After seeing the final print, Smitha hugged me for five whole minutes. She had tears in her eyes. Director Bharathan had made a similar film, Rathinirvedam (1978), starring the celebrated Jayabharathi, and it had received a lot of acclaim. So comparisons with Layanam were inevitable. People also kept calling my film soft porn and accused me of exploiting my artistes.

Ironically, Nandu, whose original name was Prince, was Urvashi’s brother. People even tried to concoct stories that he became a drug addict after seeing the intimate scenes and sex in the film.

Urvashi herself had not seen Layanam, but before its release she jokingly said that if the film had any sex scenes, she would shoot the director. I retaliated in jest, saying, “No such gun has been made in the world.” It was all said in good spirit. Sadly, Nandu later died by suicide, and so did Smitha. In that sense, life seemed to imitate art.

Incidentally, Urvashi and I had no problems with each other. In fact, I worked with her in my very next film, Kouthuka Varthakal (1990), a comedy also starring Mukesh and Suresh Gopi. It was a superhit, and Urvashi went on to do many films with me. There was no bad blood between us.

When Layanam was released, the press called it soft porn and all sorts of other things. But the film became a runaway success. My producers made crores of rupees from it. Choudary, who had started out as a financier, moved to Chennai and went on to make many films after that.