Back in 1980, when the coinage 'new generation' associated with Malayalam cinema was still decades away, a young screenwriter wrote a script that would go on to create ripples in the industry. Chamaram, which revolved around the forbidden love between a college student and a lecturer, announced the arrival of John Paul, whose scripts formed the backbone of middle cinema that navigated the boundary-less land between independent cinema and commercial cinema.
It was also the beginning of a long association with filmmaker Bharathan, for whom Paul wrote 14 of his 60 scripts. In those initial years, he wrote prolifically, at times churning out even 19 scripts a year.
However, these were not attempts at riding a wave and creating more of the same for commercial success. Most of his scripts were explorations into the complexity of relationships and the inherent frailties of the human mind. He wrote the kind of scripts that would be called "bold" even by today's standards, be it Kathodu Kathoram, which showed how society targets a married woman for finding solace in a man other than her cruel, abusive husband or Rachana that had a writer making his wife feign love for her colleague in whom he has seen a character for his next work.
