New Delhi, Dec. 26 -- Sometime last year at a university in western Canada, in the stairwell leading to a basement I found among a clutch of small squiggles on the wall, a little question asking saadanam kayilundo? I laughed at the sight of this Malayali shibboleth. The internet is full of reels of Malayalis asking strangers this question. This is how we find each other in Delhi parking lots or from boats in icy lakes. It's a line from a 1990 buddy cop movie that translates roughly to "got the stuff?"

Sreenivasan had that ability to make the ordinary phrase incredibly meaningful and memorable. Sometimes it was because he was the gifted actor performing the dialogue. Sometimes because it emerged from the mouths of the hundreds of actors f...