Sidhu Panakkal has a story from decades ago that he says almost turned into a street fight.

The production controller, known for dropping behind-the-scenes anecdotes from his years in Malayalam cinema, has now recounted an incident from the sets of Dileep's Nee Varuvolam. The location was the same spot where Aakashadoothu's Murali house set once stood, and the crew was there to shoot two scenes, including the funeral of the character played by Dileep's sister Rekha Mohan.

At the centre of the story is a light boy named Satheesan, from Cherthala, who was part of Sree Movies' outdoor unit at the time. According to Panakkal, Satheesan had a party trick. He could act deaf and mute so convincingly that people on location genuinely believed it, and he pulled the act on multiple film sets without anyone catching on.

On this particular evening, while the art department was still setting up the funeral pyre, Satheesan walked up to Dileep and ran his usual bit, miming for help like a man who couldn't hear or speak. Dileep played along by brushing him off and telling him to leave. Panakkal says this went back and forth several times. The problem was that nobody watching from outside the unit knew Satheesan was crew.

That's when things got uncomfortable. Bystanders who'd gathered to watch the shoot started murmuring, then arguing among themselves. Panakkal recalls people asking why Dileep couldn't simply ask the man what he needed instead of waving him away, with some going as far as questioning whether that's how you treat someone who can't speak for himself. A section of younger onlookers took the opposite view, arguing the man had no business pestering an actor mid-shoot. Dileep and Satheesan, unaware the crowd had turned on them, kept the bit going.

Panakkal says he and Sree Movies unit chief Balaji clocked the mood shift fast and realised it could spiral. His worry wasn't just an unhappy crowd. If locals figured out Satheesan wasn't actually disabled, the anger could shift from Dileep to the unit itself for what would look like duping people who'd come to watch a shoot in good faith.

So Panakkal did the only thing that wouldn't blow up either way. He walked up to Satheesan, made a show of explaining something to him, and quietly steered him away from Dileep, without letting on to anyone that the whole exchange had been a running gag. Shooting resumed soon after, and the crowd's attention moved back to the actual scene.

Panakkal insists there was never an intent to fool anyone watching. It was simply Satheesan's regular bit on sets where he worked, and nobody on the unit expected bystanders to take it as seriously as they did. Whether the joke ever made it back into a film in some form isn't something Panakkal has said, and the anecdote, as he tells it, ends right there.