When the Traffic Ceased

Mekha is my next door neighbour, patient listener to my mother's nostalgic ruminations, my late night chat buddy and my children's dearest playmate. I wish she had not moved in next door. I would much rather she had remained the unexpected visitor at the unexpected hour because that would mean loudness, laughter, drama, shrill arguments and endless, meandering conversation over a dinner of whatever could be rummaged out of the kitchen. It would have meant her husband was going to be holed up in my husband's room for the next several hours while we tried to stay awake and keep the conversation going. It would have meant Rajesh was still alive.

Rajesh Raman Pillai. The wonder kid of Malayalam cinema who picked himself up from the ashes and carved a niche for himself against all expectations. The man who used every public platform ever made available to him, to remind himself and anyone who cared to listen that my husband was his best friend and mentor. The man who burst into tears before me one night long ago when he was just Rajesh: the man who stole my evenings with my husband in the early years of our marriage.

Sanjay and I are not the particularly sociable types - we have never considered it essential to befriend each other's friends. To us, it would have been perfectly normal if Rajesh had just remained someone who came to meet Sanjay to discuss work, greeted me politely on his way in and went about his business. But within a couple of months of our first meeting, he was walking into the kitchen demanding cookies and juice and quite ruthlessly plonking himself in our home and our lives. He then had one flopped movie behind him and was in the process of directing a comedy series on television that was not exactly doing too great. I still remember that excruciating evening when he came home to show the series to Sanjay. I was just back from a hard day at work and could not have asked for anything more than to be left alone. I found the series agonisingly boring and my entire being was screaming on the inside to get away and for him to leave. I slowly reached for a magazine from the coffee table and began flipping through it when Sanjay discreetly nudged me with his foot behind the cover of the coffee table. Rajesh was completely oblivious to my discomfiture as I cursed him with all my might and put down the magazine to turn my attention to the screen once again. I wondered if he had noticed the exchange between my husband and me. He had. And we laughed about it many a time in the years hence.

Rajesh was unlike anyone I have ever known before or after him. He had no qualms about asking the most personal questions. But he asked them with such genuine earnestness that you did not feel offended. And he was generous with his own secrets too. At times embarrassingly so. He also demanded his share in our time. In our scheme of things. One night as he was leaving late in the night he remarked that his wife had been telling him he should not be intruding so much into our time and space. His solution was to bring Mekha along the next time he came over, to keep me company while he hogged my husband's attention. The four of us started going to the movies together. We paid courtesy calls to each other's houses when our families came to visit. Slowly, they were becoming our surrogate family in a city far from home. When my mother took ill on a night that Sanjay was away, I did not think twice before reaching out to Rajesh for help. For that entire night, Rajesh and Mekha sat with me in the hospital corridor disregarding my plea to go home and come back in the morning. This was also the beginning of a deep emotional bond between my mother and Rajesh who saw in her something of his own mother whom he had lost a few years earlier.  When I discovered I was pregnant, it was Rajesh who drove all the way to Kochi to bring Sanjay home the next day. I had the privilege of naming their cute little pug Ringo Starr. Somewhere in the middle of all this, Traffic happened.

When Sanjay first said that he and Bobby (his brother and co-writer whom I call Bobby Cheta) had decided to write a script for Rajesh, I was not too thrilled with the idea. Standing at the periphery of their friendship, I could only think of Rajesh's previous flop movie and that atrocious series I had been forced to sit through, not to mention his temperamental flip flops and extreme sensitivity. 'His vision is far above the person he projects himself to be,' Sanjay said, 'and I am excited to collaborate with that vision.' As their discussions progressed and Sanjay shared the ideas that emerged thereon with me, I realised I had judged him wrong. But as it happened, Bobby and Sanjay were also working on another movie at that time - Casanova. As that movie took longer than anticipated and Sanjay started spending longer and longer periods in Kochi with the Casanova team, back in Trivandrum Rajesh started getting restless. Around that time I also had to move back home to Kottayam owing to some complications in my pregnancy. A couple of months later, we made a short visit to Trivandrum and I was seeing Rajesh after a considerable gap of time. As soon as he got home, Sanjay and he got into a heated exchange on the delays in their proposed project. As usual, I retreated to the background as they argued into the night. Then Sanjay went off into his room to answer a phone call. Rajesh requested I come to the sitting room. He knelt beside me, took my hands in his and burst into tears. I was appalled, embarrassed and a bit uncomfortable. 'Why is he doing this to me? Please tell him not to put my film off any longer. This movie is my life,' he sobbed. Rajesh knew I never meddled in Sanjay's work. That did not stop him from entreating me to convince Sanjay to prioritise his movie over the others he had committed to beforehand. That memory is seared deep into my consciousness - it was perhaps the first time I realised Rajesh gave me far more regard than I had imagined. That beyond the incessant jibes about my supposed haughtiness and penchant for watching F.R.I.E.N.D.S on TV, Rajesh considered me as someone he could bare his most vulnerable self to.

