LIVING TO TELL THE TALE

A Salesian missionary in heartland India, a bellboy in Kuwait, a soldier in Iraq, an actor in Hollywood-Cyriac Alencheril's extraordinary life has been full of twists and turns

- NIRMAL JOVIAL

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.