How The Mandela Effect In Malayalam Movies Plays Tricks With Your Mind

Catchphrases from movies are the go-to conversation booster for Malayalis. Remember how we slipped in Kanaan oru lookillane ullu, bhayankara bhudhiya’ in random fun conversations with friends or when we said, ‘Mothaledakenena Saji?’ to that companion who tried to take advantage of your situation? Such movie dialogues always found their way into our day-to-day conversations. One such popular Malayalam movie catchphrase would be ‘Shoba Chirikunille’ from the film Vadakkunokkiyantram which was written and directed by the epitome of talent, Sreenivasan, himself. This catchphrase had unexpectedly caught the fancy of the internet with a Reddit post going viral. And people are calling this phenomenon the Mandela Effect.

As per the Reddit post, this catchphrase, which has been embedded in our minds for decades never really existed! Sreenivasan’s character Dineshan, never really said ‘Shobha Chirikunille’. If you see the movie again, especially the iconic vazhathoppu scene where Dineshan tries to crack a joke or two to get his wife’s attention, you will notice that instead of ‘Shobha Chirikunille’, he actually said “Shobhakku thamasha serikum angu manasilayila alle?” 

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https://youtu.be/f9Y6dqKgR0E

I know right! All your life feels like a lie! 

So how did this happen? Why did a thing that never really existed get imprinted in our minds? That’s called Mandela Effect. 

Mandela Effect is nothing but a false memory shared by multiple people. In 2010, Fiona Broome, a paranormal researcher recollected vivid details related to anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela’s death in a prison in the 1980s. The truth, however, was that Nelson Mandela died in 2013, after having served as the president of Africa from 1994-1999. It wasn’t just Fiona Broome who shared this false memory but thousand other people too. And that’s how the term Mandela Effect came into existence.

Memes related to the mentioned scene from Vadakkunokiyanthram have been shared relentlessly across various social media platforms. There are high chances that some random person who made this meme came up with “Shobha chirikunille” for a shorter caption that would go along with the template. Seeing these memes regularly on our feed and stories tricked our mind into believing that “Shobha chirikunille” is indeed a dialogue from the movie. 

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“Shobha chirikunille?!” is not the only case of the Mandela effect in Malayalam movies. The famous dialogue ‘Ennodo Bala’ from Katha Parayumpol has been our most cliched response to a situation that is nothing compared to the one you have encountered. The dialogue actually said in the movie is “Ende mumbilo Bala?”.

The famous catchphrase from the evergreen movie Nadodikaatu also seems to be a simplified version of the original one. It is “Eda Dasa, Ellathinum athindethaya samayam und mone” and not “Ellathinum athindethaya samayam und Dasa”.

All this while the versions of the dialogues we had etched in our memory were nothing but manipulation of the original ones. Some meme creator’s convenience became our memory and we did not even realize it. 

But isn’t it fascinating, how our brain works? While we struggle to remember things that actually happened, here we are, remembering stuff that never happened. Forget movies, what about real life? Of the million threads of memories that we have in our minds, how much of it is false? Can you recollect any?

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