The day Traffic released is, of course, a milestone in all our lives. The night before had been rife with drama as last minute complications threatened to halt the release. When Rajesh was involved, drama was bound to follow!  But Traffic was Rajesh's offering at the altar of cinematic history that no force of destiny could thwart. Hurdles were magically cleared for the release almost as though nothing could hold back Rajesh Pillai anymore - his moment had come and nothing could stand in his way! As reports started coming in about audience response from across Kerala, one could see Rajesh truly blossoming. By the end of the first screening, as theatres burst into applause and standing ovations, Rajesh was truly transformed. He was no longer the anxious, bumbling wreck. His phone was ringing off the hook. For the rest of the day he was hopping around like an excited bunny answering phone call after phone call, accepting congratulatory messages with flair and unabashedly enjoying his moment in the sun. Success blended into him so smoothly and naturally, it was like it was always meant to be!

After Traffic, Rajesh had fully expected that his next movie would also be scripted by Bobby and Sanjay. Unfortunately, that was not to be. They already had a few other commitments lined up. But then who was to know that Rajesh was not going to stick around and wait? Sometimes faith - in the simple expectations we have about the future - is our greatest weapon in facing life. Somehow we all had the faith that in our seventies, Rajesh would still be pouting, complaining and sitting at our dinner table late in the night, hogging cookies and juice. When Sanjay told Rajesh to go ahead with Mili instead of waiting indefinitely for him, he had the supreme confidence that he and Rajesh had many more movies to realize together. In those days, every time he came home Rajesh would beseech me, 'please tell your husband to write a script for me before taking up other commitments.' As usual I would smile and shrug and he would start hyperventilating about how I was uncaring and arrogant. Then Rajesh did Mili. And Vettah. He was pushing his creative boundaries and charting new territories in movie making through each one though he did not complain any less about how Sanjay was making him wait.

After the heady Traffic days, when all the rest of the team had moved on with their lives, Rajesh took his time to pause and reflect on what he wanted to do next. His reluctant brush with the Hindi film world through the Hindi remake of Traffic took him away to Mumbai for close to two years. He returned unfulfilled and unhappy and probably with the first indications that something was going wrong with his body. When he started working on Mili Rajesh was once again his bustling, energetic and yes, hyper-dramatic self. But somewhere inside of him, the energy was beginning to flag. In the initial days, it was almost comic - the tantrums he would throw about having to get a blood test, the playacting we all had to do to get him to go for a check-up. Emotional blackmail was the order of the day. There was the time he refused to get a blood test and Sanjay told him not to show himself at our house till he had got it done. As expected, Rajesh headed straight over. Sanjay and Mahesh (Editor/Scriptwriter/Director and another integral part of the team) left the house before he arrived with a helpless Mekha in tow. It was left to me to tell Rajesh in the sternest of terms that they refused to see him till he had got the blood test done. I scolded him like a child and he listened like one with bowed head. Finally, when my mother joined in the admonishment he agreed to go. Theirs was another strange equation - the kind that only Rajesh was capable of forging! From the initial days when he would sneak in chocolates and magazines to her, the bond grew to the point where she was the first person he needed to see every time he was out of the hospital. At that point in time, there was only one agenda on our all minds: get Rajesh to eat healthy, lose weight and get his blood tests and checkups on time and we were all Mekha's willing accomplices in pleading, berating, yelling and prodding Rajesh along that route. Little did we all know at that point that the comedy and playacting would soon be replaced by real, impossible-to-ignore pain and prolonged bouts of hospitalisation that would leave Rajesh incapable of even protesting anymore.

Hospitals. Needles. Surgeries. Everyone dreads those. But with Rajesh it was no ordinary dread. It was wide-eyed, childlike, undiluted fear. But over a period of time, we painfully watched him get resigned to it all. Slowly it dawned on us all that healthy eating habits and losing weight were not going to change anything for him - not anymore and not at this stage. We found fewer arguments to bolster his confidence as his vigour, his vitality and his zest for life started sinking, irretrievably. Then came the day the doctor told him he had only six months more to live. Eyes brimming over, he told us over the dinner table that he was scared as a dispassionate Mekha sat next to him, trying to make light of it. We loudly protested the insensitivity of that doctor and the utter senselessness of that prediction. We starting discussing the possibility of a liver transplant. In the privacy of his writing room, Rajesh confessed to Sanjay that he had begun to accept the inevitability of fast approaching death. There was only one assurance he needed: Please be there for Mekha.

