‘Tholumadan’, the Malayalam horror mini series, discusses mental health through a folklore

Mini series Tholumadan blends folklore with emotional trauma post-war

When little Appu pleads with his mother to tell a bedtime story, she scares him saying that if he does not sleep, Tholumadan would take him away. Madan, an eerie creature, apparently, hides in the dark, kidnaps men, kills them and wears their skin to live as human beings. According to her, many such Tholumadans live around as men.

Appu, who has been waiting for his father, a soldier, to return from the battlefront believes the tale. But when his father arrives home, all battered, bruised and emotionally shattered, Appu wonders if his father is for real or a Tholumadan.

The three-part series, Tholumadan, blends folklore with the emotional trauma of a person after the war, the Indo-China war of 1962 in this case.

Richy KS, writer, scriptwriter and director of the work, says, “Tholumadan’s conquests is one among the many bed-time stories that I heard from my late mother, Renuka. She loved making up stories and even claimed to have seen a kuttichathan (a goblin in folklore). Perhaps that’s why I became a storyteller,” says Richy.

The series smartly weaves the settings of a folklore with a soldier’s mental condition. His appearance, outbursts and breakdowns upset and scare the son, who ends up imagining his father to be Tholumadan. “We don’t usually discuss men’s mental health. Here, the soldier, is broken from within and his emotional outbursts affect the boy and the whole family. That vulnerable situation is placed against a folklore, with horror elements thrown in,” Richy explains.

Tholumadan leaves behind several pertinent questions. For example, when darkness creeps into our mind and surroundings, do we become Tholumadans?

Richy says that in some parts of Kerala, Tholumadan or Chappila Bhootham is a character associated with Thiruvathira festival in the Malayalam month of Dhanu (December-January). “The character visits houses wearing a mask with dry leaves [usually plantain leaves] tied all over the body and would sing songs. There are different stories associated with this figure,” says Richy.