Vijayan scores in Jayaraj movie

"Santham," says director Jayaraj, "is the next in my navarasa series, after Karunam."

For those who came in late, Jayaraj embarked on a series of films, each featuring one of the nine rasas with Karunam. And immediately struck paydirt, winning the Golden Peacock for that film.

And now, he is busy shooting the second of the nine rasas -- and for the second in a nine-film series, he has pulled off a casting coup that has the industry buzzing.

Playing the lead role in Santham is none other than Kerala's best known football player and captain of India's national team, I M Vijayan.

"The story is about the conflict in the mind of a killer," Jayaraj, resting at his Trichur home after an intense, strenuous shoot, told rediff.com "Vijayan plays the killer, the man who murders a very close friend, and the story is about what goes on in his mind after the deed. It is about guilt, about fear, about remorse... it is about conflicting, warring emotions..."

Jayaraj appears to have a penchant for picking non-actors and giving them lead roles -- Karunam being an example, wherein he starred a semi-senile man in the lead role. And now Vijayan. Why?

The question provokes a gentle laugh. "I liked his face, I find it expressive and most importantly, there is a rustic quality to it, which is important in context of the film I am making," says the director. "As to why I pick non-actors, I find it challenging, interesting. There is also the fact that their freshness brings a certain appeal. They are raw, you haven't seen them before. And being non-professionals, you can mould them better, they don't slip into the tricks of the acting trade.

"And you know what?," the director adds, "thus far, Vijayan has exceeded even my expectations, he has done very well, facing the camera with all the aplomb of a veteran."

Jayaraj is generally reluctant to reveal details of his under-production films, but on pressing, he goes into some depth about the film now in the making. "Like I said, Vijayan kills his friend, and the film is about the guilt and other emotions he feels. As an undercurrent, there is also the relationship between the two mothers, the victim's and the killers -- they know each other, they were close before the incident, what happens to that closeness after the killing makes a sub-plot. I have K P A C Lalitha playing the victim's mother, while Seema Biswas plays the killer's mother. I don't want to talk about what exactly happens between the two women"

The entire film was shot, in one schedule stretching 14 days. Fourteen days? "Yes," says Jayaraj. "It is a single location shoot, we shot start to finish in one hectic schedule, now I am taking a bit of a rest before getting into the editing stage."

The film is slated for a December 25 release. Speaking of which, you will recall that Jayaraj is the director who made a bid for the Guinness Book of Records, releasing Millennium Stars, the Biju Menon-Jayaram starrer, one minute after midnight on January 1, and thus qualifying for the entry as the first-ever film released in the new millennium.

Jayaraj is busy working on pre-production details of his next film -- "It is," he says, "my dream project, something I have been planning for a long long time."

To flesh it out, Jayaraj will be making a film on the life and times of Kunjan Nambiar -- the poet extraordinaire who created, and elevated to an art form, the Ottamthullal tradition in Kerala.

"At this point," Jayaraj says, "I'll leave it at that. All I can add is that Jayaram will be playing the lead role in that film."