Velipadinte Muthu was declared a "Tsunami." Trade analysts predicted ₹50 crore worldwide. The story was paper-thin—Shaji Thomas playing a cop who folds a goon’s mundu into a rope—but the fans didn't care. The first weekend was a landslide.

Anand couldn't believe it. Word of mouth had defeated star power .

"Sir," the booking manager told Anand over the phone, "we are moving your film from the 9:15 AM slot to the 9:00 PM prime time."

The climax came on the second Sunday. A massive fan show of Velipadinte Muthu was organized at a 6,000-capacity stadium. But the projector broke. While they fixed it, the stadium manager, as a joke, played the climax of Ormakalude Aazham on the big screen.

A famous director tweeted: "I went to sleep watching Shaji’s punch dialogues. Woke up watching Rajeev Menon’s eyes. The man hasn't spoken a word for 20 minutes in the film, yet I understood the entire story."