Towards the end of Yathra, a Malayalam film directed by Balu Mahendra and scripted by John Paul, Mammootty, playing a grand old man released from prison, finishes telling his life story to co-passengers in a bus, full of students and their teachers. He ends the story with a letter he wrote to his lover of a long time ago. He had broken all ties with her in the years he spent in jail, asking her to choose a different path. But in the letter he writes days before his release, he asks if she is still free and waiting for him – one corner of his mind selfishly hopes that is so – to light a single lamp by the tree in her village they once used to meet at. As the bus reaches the village everyone in the bus comes to the side Mammootty sits at, to look out for Thulasi, the woman who might be waiting with a lamp. Instead they see a whole path lit with lamps and Shobana, as Thulasi, waiting with teardrops ready to fall. Mammootty stumbles out, breaks into a smile and many tears, they hug. Yathra ends.
There would be scores of such snippets you can cut out of a John Paul script and wonder about how simple he made things look. It was only a letter written by a man with little left in life, to a woman from his past, but by the time the story is over, it sounds like the most magical words one person could write another. John Paul was 35 years old when Yathra released, just five years into his career of writing scripts. In those first five years – between 1980 and 85 – he had already written more than 30 scripts for some of the most cherished filmmakers, who would go on to become legendary in the years to come. John lived another 35 years more, writing lesser scripts in later years, but still busy with many affairs of cinema.
When he died aged 71 at a hospital in Ernakulam on April 23, remembrances were passed on, written and sent from the corners of the world. Artistes who worked with him or at least met him once jotted down how warm ‘Uncle’ was. Somehow, in all those years, he became Uncle even to his peers.
Watch: Climax of Yathra
“I met him when I went for the script-reading round and he was the jury chairman. His questions were well-drafted and there was such clarity in his ideas,” says Indu VR, one of the women filmmakers chosen this year by the Kerala State Film Development Corporation to make a film it funds. She was one among many who applied for a project with the KSFDC which funds the films of two women every year. Indu says that he read her script in less than an hour and spoke about the minute traits of her characters, even when these were not explicitly written.
“He understood it so well and he treated all of us with so much affection. He’d share so many stories, capsules of information about how MT Vasudevan Nair, a writer we all worshipped, wrote scripts or about working with director Bharathan,” Indu says, overwhelmed, and upset that she could not meet him in the final days and he wouldn’t watch her film on the screen.
John Paul’s storytelling was as famous as his scripts. It was all the more curious considering his background – a bank employee who never wrote a story before. The first book he read was from a library in Chittoor that his father took him to, because he was too naughty at the time and his parents wanted to distract him with reading. John, in his series of talks recorded for the Safari TV, said that he took the first book from the first shelf he saw and finished the nearly thousand pages without understanding a word. Much later he’d know it was Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. He was hardly 10 years-old at the time. He tried another shelf of books and discovered a love for detective fiction. When he finished that shelf, his father decided it was time to take control and put MT’s Randamoozham into his hands. Afterwards, John said, he’d get his hands into any writing which came from MT. Decades later he’d produce MT’s film Oru Cheru Punchiri, a cosy little tale about an old couple and their life in the village.
John Paul as a child / Courtesy - his Facebook page
But of course he began famously with Bharathan, that maverick filmmaker people would call a genius. Chamaram became the first film that brought them together. Zarina Wahab, a charming actor of subtleties, played the heartbroken teacher who goes on to have an affair with a student, a daring story to be written at the time. John Paul’s script didn’t give too many words to Indu, once her cousin and lover abandons her, and she goes back to her job and knocks on the door of her student (Pratap Pothen). She is quiet, smiling, welcoming in the brief time she is with the young man.
The next year, in Mohan’s Vida Parayum Munpe, the focus of the script is on a man with a small job in an office, frequently absent and inviting the wrath of the disciplined boss (Prem Nazir). Nedumudi Venu was in his early stages then, easily proving his calibre, playing the truant with a secret. John’s script takes them all away from their comfort zones – Nazir turning the tough guy as against the hundreds of soft roles he led with, Lakshmi the fearful wife who could stand up for herself, and Nedumudi who could switch between expressions in the flick of a second.
By the time of Ormakkyaie – another film with Bharathan – John had already proven his mettle, and he definitely was not predictable. No two films looked or felt alike. You could barely trace the ‘writer’s mark’ that many leave behind. There was no trademark John. “He was never adamant about the script nor did he insist that the film should retain the style with which he wrote it. He left it to the director,” says filmmaker Kamal, who made his debut with John Paul’s script, Mizhineer Pookkal.
