‘Form follows function’: An ode to K Shekhar, the art direction genius who bought ‘My Dear Kuttichathan’ to life

“Form follows function”

I still remember the day he mentioned it. It was in the year 1981, at my residence in Alappuzha, Kerala, in the bedroom I shared with my elder brother Jijo. My father had started his own movie production company, Navodaya, in 1977, after the demise of his elder brother Kunchacko. We had limited resources, but tremendous energy. The bedroom was our meeting room. Our residence also housed our film distribution office. Our car shed was converted as the storeroom where film boxes and cinema posters were piled up. That bedroom was the witness to several script discussions, movie budgets, box office collections and auditions of Malayalam cinema. The walls of the room were painted parrot green, so we used to call it ‘pacha muri’, meaning ‘green room’; no wonder it was the green room where some of Malayalam cinema’s legends got launched. Mohanlal’s audition for Manjil Virinja Pookkal was done in that green room.

“Form follows function.” That quote came from K Shekhar, the reclusive all-arounder who was roped in as the costume designer, on the first day of our meeting.

After the success of Manjil Virinja Pookkal (1980), written and directed by Fazil, masterminded by my brother Jijo, produced by my father Appachan, my brother had started working on his directorial debut, Padayottam (the first Malayalam film to be shot in 70 MM). The story was based on Alexander Dumas’ French Classic ‘Count of Monte Cristo’, which all literary buffs in one breath scream was “the ultimate revenge story”! The protagonist in the story was played by the box office star of Malayalam, Prem Nazir, who was 55 years old at that point. He had to play two get-ups: the treacherously banished young warrior as well as the 60-year-old mystery millionaire who returns years later to serve the coldest revenge dish. Kerala has been a humid country since time immemorial. During medieval times, menfolk never wore upper garments as humidity made it uncomfortable. Costume dramas had to follow the same pattern. But our predicament was that our ‘evergreen hero’, the moniker he was carrying, acting barechested made it less presentable, especially since his age was showing on his chest. There were several battle sequences in the movie, and the warrior Prem Nazir had to lead his foot soldiers and cavalry. There was also a slave ship sequence on the lines of Ben-Hur, where Prem Nazir had to play a slave. Our hero, being a big box office draw with lots of fans, could not go bare-chested, even though he played a slave, and so we had to dress him like a slave, but a dignified one!

“Form follows function.” The morning discussion stretched a lot and continued after lunch. I had a nap during the discussion and woke up after half an hour; the subject of discussion remained the same. Shekhar spoke authoritatively, “When Prem Nazir is fighting with a sword, if you are having an over-decorative armour to underline his stardom, it’s going to hamper his action. The costume had to be functional, not elaborate; it would hamper function and would look odd. But you can distinguish him by the colour stripes on his arm guard, and by giving his costume an ornate golden beading. Remember, form follows function.”

Shekhar ended up designing not just Prem Nazir’s costume, but his makeup, the looks of different warring factions and their armour. He also designed the publicity posters for the movie. He was a self-taught artist.

On the first day of our meeting with Shekhar, my brother and I, both born into movies, listened to the observations of the rank outsider. The paradox was that Shekhar had never designed a costume. He did not even choose his own outfits; his household did. But his reputation preceded him. He had an eye for detail. He was 25 and fresh from his Master’s in Journalism, and held a Degree in English literature from University College, Tiruvanathapuram. He was a regular customer in the Indian Coffee House, a cultural hub that tolerated the intelligentsia customers who spent hours sipping one cup of coffee and were never asked to leave. Thiruvananthapuram also had several great libraries, which fueled these brains. Besides, the capital city of Kerala had a movie screen which screened classy English movies. Shekhar was a regular in all the above venues.

