It is difficult to think of Mamukkoya without that famous accent of his. In all his films and the lines he is frequently quoted from, the late actor spoke the Kozhikode Malayalam, where nammal (we) became njammal and nenaku (you) turned into anakku. Thaha Madayi, writing Mamukkoya’s memoirs as told to him, would not have wanted to change a syllable. Reading them days after his death, picturing him with folded legs on a chair and narrating the stories of his life, brings an ache. But the words throw a new light around this man, who lived up to 76 and made people laugh on and off screen for decades.
“We must raise our children as artists. There is no communalism in art. A song written by a Hindu called Vayalar, sung by a Christian called Yesudas, gets enacted by a Muslim called Mammootty. We can’t see such unity in religion. Mosques will have Muslims, churches Christians, and temples Hindus, but theatres will have everyone,” Mamukkoya said in his book of anecdotes that came accompanied with such thoughts that made you pause and read them again.
The books, titled Mamukkoya and Jeevitham, are not biographies that begin with his difficult childhood. They are strips of memories, helplessly pouring out from one who had seen much in life. Kozhikode, the land he was born in and bore much pride in, found its way into every other chapter. "People there have minds like cleaned-up vessels. Those who worked in the sea, with the trees, or the rivers would also be artists and sportspersons. That is the Kozhikode talent. Those who come from outside also become that way," he writes.
It is of the people of Kozhikode that Mamukkoya talks most about, beginning with Vaikom Muhammed Basheer, the legendary writer who proved how beautiful the simplest Malayalam could be.
Basheer / Courtesy - Sreedharantp / Wiki Commons / CC By SA 3
Basheer was the reason that he came into movies, Mamukkoya writes. A student of Basheer’s, S Konnanatt, had come to his house in Beypore to seek his blessings for a new film – Surumayitta Kannukal. Mamukkoya was in Basheer’s yard then, like he and a few others would be most afternoons. The writer pointed to Mamukkoya and asked Konnanatt to give him a role. It was a small role, one Konnanatt had to create to fit Mamukkoya in. Feeling bad for him, however, his senior co-actors Nellikod Bhaskaran and Bahadoor urged the director to include him in more scenes.
But that really wasn’t his first film, Mamukkoya adds. It was an art film called Anyarude Bhoomi, made by Nilambur Balan. “But no one noticed it, since it was an art film,” he says matter-of-factly.
The more pronounced entry came with Doore Doore Oru Koodu Koottam, when actor Sreenivasan recommended him to director Sibi Malayil. After watching him play the Arabic teacher in a few scenes, Sibi liked him so much that he added more scenes for the Beypore man.
The 80s had begun by then and Mamukkoya, once out there, got picked up for films over and over again, becoming popular through his unforgettable roles in Sathyan Anthikad movies. “Sathyan and Sreenivasan made me earn a name as a comedian,” he writes.
Watch: Scene with Sreenivasan in Vadakkunokkiyanthram
Acting and comedy had both come into his life much earlier, through theatre and stage. He loved theatre so much that as a child, he, along with other children in the neighbourhood, would enact the theatre rehearsals of grownups in a different form, using pieces of his mother’s clothes as props and costume. It was a life-long love, theatre. He clearly thought a lot more of theatre than cinema.
“Cinema was a job for me. But a theatre actor never stops acting, until he dies. The art that the director 'okays' is cinema. The acting that one 'okays' oneself is theatre,” Mamukkoya writes.
He dedicates chapters to mention the theatre artists he adored, including women. Quoting Nilambur Ayisha’s line in a play, he writes how she powerfully declared, “duniyavil aanungal mathralla pennungalumundu” (There is in this world not just men, but women too.) Coming from Ayisha, a woman who had to fight plenty to be able to act at a time it was frowned upon, the words carry a lot of weight.
Despite his belief in god, Mamukkoya is clear on his feelings about religion. “It is not religion or politics that bring people together. Music, theatre, and literature are what sees humans as humans,” he says at one point. “What artists learn, they learn from their experiences, nature, and their relations. We can’t go on much with only what the religion says,” he says at another.
Kalamandalam Hyderali / Credit - Fotokannan/ Wiki Commons / CCBYSA 4
He also expresses his opposition to religion speaking against art. When a Muslim boy was ousted from religion for learning Kathakali, Mamukkoya spoke against it. “Who can decide that a person is no more a Muslim because they learnt kathakali? It is god who decides if we go to heaven or hell after all our actions here. Kalamandalam Hyderali’s (a renowned Kathakali singer) music will make even god happy.”
He also takes a dig at the religious leaders who earlier used to say that Muslims should not draw faces of people or animals, but later seemed to change their opinion when they had to take photographs for passports.
Mamukkoya, a man known for his comic acts in movies, was serious in life, he says. But it does not stop him from turning humorous in his anecdotes. When he writes about the time Basheer stopped drinking, he describes director John Abraham and actor Surasu – frequent visitors at Basheer’s house – as walking around like a close relative had just died.
Not just Basheer, he appears to have had close relations with multiple writers, VKN and SK Pottakkad among them. Mamukkoya’s sense of secularism comes out at yet another instance, when he writes of the time Basheer died and VKN came to pay his last respects. VKN asked Mamukkoya if he could see the body since he was a Hindu, if it might go against beliefs. Mamukkoya then told VKN, “What are you saying, aren’t we all humans?”
This was not a man who had a lot of formal education. He had dropped out after class 10, feeling that it was enough spending all his hard-earned money from doing odd jobs for books and pens at school. Experiences and the company of people he kept appear to have shaped his thoughts, which pop out between his stories. It had not been easy for Mamukkoya. His father had died when he was in class 6 and the family – his mother and two siblings – were left to fend for themselves. Mamukkoya, as a young lad, earned money by labelling and measuring timber. Even when he acted in theatre, he regularly did timber work.
In films, he played a lot of characters, most often as a tea shop man, he says. But he never got to play someone who measures timber.
He stopped the work when he got enough movies. But films never seem to have got to his head. He wonders at one point why theatre artists can go anywhere and be with friends but film stars can’t. “Why do people look only at film stars like this?” he writes, and adds an anecdote about sharing a stage with famous orator Sukumar Azhikode once. People had booed when Azhikode spoke, asking for Mamukkoya to speak, because they wanted to hear his “jokes.” Mamukkoya writes with his trademark honesty, “If Azhikode mash is there, then people should listen to his speech, not Mammootty’s or Mamukkoya’s.”
He is also exceedingly modest when he speaks of himself. Writing about the time he wanted to play Oedipus in a drama after watching it, Mamukkoya says how he realised something later in life, “There are some trees on which you can’t do a lot of sculpting. I am one such tree. A man-tree of Kallayi.”
He could make you cry with these words. You imagine that some of Basheer must have rubbed off on him in their many evenings together. Mamukkoya missed those evenings too. “Now everyone just needs things that are beautiful to look at, not literature, not pure music. So the old Kozhikode evenings will never come back. Basheerkka used to say that you and I are all the same. People became one, but they didn’t become anything. They gave everything away to others and went somewhere far away,” he writes. He could have been writing about himself.