Thiruvananthapuram: Weeks before Kerala votes in Assembly elections, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan sat down with Malayalam superstar Mohanlal for a candid, hour-long conversation about his childhood, personal influences, and the tough exterior that he says was built for him, not by him.
The interview, titled Kandum Mindiyum Iruvar (Two people, who met and talked), aired as the two-time CM prepares to lead the CPI(M) into a third consecutive state election. The format drew immediate comparisons to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s widely discussed 2019 interview with Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar, released on the eve of the general elections. The party, though, maintained the conversation was the product of a long personal bond between the actor and the politician.
Over the course of an hour, Mohanlal drew out a side of Vijayan rarely seen in public: a teenager who once led a rebellion against a ferry-fare hike, a son who read the Mahabharat aloud to his mother, a kid who worked briefly as a beedi-roller before his teacher urged his parents to send him back to school, and a politician who enjoys action films and privately relishes a good joke.
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‘A branded image’
Vijayan addressed the perception of him as a stern figure with characteristic bluntness.
“It’s a branded image… Because I am a Left-wing functionary, especially a key figure in the CPI(M). People have different expressions, but they only show the ones where I am angry. There will be moments of happiness, but they decide against publishing them,” Vijayan said.
The Chief Minister went on to say that he doesn’t usually worry about news against him.
“I see it as opposition to the party I represent, which is channelled towards me. I don’t feel any anger towards the people as well,” he said, adding that the moment he steps through his door at home, he tries to become a different person entirely.
The CM spoke warmly of his mother, crediting her as the central figure in his upbringing and the source of lessons in hospitality and grounding. He said her death, along with that of veteran CPI(M) leader Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, had left him devastated.
His reading life, shaped early by epics such as the Ramayan and Mahabharat, eventually expanded to include Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables.
“My mother was a big shade of protection in my life. She played the main role in raising me with care,” he said.
While his parents were believers—and his mother held faith in the supernatural, something Vijayan said he too believed in as a child — he grew into his communist identity through the mentorship of stalwarts such as A.K. Gopalan and E.M.S. Namboothiripad, whom he named as his greatest political influences.
The bloody shirt and the Emergency
The interview touched briefly on Vijayan’s political career, including the moment in Kerala Assembly when he held aloft his bloodied shirt, the one he was wearing when he was allegedly subjected to custodial torture during the Emergency.
“I did save the shirt for a bit. I was young then, so I was able to survive. But when they beat us, you know how they say ‘beaten till the skin peels off’, the skin of my body had actually peeled off because of the beating,” he said.
That experience, the CM said, shaped his firm stance on custodial violence—including his policy of referring such allegations to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
On fear, Vijayan said he has known little of it in his public life, save one: the fear of straying from the party line.
“Generally, I am a person who goes in obedience to the party. The party has general positions that it desires. I am someone who thinks that even the slightest deviation should not come in those positions. I live fearing that. If you want to say so, there is such a fear,” he said.
His confidence, he noted, comes from the certainty of never having wronged — illustrated by an anecdote of a local from his village who once hinted at a bribe, and was turned away without ceremony.
Asked about his stewardship of the 2018 floods and the Covid-19 pandemic, Vijayan deflected credit with characteristic modesty.
“So, as part of that, to stand with the people, to speak to the people, and the people received that in a good way. They accepted it with such goodwill,” he said, insisting he possesses no particular talent and thinks of himself as “a common man” who simply prioritises practical problems.
Mohanlal closed the interview by coaxing Vijayan into a performance of sorts—lines from the Upanishad he had learned in school:
“Hridistham Eeshwaran… Prathishtham Prathimaam Poojayil… Karastha Paayasam… Koparastha Galam Pin. (God is established in the human heart. Instead of going behind this true presence, one goes before the idol. Inside this, there is payasam (sweet pudding), but outside, only a drop has been placed. So, to lick that drop, when one goes out toward it, the whole thing gets spilled.).”
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