Now, let me mention how we got in touch with Shekhar. Navodaya was a banner that played very safely, had made four formula movies between 1977 and 1979, and all of them had worked at the box office. During 1979-80, my father understood that things had to change, and his survival instinct made him accept my brother’s leadership. We decided to make a movie with new faces, and as a result, Manjil Virinja Pookkal got made, with Fazil being the director. Mohanlal, a new face who responded to our casting call, portrayed the antagonist. Sankar and Poornima Jayaram played the lead. Debutant Music composer Jerry Amaldev composed the music. The movie was shot in Kodaikanal during May and June 1980 and slated for December release. After principal photography, we had planned a patchwork of leftover shots in Alappuzha on October 1, 2 and 3. The cast and crew assembled on September 30, which was when we met Priyadarshan, a movie buff. He had accompanied Mohanlal from his hometown, Thiruvanthapuram, and we understood his passion for movies. Jijo welcomed him into the Padayottam core team. As Jijo and Priyadarshan discussed making Padayottamin the 70 MM canvas, the magnitude grew, and more brains were needed. That’s when Priyadarshan introduced Jijo to Shekhar and ‘form followed function’ in Padayottam.

In spite of being an English literature student, Shekhar’s knowledge was all-around. He could discuss the escape velocity needed for the NASA rocket to bolt out of gravitational pull, and in the same breath, comment on the fulcrum and the mechanical efficiency of the hand cart used in the Chalai market of his native Thiruvanthapuram.

Later on, in 1983, we were toying with the idea of launching India’s first 3D movie. Finding the right story was quite a task. Jijo was sure about one thing — he did not want to piggyback on a movie star, as 3D was the star. He also wanted it to be based on a Kerala myth. He looked into the medieval Kerala master craftsman myth of Perunthachathan, but it was too cerebral. He had a look at Manikkyakallu, a fantasy story by M T Vasudevan Nair, but the story was ahead of its time in relation to available movie special effects technology. We discussed the Kappiri myth of Fort Kochi, the ghost guarding the Portuguese treasure, which later on turned into Barroz. Then sauntered in Kuttichathan, the poltergeist of Kerala; the concept was familiar in Tamil Nadu also. Traditionally, Kuttichathan is a scary, mischievous poltergeist that invokes fear. But the smartness in the story was to make it befriend a bunch of kids, and thereby become a friendly ghost. It appealed to the kid in everybody. Armed with the Kuttichathan concept, Jijo and Mathew Paul, his Assistant Director, went all over the country in search of a writer. They had meetings with literary giants like OV Vijayan and Zacharia in Delhi. On their way back home, they held discussions with Anant Pai and Luiz Fernandes of Amar Chitra Katha in Mumbai. At a certain point, Malayalam literary giant Padmarajan and Sarangapani, who was a regular in our parent company, were also consulted. Finally, it was entrusted to Raghunath Paleri. Shekhar, who was already part of our think tank, was given the Art director’s role.

The team behind ‘My Dear Kuttichathan’, India’s first 3D movie made in 1983. (L to R) Rajiv Kumar – Assistant director, Raghunath Paleri – Script Writer, Jijo – Director, Mathew Paul – Assistant director, Jose – Executive Producer, K Shekhar – Art Director
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

The story starts with an incident where a trio of ordinary school-going kids frees a Kuttichathan enslaved by an evil magician and takes it home. We had to come up with the rest. Imagination was going bonkers, and everybody was pitching in. On a fine morning, Mathew Paul comes up with the idea that the drunken father — who is the master of the house where the invisible Kuttichathan is secretly staying — finds inexplicable footprints on the walls and ceiling. That’s when Shekhar suggested, “Mathew, stretch your imagination, do not limit it to footprints, we can make all kids walk on the walls and ceiling. Shekhar had hit the spot; nobody then knew he was making an epoch statement. Jijo was watching all these proceedings from a corner of the room with studied silence. Navodaya had a good collection of books on movie-making and set design. Jijo already knew how the dancing star Fred Astaire had done it, but that was half-hearted wall climbing. It was limited to jumping and doing a gig on the side wall. It did not have one single shot where the characters take a complete run on all four walls of a room. Both he and Shekhar knew in principle how it was achieved in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, an illusion technique that had evolved out of 19th-century fairground entertainment. I But that was Hollywood, and we were movie makers from a remote corner of India making a movie with a shoestring budget. Our need was to stage it in a living room where much of the story in the movie is happening; we needed working space, the room was getting bigger, and so was the budget of the movie. Imagination was literally travelling beyond the Milky Way in our thinking camp and defying all laws of physics including gravity.

