Like most (eh?) five year olds who grew up on a steady diet of Manichithrathazhu, I was madly, hopelessly, somewhat anachronistically in love with Shobhana.

Without fail, the film marked the bringing-home of new video-viewing technhology. Post purchase of a VCR, VCD player, DVD player and so on, depending on the year, on the way home from one of the few weirdly architecture-d appliance shops (one was clad in a three-storey tall wall of glass and falling water) in Kozhikode, we would stop religiously at this video cassette shop in Kakkoor (that gave way to the CD rental shop where we reenacted the ritual with eerily similar longing despite the advancing years) and relieve the shopkeeper of a recent copy of the film. We continued the tradition long enough to watch the YouTubed version as we brought in the flat-screen TV only couple of years ago. Like Shobhana, Manichitrathazhu hasn’t aged a day since my feverish five-year-old-boy encounter with her uncompromising, wholesome grace.

Various heroines made mincemeat of what was left of my cardiovascular system and associated parts later in my teens. Yet Shobhana remained the sole, spirited image of a fierce, unattainable, truly significant, other. Over at r/kerala, someone mentioned this 2002 Karan Thapar interview with her and she is variously bold, beautiful (duh) and intimidating. If I say any more, this is going to sound like an unsent inland-love-letter. So, here is the thing.