The military man who gained immortality as Pavanayi'

Kochi: After serving the military for five years where Raju Daniel a.k.a Captain Raju rose to the rank as a captain, he powered his way into the film industry and made his indelible mark in multifarious roles for over three decades.

With over 500 films in several languages, including Malayalam, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada, he shone in both serious and comedy roles. Though he was the perfect villain for a long time with his tall onscreen image, he also broke the stereotype with many character performances.

Raju, who was also a volleyball player, pursued a degree in zoology from Catholicate College, Pathanamthitta, and joined the Army as an officer at the age of 21. After quitting the force, he worked as marketing chief at a private company in Mumbai and acted in several amateur drama troupes.

From the tough villainous roles to the amiable comic roles and vice versa, Raju’s career was a mixed fare.

‘Pavanayi’ of ‘Nadodikkattu,’ the 1987 movie, rem-ains one of his most memorable characters. He appears as a gangster and a hired killer in a hilarious manner. Though his presence was only for less than 10 minutes, the film became a milestone in his career. Pavanayi, who was tasked to kill Vijayan (Sreenivasan) and Ramdas (Mohanlal), who were mistaken as detectives by Ananthan Nambiar (Thilakan), a drug-smuggler, failed to accomplish his mission and fell to his death. However, the scene where he takes up the ‘Malappuram Kathi’ (Malappuram knife) from his collection of ‘lethal weapons’ to kill the duo has had a permanent existence, especially on social media trolls.

Raju always talked of Pavanayi’s role that he loved to take up due to the underlying humour in it.

The next year, he came up with a mysterious villain, Nicholas, who was also a hired killer, in the movie August 1 but not in the same class as Pavanayi. It was an instant hit with the menacing villain role played by him. After one year, through the character of ‘Aringodar’ in Oru Vadak-kan Veeragadha of M.T Vasudevan Nair- Hariha-ran, he portrayed the highly skilled teacher of Chandu Chekavar (Mam-mootty) and captured the audience attention again.

‘Karunan Chanthakka-vala’ (detective Karan Ch-and), the role of Dileep’s uncle in CID Moosa, was another hilarious version of ‘Pavanayi’ with the same knee-length overcoat, dark glass, a hat and an extra foolish behaviour.

His other notable films include Oru CBI Diaryku-rippu, Samrajyam, Avana-zhi and Puthukkottayile Puthumanavalan.

He made his directorial debut with the film Itha Oru Snehagadha in 1997 while the second film came after 14 years - Mr. Pavanayi 99.99 which was released in 2012 where he reprised the role of Pava-nayi from Nadodikkattu.

He was a great believer in God and in the last years of his life, he bec-ame a man of prayers. He used to say that his parents’ wish was to see him as a priest.