Mumbai-based animator Suresh Eriyat believed his father’s tall tales until he was in his 40s. In the film Kandittund! (Seen It!), produced by his Santacruz studio, Studio Eeksaurus, and animated by Adithi Krishnadas, we get a glimpse of these stories. PNK Panicker, his father and the protagonist, takes the listeners on a journey through six ghost stories that are “a mashup of some harmless lies” and “unbelievable exaggerations”. When we catch up with Eriyat, he tells us, “My father was always an amazing storyteller. He was so convincing that we never realised that these were all merely stories. They were an extension of reality for me.” The film, originally in Malayalam, has recently been adapted into a book, P.N.K. Panicker’s Ghost Stories (Tulika Publishers), in English.

Eriyat recalls being eight years old and listening to his father’s narrations as they walked to his village near Alleppey (Alappuzha) in Kerala. On one of their trips, his father showed him the exact spot where he had caught sight of a ghostly creature called Aana-Marutha once, with descriptions of the time and place where it escaped to. “It sent a shiver through my spine,” Eriyat recalls. Several such fantastical creatures from local myths have made it to the film and the book. Having listened to vividly-described stories for years, Eriyat realised that there was a need to reintroduce his audience to the power of oral storytelling and the charm of storytellers who exist among us. “I started to record my father’s versions. That way I could document his talent forever,” he shares.