Through all the pain, all the hopelessness, Rajesh made one more film - Vettah. Whatever was left of his energies and spirit he poured into Vettah, perhaps fully aware that it would be his last. There were several bouts of hospitalisation in between. He pulled himself out of his hospital bed each time to get back to work and he continued to do it right till the day of Vettah's release. Sanjay and Mahesh were making enquires about the liver transplant and they had Rajesh's word that he would go with them to Chennai once Vettah was released. From the days of Traffic, Rajesh and Sanjay had a ritual - on the release of either of their movies, they would watch the first day, first show together. After wrapping up the movie in Trivandrum, Rajesh insisted on travelling to Kochi to watch Vettah together. He was so unwell at that point that the only way the doctors consented to his travel was by ambulance. And the ambulance was to take him directly to the ICU of PVS Hospital. It turned out to be the last journey of his life.

That night when Sanjay told me Rajesh was hospitalised yet again, I was impatient, angry and not feeling too kindly towards him. Just that afternoon, when we heard about his foolhardy trip by ambulance, I had told Sanjay, 'if this guy does not get his act together and get that transplant, he is not going to be around much longer.' As I said those words, I did not believe it was going to happen. You say such things out loud only when you think that eventuality is impossible. Never going to happen. It was just another statement I would probably have said to his face to bully him. 'Rajesh is in the ICU' Sanjay said and something in his voice made me realise this was not one of those times to get angry. Sanjay was preparing to say something and it was with great difficulty that he got the words out: 'It looks like he may not come out of this, this time.' Those words went into my heart like a red-hot knife. This was nothing like the impatient exchange we had shared that afternoon. This was the ugly reality we had been dreading for the past few months. A reality that was leaving deep, deep furrows in our souls as it was being uttered and heard. Sanjay is not one to exaggerate. He is not one for drama. He uses his words sparingly and carefully. So I knew he would not utter those words without reason. The end we had dreaded but thought was a long way away was actually upon us. The big man was actually going to leave. It was a haze of tears and pain after that. Somewhere in the middle of it all, Rajesh breathed his final gusts of air and his heart beat its final, flamboyant beats. And then he was gone. Into a silence that was never like him. Into a journey from which he would never again return in the middle of the night to disturb our sleep.

After he had been taken away, I realised there were things I should have told him but never did. That when we moved to Kochi from Trivandrum he and Mekha were topmost on my list of things I would miss. That somehow - somehow - he had managed to make me realise he meant more to me than I have ever acknowledged. That somehow - somehow - he had managed to make me cry. That I would never be able to repay him for the trust with which he shared his secrets. For the unconditional acceptance of who I was. For the needless and unsolicited affection. For the unstated respect. Rajesh - you could have just been my husband's best friend. You unnecessarily, uninvited, made yourself a part of my family.

I have seen Rajesh being described as a 'child-man'. I have heard people claim he shed tears when they left after a short meeting with him. Following his brutally abrupt death, I read about people who were perplexed, overwhelmed, agitated, confused or just plain fascinated with him. He was capable of eliciting those reactions and more. Even from me, the wife of the man he declared in every interview he ever gave, meant the world to him. It was a strange friendship - my even tempered, introverted husband and this boisterous, tempestous extrovert; the quiet, brooding writer and the flamboyant, mercurial director. On Rajesh's passing, my husband was approached to write a piece in his memory. He refused. For one, he could never begin to capture in words what Rajesh had meant to him. And for another, the act of putting a tribute on paper would have meant closure, an acceptance of the finality of death. Wherever Rajesh is right now, I can almost picture him - pouting, seething, complaining - "Annaa! You refused to write about me? How could you?" Rajesh - this is the tribute Sanjay will never write for you. These are the stories I would like to add to the many that have already been written about you. Who would have thought, that day when I was forced to watch that horribly boring series you had directed, that you would one day fill up pages in newspapers and be a 'trending' topic on social media the day you left everything behind in a world that could not quite contain you? Who would have thought I would be writing a piece in your memory? Not you or me, that's for sure!

Rajesh Raman Pillai was not my friend. I did not know the workings of his tumultuous mind or his sensitive heart. I did not spend hours with him holed up in a room, laughing like mad at his anecdotes or witnessing his eccentric breakdowns over the most seemingly trivial things. I only watched from the sidelines. And occasionally sparred with him over why the radio station I then worked in would not promote his films or why I preferred to watch American comedies on tv rather than a Malayalam series. But at least on a few occasions, he bared his soul to me - shared some of his innermost feelings and fears, hopes and insecurities with me. I don't know if I would have done the same with him some day. But I hate that he did not leave me that option, that feeling that somewhere out there, there would have been someone to talk to. I have depended on him, trusted him, wept for him. But I resent the fact that he did not give me the opportunity to tell him I did care. Far more than I have ever expressed. That I did not just see him as an affable friend of my husband. And that for the rest of our lives, we are going to have those fleeting moments when we involuntarily think or say out loud 'imagine if Rajesh had heard this.' The moments we feel 'if only Rajesh had been here to see this'. And definitely, all those moments in the future when we are going to think 'Rajesh should have been here today.' He should have.