In the heart of North Malabar, long before cinema halls and streaming platforms, stories lived in songs. The ‘Vadakkan Pattukal’- the Ballads of North Malabar sung by ‘Panan’ the balladeers spoke of warriors and families who lived by the lifestyle of Kalaripayattu, the traditional martial art of Kerala. These ballads of the North Malabar region in a small state Kerala in India, celebrate the ‘Chekavars’- warriors trained in Kalaripayattu who often fought ‘ankam’- duels to settle disputes between feuding lords. Victory brought honour, defeat meant death, but never disgrace.
Originally passed down orally, Vadakkan Pattukal were later written, printed and then eventually visualised through images and motion pictures adding shapes, sounds, colours and perspectives. And movies inspired by these stories have an important contribution behind the popularity of the ballads across several regions of the world. Beyond blood and battle, the ballads also captured the social life of medieval Kerala: marriage customs, caste hierarchies, food, festivals, the men and the women.
Among these tales, none has captured Kerala’s movie imagination more than the legends of the Thiyya warrior siblings Aromal Chekavar, Unniyarcha and their nephew Chandu. Aromal, the noble warrior. Unniyarcha, the fierce swordswoman. Chandu, the cousin forever called as ‘Chathiyan’ the traitor.
The Legend
The three grew up training together, but rivalry and jealousy soon poisoned their bond. Chandu loved Unniyarcha and, as per custom, hoped to marry her. But Aromal opposed the match, arranged her marriage elsewhere, and festered jealousy in Chandu.
The real tragedy unfolded when Aromal was chosen to fight a duel and Chandu, appointed as his aide, sabotaged the weapons and fatally betrayed Aromal. Yet he won, only to be fatally stabbed by Chandu while resting after the fight. Before dying, Aromal revealed the betrayal for which Unniyarcha vowed revenge that her son would kill Chandu. And years later her son Aromalunni and nephew Kannappanunni beheaded him, restoring the family’s honour.
Adaptation and Shifts
Over the decades, filmmakers have adapted and retold this same legend in strikingly different ways.
A filmmaker always has a right to liberalize and put in creative additions and excisions to the content and even the perspective and chronological order of events in the original text can be distorted accordingly to enhance the beauty and feel of a film. This is mostly reflected and conveyed through the plot and characterization of the film. And when the same text is adapted by different artists into films, during different period of time and using different technologies, the variances among them are apparent.
So far, four Malayalam movies- Unniyarcha (1961), Oru Vadakkan Veeragadha (1989), Puthooramputhri Unniyarcha (2002) and Veeram-Macbeth (2016) are set around the same story of the Puthooram family from the Ballads of North Malabar. The makers of these films reimagined the same ballads, reshaping heroes into villains, villains into misunderstood men, and oral history into cinematic spectacle.
Four Films, Four Perspectives
The Characterisation: True to the text or true to the imaginations?
Character in film or any text could be the individual as such or the behaviour or even any thought that leads to actions that define the character.
The original ballads present Aromal as the archetypal hero who is young, valiant, and bound by duty. While his sister Unniyarcha embodies rare female valor, remembered as both beautiful and fiercely independent. Chandu, however, lives in infamy as Chathiyan Chandu, the traitor who kills his cousin. Cinema, however, reshaped these characters to match the times.
Unniyarcha shifts from a virtuous heroine (Unniyarcha) to an empowered visionary (Puthooramputhri Unniyarcha), and even a sensual opportunist (Veeram). Chandu, once flatly villainous, becomes a misunderstood anti-hero (Oru Vadakkan Veeragadha) and also Shakespearean figure of ambition (Veeram). Aromal, though consistently noble, often fades into the background, his death serving as the catalyst for the others’ arcs. These shifting portrayals reveal not just creative choices but changing cultural priorities from celebrating pure heroism to probing human flaws.
When the ballads describe Aromal as a man with dark complexion- “കാരിരുൾക്കൊത്ത മുടിയഴകേ… കാരിരുൾക്കൊത്ത തുടയഴകേ…” none of the movies show him as in the original Vadakkan Pattukal. Panan’s words and Aromal himself describe him as a 22 years old during the duel, when he says, “… ഇരുപത്തി രണ്ടു വയസ്സെനിക്കേ…” but the movies show him much older. And though Aromal is considered as the protagonist in the Vadakkan Pattukal, no movie put him as the protagonist but just an inevitable major character that pushes the plot along, like a Deuteragonist.
Unniyarcha, his sister is very young, beautiful, courageously stubborn and is read as selfish. She is also slightly an opportunist. From the conversation between Aromal and his brother in the Vadakkan Pattukal, we get to know that she was married off at a very young age of ten when the ballad recites, “…പത്തുവയസ്സിൽ കുളിച്ചുകെട്ടി നെടുമംഗല്യം വെച്ചുകൊണ്ടുപോയി…”. Some claim that she was thirteen years old when she fought with the Jonakars.
Though there has been no description of Chandu much in the ballads, he is understood as an orphan, betrayer, murderer, molester etc. He is easily swayable, caught between promises and love. From the lines in the ballads it could be understood that Chandu could actually be younger to both Aromal and Unniyarcha. Thus evident that, the films hardly have cast actors that resemble the age mentioned in the Vadakkan Pattukal. The attires of these characters are also different in different movies.
Difference in characterisation can also be picked from the language the characters use in each of these movies. The first movie in the series uses the language of the times while Oru Vadakkan Veeragadha brings in a more Brahmanical touch to the slang of Malayalam used. Puthooramputhri Unniyarcha takes a similar approach in the language. But Veeram shatters all the previous ones and brings closer to the slang of the North Malabar region.
The Chekavars may belong to medieval ballads, but their stories survive through every retelling, proving that legends live as long as they are reimagined. From heroic purity in the 1960s, to psychological realism in the 1980s, feminine agency in the 2000s, and globalized experimentation in the 2010s… Adaptations have been more than just storytelling.
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