My father definitely understood the value of the sequence. He also knew he couldn’t cold shower his ambitious son. With his consent, Jijo approached Mr Rajendran and the team of SILK Steel Industries Kerala Ltd, the Government of Kerala company that had recently designed and erected ceiling tubular trusses of our studio floor in Kakkanad. Shekhar and my brother explained to the Structural Engineers the movie sequence along with the desired length, breadth and height of the room. The speed at which it had to rotate, the weight of movie props, the wooden walls, the weight of movie lights, etc., which we calculated to be six metric tons. Their design, which had to accommodate the living room, turned out to be an octagonal one, 12 feet in radius and 35 feet long. It was made out of a tubular steel truss weighing 24 metric tons. But the budget was a bomb, around ₹5 to ₹6 lakhs, which was half the budget of a Malayalam movie.

The steel structure and set were erected in our new studio near Kakkanad, Ernakulam. Lighting the gravity-defying room for photography was a task. As the unmanned lights had to be welded or bolted, the power supply cabling was a conundrum. Miles of cables had to be wrapped around the structure. The unmanned movie camera was bolted inside the room, rock steady. At times, it was manned, and instead of the Director of Photography Ashok Kumar, cameraman Soman volunteered to be literally welded to the camera that rotated along with the set. The structure was rotated manually. It took us two weeks to complete the song sequence which Ilaiyaraaja had composed. The 95-minute movie was shot in 77 days.

The gravity-defying room where the kids climb the wall is technically an illusion. The kids who are on the move never defy gravity; it’s actually the room which rotates while the kids keep on walking along with the rotation. The illusion is possible as the camera fixed inside the room also rotates along with the room. The audience watching the movie gets to see what’s shot in the camera.

Gravity defying room in Kuttichathan, from the illusion or camera angle (left) and real angle (right)
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

Interestingly, Shekhar had another tryst with gravity during his college days. He wrote the script for an English drama for an All India Radio youth program. It was a farcical comedy set in England. Newton discovers the Law of Gravity, and the King knights him. The naive apple farmers understand that the discovery was a result of an apple falling on Newton’s head. So they approach the King with a memorandum. Can the genius in Newton somehow reduce the speed at which apples crash onto the ground and thereby save apples from getting bruised?

Shekhar’s knowledge of history came in handy during the making of the prime-time Sunday Doordarshan serial, Bible Ki Kahaniyan. This was mostly shot in Rajasthan. He was part of the research team Navodaya had sent to Israel. Apart from meeting Bible scholars, he was able to spend time at archaeological excavation sites.

There was practically no project Jijo did without Shekhar. Shekhar had a say in the design of the amusement park, Kishkinta, Chennai, named after the legendary animal kingdom in Ramayana. His pivotal contribution was in the theming of the White Water rafting ride. He conceived the same in the lines of the Hindu temple ruins of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Based on his concept sketch, it was painstakingly handcrafted by Muthuraj over a period of 4 years between 1990 and 1993. Muthuraj was a novice fresh out of the Government Fine Arts College during that time. This location has been featured in innumerable movies, the latest being the Vijay movie The Greatest of All Time.

The yesteryear of movie-making, ahead of the present digital era, was riddled with lots of risks and uncertainties. It was adventurous. Everything had to be done for real. The audience used to wonder how certain actions or visuals were achieved. Today, the movie viewer doesn’t have that excitement, as they dismiss it muttering, “graphics.” There was an age when you could not fake everything. Shekhar belonged to that era. If you were a moviegoer of the 80s and 90s who gasped on the edge of your seat, blame it on Shekhar because he would have had a hand in it. He had made several breathtaking impossible moments possible.

Shekhar ran out of breath in the last week of December 2025. He won the Kerala Government State Award in 1986 for the film Onnu Muthal Poojyam Vare and worked as the Art Director of the Padmini, Nadhiya Moidu starring Tamil movie Poove Poo Chooda Vaa directed by Fazil. Both movies were produced by Navodaya Films.