“My biggest wish has been to see my movie hit the local theatres and run for at least a few days,” says Dr Siju Vijayan with an infectious smile, at his home in Aroor. The filmmaker and homeopathic doctor has been in a wheelchair since 2017. Vijayan, who suffers spinal muscle atrophy, has a positive, almost enthusiastic attitude towards life. “My condition (spinal muscular atrophy) was detected when I was five. I would find it difficult to walk properly. I would fall frequently. And this alarmed my parents. So, they took me to a doctor, who recommended a muscle biopsy, which revealed that I was suffering from spinal muscular atrophy.” The doctor had initially said that he would lose the ability to walk by age 12. But, as fate would have it, Vijayan made it through.
From Dreams to Screen: A Cinephile라이브 바카라 Pursuit
Malayalam director and writer Dr Siju Vijayan talks about his childhood fascination with cinema and the challenges of navigating filmmaking in a wheelchair.
“There were times when I needed help to walk (hold on to another person for support),” Vijayan recalls. “That라이브 바카라 when my friends would step in. They’d be happy to lend me a hand, especially if I had to get on a bus, where the footboard was placed high. My friends and my family have been my lifeline,” he says. Vijayan took to films after he was mesmerised by a movie poster. “The movie Amaram (1991), starring Mammootty, had just been released. I was probably in class seven or eight. My brother and I were returning from school. He suggested we stop for tea, and so, we entered a tea shop, where posters of a lot of plays and movies were put up,” he reminisces. “While this wasn’t out of the ordinary, what caught my eye was an artist라이브 바카라 rendering of the poster of Amaram—a vertical portrait of the lead Mammootty taking his boat to sea, against a black backdrop. It was so beautiful.”
He then went on to recreate several such movie posters. “Art was like a release for me. It wasn’t just movie posters, but also sceneries and portraits. I enjoyed it,” he says. His drawings and art works were praised by teachers, parents and admired by peers. “That certainly felt good,” says Vijayan. After eighth grade, movement started becoming more and more difficult for him. “I had to increasingly rely on help from friends and family to be able to walk from one place to the other, access transportation and so on.” Vijayan recalls his father taking him across the river from his home in the hamlet of Aroor to Panangad, a suburb in Kochi, via boat. “My father was quite particular about our academics. He would ask us to recall what was taught the previous day, during the boat ride to school,” he recalls.
After completing grade 12, Vijayan enrolled at Maharajas College, Ernakulam for BSc. and then went on to study BHMS (Bachelors in Homeopathic Medicine and Surgery) from Shree Vidyadhiraja Homeopathic Medical College in Thiruvananthapuram. Navigating through college life wasn’t much of a challenge, as he had trusted friends who helped him. But things changed when he came back home after completing college. “Inactivity led my condition to deteriorate quicker, and so, I bought a wheelchair in 2015 and by 2017, I became fully dependent on it,” he says.
He fondly recalls his first tryst with film making, “A college roommate (at Vidhyadhiraja) bought a hand-held video camera—the one where you could put in a small cassette for recording (a DV camcorder). I was very thrilled and wrote a script for a short film titled, Hostelil oru divasam (one day at a hostel). However, that movie was never shot—a common friend of mine burnt it when I stepped out. I am not sure whether he meant it as a joke, but the script was lost forever.”
In 2012, Vijayan wrote and directed a short film called Anamika– The Prey? The movie premiered at the Lohithadas National Short Film Festival in the same year. The movie highlighted the various kinds of harassment and bias women tend to face, with Anamika, a young girl, reliving lives of real-life victims of violence like Soumya, who was brutally raped and murdered in 2011 and Liji, who was murdered by her cousin in 2012. In 2014, Vijayan wrote and directed Novu, a 15-minute short film and in 2019, he scripted and directed his first feature, Insha, the tale of a wheelchair ridden girl, who wished to see the ocean. “The movie was slated for release in March 2020. Everything was ready. However, the pandemic postponed its release and about a year later, in March 2021, the movie was released in theatres and soon after on Neestream, an OTT platform,” says Vijayan.
The script of Insha was then turned into a book. “The book Wheel to Reel was officially launched in December 2024,” he says. The book is part of his story, weaved in with the script of Insha. Vijayan started the shoot of his second feature (yet to be released) Return to Kashmir in 2023. The shoot has been completed and the movie is now in post-production stage. For this, Vijayan is trying to raise funds by trying to sell as many copies of Wheel to Reel as possible. “Our country isn’t really disabled-friendly,” says the director, who travelled along the length of the country to shoot the film, which is the story of a displaced Kashmiri Pandit라이브 바카라 return to his home. “A lot of hotels, especially budget hotels, do not have elevators. And the more economical rooms are on the top floor. At one such instance, me and another crew member had to sleep in the car for the night,” he recalls. “At a lot of places, accessibility is limited as there are no ramps, or the ramps aren’t wide enough or aren’t on level with the ground, which defeats their purpose.” Nothing, however, seems to deter Vijayan라이브 바카라 spirit. “I do feel uncomfortable when people look/stare at me—and more often, I am not able to make out if it is sympathy or empathy. This is something I dislike,” he says.
The director might be bound to a wheelchair, but his dreams certainly aren’t.
Sumitra Nair is an independent journalist based in Kochi, Kerala.
