On her 30th death anniversary, Thulasidas, director of the Malayalam hit Layanam (1989), remembers the magic of Silk Smitha.
I was a struggling director who had just made one action film with actor Ratish when the idea of Layanam came to me. The film was based on my memories of the Hollywood hit Summer of ’42 (1971). I approached producers R. B. Choudary and Goodnight Mohan, and that is how the banner Super Good Films came into being.
I had approached stars like Sumalatha and Lakshmi, but they said they were unavailable and had to beg off. I was at my wits’ end when producer Choudary suggested Silk Smitha’s name. She was a very busy artiste at the time, charging almost Rs 25,000-30,000 for an item song. So I went to her house in Saligramam and narrated the story. My first line was that she would be draped in a saree throughout the film. She was very happy and immediately agreed to do it. The producer had asked me to find out what she would charge for the film, and she assured me that she would do it at a reasonable rate.
We shot for about 25 days in Chennai and another three days in Calicut, Kerala. We spoke to each other in Tamil. She was a professional artiste to the core and had no hang-ups. The film was a coming-of-age story about a young boy’s infatuation and love for an older woman. Nandu played the young man, and Silk was the older woman. The climax is tragic. Since the couple cannot live together, they decide to die by suicide.
The original climax of the film was very different. Smitha and Nandu’s characters were not supposed to die by suicide together. Her husband returns and confronts her with a question: does she want him, or does she want the boy she had met just recently? Smitha’s character is left completely confused by the choice. She cannot bring herself to answer because she does not want to hurt either of them. The boy is equally confused by the situation. Then, while Smitha is upstairs in the house, she hears the sound of a gunshot. The boy has shot himself. When she hears the gunshot, she runs down the stairs, falls, and is accidentally impaled in the chest by the sharp end of a statue. Fatally hurt and bleeding, she drags himself near the boy’s body. That was the original climax of the film.
On the sets, she would always have a book in her hand and a lady companion with her. Some days she would sit staring vacantly at the horizon. I would ask her, “Hey, why are you in a bad mood?” She would simply say, “Nothing, sir,” and quickly recover herself. I never saw any diva tantrums from her.
I would sometimes go to her house. In those days, her live-in companion was a Telugu doctor with a beard. We called him Doctor. He remained with her until the very end.
After seeing the final print, Smitha hugged me for five whole minutes. She had tears in her eyes. Director Bharathan had made a similar film, Rathinirvedam (1978), starring the celebrated Jayabharathi, and it had received a lot of acclaim. So comparisons with Layanam were inevitable. People also kept calling my film soft porn and accused me of exploiting my artistes.
Ironically, Nandu, whose original name was Prince, was Urvashi’s brother. People even tried to concoct stories that he became a drug addict after seeing the intimate scenes and sex in the film.
Urvashi herself had not seen Layanam, but before its release she jokingly said that if the film had any sex scenes, she would shoot the director. I retaliated in jest, saying, “No such gun has been made in the world.” It was all said in good spirit. Sadly, Nandu later died by suicide, and so did Smitha. In that sense, life seemed to imitate art.
Incidentally, Urvashi and I had no problems with each other. In fact, I worked with her in my very next film, Kouthuka Varthakal (1990), a comedy also starring Mukesh and Suresh Gopi. It was a superhit, and Urvashi went on to do many films with me. There was no bad blood between us.
When Layanam was released, the press called it soft porn and all sorts of other things. But the film became a runaway success. My producers made crores of rupees from it. Choudary, who had started out as a financier, moved to Chennai and went on to make many films after that.
Often, my friends would ask me whether I had been given a car or extra money after the film became such a huge success. After all, it had made so much money. My answer was always the same: I was given nothing. I received only my remuneration of Rs 50,000.
I was devastated by Silk’s death. We were shooting with Manoj K Jayan and Shobhana in Chennai for Kumkumacheppu (1996) when I learnt that she had died by suicide. I collapsed in my chair and wept like a child.
I don’t know what she did or why she did it. But there was no reason to go at barely 35. She was a reserved individual. We had never interacted much beyond our work but I later came to know that she had a troubled past. What exactly was eating away at her from the inside, though, one would never know.
From the way Smitha used to speak to me, and from the circumstances in which we had spoken several times, I always felt that she would never die by suicide. She had so many plans for her life, and knowing that, I still find it difficult to believe that she would have taken her own life. Suicide can sometimes be an impulse that takes hold of a person for a brief moment, and perhaps something like that happened to her. It is possible that she acted on such an impulse. But even now, I have my doubts about why she would have done it.
For me, Layanam and Silk are inextricably linked with my career and my success as a filmmaker. I don’t care if people call it a sex film or anything else. I am extremely proud of the film. In every interview I give, even if they don’t bring it up, I make it a point to talk about Layanam.
And I am extremely proud of this actor called Silk Smitha, who gave me a new lease of life.
Also Read: Exclusive: She Was a True Diva: Kushboo Sundar Remembers Silk Smitha on Her 30th Death Anniversary