ is used in colloquial Malayalam conversations to refer to an abandoned or haunted house.

In her ghostly form, Bhargavi, with her silhouettes bathed in glimmering white light, paints a scary picture.

It’s unthinkable to imagine or re-imagine Bhargavi Nilayam without its deeply flavourful and romantic songs written by P Bhaskaran and composed by Baburaj. They add so much gravitas to the tumultuous emotional rollercoaster of the characters, perhaps explaining why director Aashiq Abu chose to retain them in his upcoming spinoff of the classic.

It’s been five decades since the film was released and surprisingly, Bhargavi Nilayam seems to have aged well. As Aashiq Abu attempts to recreate Bhargavi Nilayam as Neelavelicham on screen in 2023, he sure has the odds stacked against him.

Neelima Menon has worked in the newspaper industry for more than a decade. She has covered Hindi and Malayalam cinema for The New Indian Express and has worked briefly with Silverscreen.in. She now writes exclusively about Malayalam cinema, contributing to Fullpicture.in and thenewsminute.com. She is known for her detailed and insightful features on misogyny and the lack of representation of women in Malayalam cinema.

Views expressed are author’s own.