The year was 1998. Dr V Venu, then a 34-year-old bureaucrat, had just taken over as Kerala Tourism director.

It was a time when Sri Lanka was widely believed to be the ayurveda capital of the world. The young director was determined to reclaim the honour for Kerala. He planned a major marketing blitz, but by employing never-before used methods.

“I remember meeting Dr Venu with digital content for CD-ROMs and videos. He gave them all a close look and then asked me to look at the nails of the masseurs we had featured,” said Hari M R, the chairman of Invis Multimedia.

Hari did not notice this before. Their fingernails looked dirty.

“These were professional masseurs we had chosen for the photoshoot. These women constantly dealt with all kinds of ayurveda concoctions that it was natural that their fingers and nails were stained. Dr Venu wanted the ads sanitised. Already, India was perceived as unhygienic. He did not want our digital content to confirm that impression in a foreigner travelling to Kerala for health purposes. We got the point,” Hari said.

He reworked the campaigns using professional beauticians as masseurs. As the main model, Invis roped in a radiant girl. In a year this girl would win the Miss Chennai title. And in another four, would become a rage in Tamil and Telugu films. But when she was picked for the Kerala Tourism ad, following Dr Venu's insistence on fresh ways to package Kerala, she was in her teens and was just about finding her feet in the world of modelling.

Her name: Trisha.

“We were particular that everything about our content looked fresh, pretty and glossy. We realised that the ayurveda oil poured on Trisha's body looked dull. So to achieve a certain alluring gloss, it was not ayurveda oil that the masseurs pour on Trisha in the video but 2T engine oil used in Kinetic Honda,” Hari said.

Showman who erased himself

There was a bit of deception but Kerala Tourism was suddenly powered by fresh dynamic thinking.

It was the first time in the country, perhaps even in the world, CD-ROMs were used to market a destination. (YouTube was launched only in 2005.) Soon after, Kerala Tourism launched its website under Dr Venu's leadership. The website was so ahead of its time that even the Kerala government portal was launched only three years later in 2001. The Kerala Tourism website still attracts the largest traffic among tourism websites in the country. Not even the India Tourism site can boast of such traffic.

As a tourism administrator, Dr Venu was clearly a showman. But he was more the backroom stylist than the flashy bridegroom. Outside his office, the officer was seen mostly in a white 'mundu' and shirt.

He might be hyper-sensitive to how his state is perceived but is seemingly least bothered about what others think of him.

Man in the queue

There are many people who had seen him standing in a long queue before a beverages outlet.

“When I saw him in front of a Bevco queue, he was Kerala's excise commissioner,” said Hari. “In his trademark 'mundu' and shirt he was just another Malayali waiting for his bottle. Not even the person at the counter recognised him as the commissioner,” Hari said.

This yearning to be free of all the privileges of power had at times put him in trouble. Dr Venu is a cycling buff who normally pedals up to 40 km a day, all alone in the morning. Many a time autorickshaws had knocked him down and left him to his fate.

“When such things happen, he would be furious. He would rant that they did not stop and come to his help,” a senior IAS officer and friend said. “I would often wonder why he would not just jot down the number and initiate action against the driver. Even ordinary people would do it. And this man was the home secretary,” the officer said.

Beggar on SM Street

Former minister and Muslim League leader Dr M K Muneer did not find this surprising.

“He is a person with a strong moral compass. He will not hurt anyone. And will go crazy if he thinks injustice has been done. He is hyper sensitive,” Muneer said. They were classmates at Kozhikode Medical College. Also, Venu's mother, Dr Rajamma, had taught Muneer gynecology.

He remembers how Venu, when a medical student, had taken off his shirt and sat begging on the SM street after hearing about an incident of death by hunger in Wayanad. “He managed to send money and a load of things to the dead man's family in Wayanad,” Muneer said.

When their classmate, Samad, committed suicide after he was given poor internal marks, Venu was at the forefront of the students' agitation. The then Kozhikode collector, K Jayakumar, who had negotiated with the medical students described Venu as 'firebrand'.

Night fights

Actor Maala Parvathy, who performed along with Dr Venu in the Abhinaya Theatre Group, recounted Dr Venu's absolute lack of airs with both amusement and disbelief.

“One morning at the rehearsal I saw him seated with his hands over the shoulder of Ajayan (Abhinaya actor). He looked happy but he had a bad-looking wound on his lip. I asked him what happened. He said Ajayan had hit him during a drunken brawl the previous night. Ajayan was profusely apologising but Venu chettan was laughing with his arm around Ajayan,” Parvathy said, finding it hard to control her laughter.

She said the nicest thing about Venu was that he kept everyone together. Perhaps this also made him the natural leader of the IAS community in Kerala.

Dr Pugnacious

However, if push comes to shove, Venu will hit back.

In 2017, quoting a top forest official, a newspaper had filed a report saying all the 60 ecotourism sites within tiger reserves and national parks in Kerala violated the country's conservation rules.

The day the report came, the reporter got a call from Venu, then the tourism principal secretary. He was livid.

"If at all there are aberrations in the running of ecotourism activities, it is the Forest Department alone that has to take the blame. To paint ecotourism activities as destructive in the light of some ignorant mistakes made by junior forest officials is as foolish and dangerous as throwing the baby out with the bath water,” he said. Venu called the forest official's statements 'devious'. He wanted his words published.

A day after Venu's statement was published, the newspaper received a letter from the top ranking IFS official he had quoted. The letter essentially complained that the reporter had got an appointment with the official under false premises. Soon enough, the officer secured a central post and left Kerala.

Action hero Venu

Besides Kerala, theatre is Venu's big passion. Noted theatre personality and acting trainer M G Jyothish, who had directed him in a number of Abhinaya plays, has found Venu's complete surrender to the requirements of theatre life 'amazing'.

“He was just like any other person in Abhinaya. He would carry waste, wash plates and sleep on the floor with other actors. He asked for no privileges and was given none,” Jyothish said.

He said Venu was undaunted by the experienced performers acting alongside him. “What people like us had with experience he acquired with stupendous hard work. When others in the group rested, this man kept rehearsing and rehearsing,” Jyothish said.

Venu was King Duncan in Macbeth, Shinde in Vijay Tendulkar's 'Sakharam Binder', Adhikari in Ayyappa Panicker's 'Palangal' and the Lord of Death in 'Bhagavathajugam'.

In 'Palangal', there is a long stretch where Venu has to perform with two of Kerala's finest theatre actors: Jyothish and Munshi Byju. “We had to render our lines and emote in the rhythm of 'chavittunatakam'. Even for us, who had been doing this for years, this is a difficult feat to pull off. By the third show I thought Venu Chettan did better than both of us. I felt envious,” Byju said. “He will not fail. He does not like to fail,” Jyothish said.

The actors he worked with said Venu could bring about a cultural change in Kerala. Here is how Muneer views his 'sentimental' college buddy's elevation as chief secretary: “No matter what, justice will be served.”