Watch: Clipping from Ormakkyaie
Kamal shares a long story of how John Paul was the reason he became a director. “In those days, there was a man called Korah living in Ernakulam, and many producers and directors would take the script to him to decide if they should proceed with it. Korah would bring out some cards, hear them out, and tell his verdict – whether the film would run or not. The directors and producers would listen to him. When producer RS Sreenivasan came with a script by John Paul, he suggested my name for the director. I was still an associate director. Sreenivasan took my name along with two others that John Paul suggested as other choices, to Korah chettan. For some reason, Korah chose my name. I don’t know why, because I had never met him before.”
The film might have still stopped because Sreenivasan died a few months later. But his family wanted to take on the project and Kamal was trusted with it. By the time Kamal was ready for his second film – Unnikale Oru Kadha Parayam – he told John Paul it should be a movie with Mohanlal and some kids. “And he was ready. I was a new director but he was willing to accept my ideas. He had been that way with everyone,” Kamal says.
Watch: Song from Unnikale Oru Kadha Parayam
People who have spoken to John Paul at least once agree. Indu recalled how affectionate he had been with all of them, newbies making their way into a dream career. He was very polite to this reporter when he was asked to speak a few words about Nedumudi Venu on his passing. “He would be friendly and even concerned about someone he met for the first time. He was always up for anything, never resting,” says VK Joseph, film critic and secretary of the Federation of Film Societies in India.
Joseph says that the film society movement had a big role in moulding John Paul as a scriptwriter. “That was what made him more cinematic in his approach, different from what one was used to at the time. The language in his script, the dialogues were clear and beautiful. And it was clear he thought very visually, creating beautiful images with the script. At least 10 to 15 of his hundred scripts would have played a role in bringing major changes to Malayalam cinema. They can be studied by students of cinema in later years,” Joseph says. Yathra’s climax would fit tidily into these visual scripts.
John Paul’s first memory of watching a film was from the time he went with his family to see Snapaha Yohannan in Kochi. His siblings swear otherwise, he said in a Safari video, because as a baby they had taken him to ‘kotaka’ (old film theatres) and fed him peanuts to keep him from crying. “My father was someone who refused to build our home on a piece of land he would have got really cheap, only because it was near a film theatre and he was afraid it would be a poor influence on his children and distract us from studies. But later when I slipped into the thick of mainstream cinema, he was most supportive of it,” John said in the video.
It is a wonder then that he ended up in a field so far removed from everything he had been raised on. He had once wanted to be a priest, John revealed. But it was a bank that he went to work at and later a media house. His friendships with creative people like Bharathan paved his path into scriptwriting. In the two decades he remained active, he worked with great directors and upcoming talents, Kamal among them. Mohan, Bharathan, IV Sasi, PG Viswanathan and KS Sethumadhavan made films from John’s scripts. Sathyan Anthikad, Joshy, K Madhu and Sibi Malayil, who all rose as directors in the 1980s, also worked with John.
Many gems of the time - Kathodu Kathoram, Yathra, Unnikale Oru Kadha Parayam, Oru Minnaminunginte Nurunguvettam, Vrutham, Ulsavapittennu – came from John’s writing. In the 1990s, there were more – Keli, Malootty, Chamayam among them.
Watch: Scenes from Keli
The scripts reduced in number in the years afterward. “Maybe because he never knew to be selfish, he never went to a director or a producer with a script, even when he had that freedom with many of us. Not because of an ego, but he’d say that ‘they would all be busy and have their comfort zones to work with, why disturb them’. Perhaps that’s the reason he never became financially well off. He was never in it for the money. He had produced films that flopped. But he never complained, not even in his last days,” says Kamal.
Krishnachandran, singer and actor and dubbing artiste, who played a role in Ormakkyaie, shared a conversation with John from December 2021. “I had sung a version of the old film song ‘Kanana chayayil’ for Unnikale Oru Kadha Parayam along with singer Ambily. I had forgotten about it but it came up on Youtube recently and I shared it with John uncle. He said he remembered it well, because producers were worried about including the poem, the song. But we kept it original, with only two instruments – Napoleon on the flute and Vidyasagar on the vibraphone, who later became the famous musician we know him as. John uncle said that the first day of the film’s release, when the song was played, people became so emotional and sang along with it, clapping and hooting. Some things should not be allowed to be lost to time, he said.”
For as far as he could, he never let that happen.