Balachandran Chullikkadu

Chullikkad is married to Vijayalakshmi, a known Malayalam poet and they have a son named Appu. He retired from Kerala State Government service on 31 July 2013. He got National Film Award for Best Non-Feature Film Narration / Voice Over for The 18 Elephants – 3 Monologues in 2003

In 2000 he took Buddhism as his religion. He says that this cannot be called a conversion from Hinduism because he was never a follower of that religion. "I have not converted because I have not been a believer though I was a Hindu. I have now embraced Buddhism, not converted to Buddhism. The problem with Hinduism is that it is a religion of social status and set-ups. Your value in Hinduism depends on the family in which you were born," he says.

His collection of poems published are Pathinettu Kavithakal, Amaavaasi, Ghazal, Maanasaantharam, Dracula etc. A collection of his complete poems, Balachandran Chullikkadinte Kavithakal (The Poems of Balachandran Chullikkad, 2000) was published by DC Books, Kottayam, Kerala, India. They have also published the book of his memoirs, Chidambarasmarana (2001).

He has participated in many national literary seminars organised by Central Academy of Letters, India. He was one among the ten members of a cultural delegation of India to Sweden in 1997 invited by Nobel Academy and Swedish Writers Union. He represented Indian poetry in the international bookfair in Gotenborg, Sweden in November 1997.

Chullikkad is also an actor in Malayalam films and serials. As an actor, he is best known for G. Aravindan's Pokkuveyil (1981) in which he played a young artist who lives with his father, a radical friend and a music-loving young woman. The film is about how his world collapses when his father dies, the radical friend leaves him and her family takes the woman away to another city.

Balachandran Chullikkad (born 30 July 1957) is a Malayalam poet, orator, lyricist and film actor.