On the fifth day of his birth, Cyriac Alencheril's mother died. Since then, the word "struggle" has been like his twin sibling. A Hollywood actor-producer born in Kerala, Cyriac has had an extraordinary lifehe has been a Salesian missionary in the Hindi heartland, a bellboy in Kuwait and a paratrooper in the US military. The twists and turns in his life would make a gripping thriller.
"I was born as the seventh child of a 33-year-old mother during the India-Pakistan war of 1971," he says. "My father was in the insecticides and pesticides business in Athirampuzha in Kottayam district. Even today, raising a child without breast milk and other necessities is tough. Imagine [how it was] 53 years ago. People pretty much said I wouldn't survive... that I was a gone case."
He carried the tag of being a 'gone case' throughout childhood. According to Cyriac, his curiosity often landed him in trouble, because of which he had to change schools several times.
A turning point came when he got into mischief in church. "I was an altar boy," he says. "One Sunday morning, I took three small bottles of wine meant for mass. I didn't know what wine tasted like, so in a moment of insanity, I took not just one, but three shots-bam, bam, bam! The sexton identified me as the culprit, and the vicar reported the incident to my disciplinarian father. I was beaten many times and sent to a boarding school, [after] my stepmom insisted that I needed to be sent away from home."
The school was around 20 kilometres away. A maternal aunt paid for the admission, and Cyriac found the school a blessing in disguise. In his second year, he earned the title of best actor. He became an athlete, footballer, debater and emcee as well.
This story is from the July 07, 2024 edition of THE WEEK India.
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This story is from the July 07, 2024 edition of THE WEEK India.
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