His experiments with method acting

Jain Syriac Babu looks about 18. In Jalam, the charity film that's released a week ago, you see him chasing Priyanka Nair in the first scene, proposing marriage. She says, “You are younger than me by two years.”

The film then spans several years with the couple raising a child together but Jain continues to look a teenager, managing to pass off as the small towner with oiled hair parted into two, a mundu and a loose checked shirt. So when you look at his Facebook photos, you might be surprised to find an entirely different picture there. There's no small townness about him, at least until he tells you he is from Nilambur, he's studied there and came to Bengaluru only a year ago.

The idea of acting came to him in the days he left Nilambur for Kottayam to do his MSW. “We were doing a play against child abuse, and I realised the possibilities of acting,” Jain says. He went on to participate in a theatre festival by Mahatma Gandhi University and won the best actor award. When the news of this came on the papers, director

M. Padmakumar called him to act in the Mohanlal-starrer Shikkar. "I showed him the videos of a play we did, and my mannerisms were similar with the character he had in mind. I also learnt martial arts for a year for the character."

Learning new skills for his characters seemed to have become a habit for Jain. For Jalam he has learnt to make porottas the way we see street side eateries throw maida on the air and beat it over a pan. “There have also been other incredible experiences, of meeting people who lived under a bridge in Ernakulam.”

Jain recounts meeting men and women from other states, catching fish in their coracles. In between Shikkar and Jalam, Jain did not get to act in films but he had become active in theatre, and also began writing on his own. An English play he has scripted and directed - The Nation of Refugees — has been staged in Bengaluru the last year. He has also become involved with theatre groups like Abhinaya and a contemporary theatre with Feroz, which they started in Mananthavady.