 "Rupesh Kashyap")
Maverick Malayalam film director Lijo Jose Pellissery begins “Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam” (A Mid-afternoon Slumber) by thanking an “old advertisement that gave the seed of thought” for his latest venture.
This Kafkaesque tragicomedy, which was adjudged the Best Film of the year at the 53rd Kerala State Film Awards announced last Friday, was inspired by an old Greenply commercial.
It shows a Sikh boy travelling with his parents in a crowded bus through a remote village in Tamil Nadu. When the boy sees a house through the window, he inexplicably begins to speak in Tamil and asks the driver to stop the bus.
The boy, as if in trance, walks into this house and starts behaving like the patriarch of the family who died several years ago. He spots a Greenply table by a wall with a name engraved on it: Savitri. Just then, an old woman emerges, who believes that the boy is her dead husband.
The commercial ends with the boy reclining on a chair –and addressing the old woman as “Savitri,” the long-lasting bond of Greenply having tied his two lives together.
It is not surprising that Pelliserry was inspired by this hilarious commercial, considering he had worked in several advertising agencies before venturing into filmmaking.
In the past decade, however, he has unleashed a torrent of genre-bending masterpieces like “Angamaly Diaries”, “Ee.Ma.Yau” and “Jallikattu” – India’s official entry to the Oscars in 2021 – which has consolidated his status in the Malayalam film industry.
“Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam”, featuring the charismatic Mammootty in the lead, opened to rave reviews in January this year.
Mammootty, who won the best actor award for the film, plays James, a grumpy middle-aged Malayali, who wakes up from a slumber believing he is Sundaram, a man who disappeared from a village in Tamil Nadu years ago.
As in the Greenply commercial, where the Sikh boy seamlessly transitions to a Tamil patriarch, in “Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam,” James from Muvattupuzha transforms into Sundaram from Pollachi in the blink of an eye.
The brain behind the ad
Rupesh Kashyap, the man who conceptualised the commercial for Greenply nearly two decades ago, says he wants to return the favour and thank Pellissery for making this film.
“I am amazed at how the story unfolds in ‘Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam’. Credit goes to the director for taking the idea from that commercial and turning it into a film,” Kashyap tells Business Standard in a telephonic interview.
“I think this is probably for the first time that an advertisement is inspiring a feature film,” he notes.
He adds that the director did not need to have acknowledged his ad. “After watching the film, I tried reaching out to Pellissery, just to thank him, but I have not been able to contact him so far,” he says.
Kashyap is no stranger to the advertising circuit.
A veteran with more than two decades of experience, having worked in several ad agencies like Lintas and Leo Burnett, he also spearheaded the launch of over-the-top (OTT) major Hotstar (now Disney Hotstar).
Kashyap jogs his memory to recall how he conceptualised that Greenply commercial all those years ago.
The eureka moment
“I was working as a senior copywriter for Lintas in New Delhi. The brief given to me was that we must drive home the point that this product (plywood) is durable and long-lasting,” Kashyap recalls.
After brainstorming with his teammates, he got the idea of basing the commercial on the theme of reincarnation.
According to Kashyap, the spark came from a short story he had read as an adolescent.
“Growing up, I read a story about reincarnation in a Hindi magazine called ‘Aha Zindagi.’ I thought, let me use this idea in the commercial. Punar janam hota hai, phir bhi plywood tika hua hai (a person has died and is reborn, but the plywood has remained intact),” he says.
The humour in the commercial and the interplay between the cultures of North and South India clicked with the audience, Kashyap notes.
The ad was also instrumental in helping Greenply stand out from the rest of the plywood companies during that time.
Over the years, Kashyap has written lyrics and jingles for products ranging from Tide and Maggi noodles to LG refrigerators and Complan, before going on to direct brand ad films for Hotstar.
Kashyap spent his youth criss-crossing numerous towns across North India since his father was employed with the Eastern Railways.
He says that this has helped him understand cultures more intricately, which would later influence him in writing films, lyrics, and jingles.
Kashyap reckons that he was lucky to have joined advertising in the early 2000s, a time when content creation hit the apogee, thanks to innovative campaigns.
Advertising has since undergone quite a change, with storytelling no longer as interesting or engaging as it used to be.
Kashyap gives a sobering assessment of the sector. “India has changed in the last 30 years. YouTube has become your Doordarshan, and consumers have far more choices now,” he explains. “Content creators’ understanding of cultures today has become somewhat superficial, and storytelling has turned formulaic instead of being more persuasive, However, the internet boom has helped marketers tell nuanced stories,” he adds.
Moving on from the advertising world, Kashyap joined Disney Hotstar in 2015 and followed it up by overseeing the rebranding of the AHA app and its premium offering, AHA Gold.
So, what’s next on the anvil? “I’m excited about my next project. It is a multilingual marketing content…fingers crossed.”
