woman. His world collapses when his father dies, the radical friend leaves him, the sportsman friend gets injured in an accident and has to give up sports and her family takes the woman away to another city. The lead role was played by poet Balachandran Chullikkadu. His next film Chidambaram came after a gap of four years. The 1985 film was an adaptation of a short story by C. V. Sreeraman and was produced by Aravindan under the banner Suryakanthi. The film explores various aspects of relations between men and women through the lives of three people living in a cattle farm in the hilly areas on the border of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Themes of guilt and redemption are also dealt with. Unlike earlier films directed by Aravindan, Chidambaram featured a cast consisting of many popular actors: Bharath Gopi, Smita Patil, Sreenivasan and Mohandas play the lead roles. In 1986 Oridathu can be seen as a continuation of Aravindan's earlier film Thampu and his cartoon series Cheriya Manushyarum Valiya Lokavum (The Small Man and the Big World). The story is about the problems faced by the people of a hamlet with no electricity, when electric supply finally reaches them. The film reaches a conclusion that life is better without electricity. Though the film is discussing a serious issue, the treatment of it is very simplistic. Humour and intensity characterise the film that is set in the mid-fifties. The film is different from many of Aravindan's earlier works in that it deals with a broad range of characters and lacks a clear-cut linear story. The theme of Oridathu demanded a caricature treatment so Aravindan made it that way. When asked about this deviation, Aravindan stated, "There is an element of caricature in all the characters. A little exaggeration and lot of humour was consciously introduced to make effective the last sequence, which is the explosion. In fact the whole film moves towards the climax — the clash on the day of the festival and the breaking out of the fire." The film is complex in that it has many characters and many incidents and therefore does not have a single motif. Hence, Aravindan had to use a number of shots in the film. The usual type of music is also absent. Instead, the sounds of the incidents are used to the maximum. In the film, different characters speak different dialects