"Ivan Karpooram madhiri, ezhai koluthinaalum, panakkaran koluthinaalum orey madhiri thaan erivaan" - Lakshmi in Padayappa (1999)
I wanted to write something on 12.12.12, for it is my thalaivar's birthday, and I didn't know what to write about. So I thought I shall randomly babble about whatever comes to my mind. Well, today I managed to watch a thalaivar movie first day first show, a first for a Thalaivar birthday! I have been quite hyper almost through out the day, screaming my guts out in the theatre, and pretty much talking only about the movie for the rest of the day. I happened to visit my physiotherapist who was kind of pained with all the hype given to the man's birthday in the city, and she was complaining about it to me, and to her discomfort, I added that I was a fan(atic)! On my way back home, I was thinking about what makes the man such a rage. The actor Raja Krishnamurthy talks in his book "Rajini's Punchtantras" about how it was an ideal mix of attitude, hard work, luck and style that made the man the empire he is today. But I wanted to analyze the entire thing from my point of view.
I grew up in the post-Rajini-mainstream era. What I mean by this is, by the time I was in my teens, Thalaivar had stopped acting in more than a movie in three years. Twenty-five Rajni movies have released post my birth, less than 15% of his body of work, and only five of those have released after I moved to Chennai. There are many who love Rajini for the man he is, but I'm sure all of his were at first floored by his films, after all the man is an actor. I've talked earlier in this blog about how it wasn't Maanikbasha, or Surya fighting for Deva, or the cigarette flipping Hussein in Geraftaar who floored me, but it was Maathadu Maathadu Mallige! I watched it for the first time at an age when I didn't have a clue about films, all I'd watched upto that point were mythological films of Sivaji Ganesan, thanks to the age-old rented VCR shop in Bahrain! When I watched the song, I was desperate to watch the movie, I was totally floored by the sherwani-wearing, vibhuti-clad man in the song, I'd not seen dance steps half as attractive as them, attention grabbed! I watched the movie, and fell in love with the hero. I watched the movie, not once, not twice, but thirty times, to the point of my parents telling me that the VCR shop guy will get pissed if I kill the video-casette with all the repeated viewing. Then started the period of catching up on other Thalaivar movies. I watched Basha on Sun TV (The only Tamil channel that was available in Bahrain then) for a Pongal, and Muthu the following Diwali on Sun TV. I also watched Annamalai on DD National, when they decided to play a Tamil movie with subtitles for some reason, ever thankful to them for that! I caught up with Padayappa on another VCR. By then, I was a fanatic, and all this for someone who I didn't know anything about other than on the screen, in my case the television screen.
Then, Sun TV played Marudunayakam's inaugural function, which had Queen Elizabeth visiting and all that fanfare. I saw Thalaivar's true getup for the first time, and was paralyzed with shock for a day. For close to two years, the man I had been worshipping on TV, whose punch dialogues I would reel out to my younger brother, who would stand in front of me like Raghuvaran trying to give counters to those dialogues, that man was nothing like the man I knew. Well, I then brought my spirits up when I saw Kamal Haasan in a beard and all that, since I had watched only Avvai Shanmugi up until then, and he wasn't like anything I'd seen before either. Then homecoming happened, a couple of years down the drain, and evening 3-5.30 pm Sun TV movies happened. I caught up on a lot of old Thalaivar movies, and slowly got into the groove of Thalaivar jargon. I got to know what "Idhu epdi irukku" meant, what "Alex Pandian" meant, what "Ayyampettai Arivudainambi Kaliyaperumal Chandran" meant, and so on! I loved Baba, and for some reason others didn't, so lets not delve much into it. The movie was a disaster, and Thalaivar went on a hiatus. I went on an old Thalaivar movies watching spree, I guess it was during this period that I watched most of his movies. This was also the blossoming of the Vijay-Ajith-into-megastars period. In school, people were fans mostly of these two, there were even people who were fans of Simbu (If your reading this, I still remember :P) what I didn't realise was many of them were closet-Thalaivar fans too. I was a very vocal Thalaivar fan even then, with a few classmates, guys who would shout (sometimes even abuse) someone who spoke something even remotely against Thalaivar out of an argument. It was also during this period that I got to study the man better. It is common knowledge what everyone says about the amazing human being he was, and all of that, but I tend not to trust anyone on such hearsay value. I tried to dig up on this man's dirt, his past, and there were loads of it in the past, but his immediate past, say from around 1985 was clean, so clean that if it were a plate, I could eat from it. My respect started growing. The man's humility and down-to-earth nature, amidst a million other stuff floored me. The rest, as they say is history.
Everyone knows the elephant-horse story from just before Chandramukhi, and those who watched Sivaji in the theatres are not likely to forget that experience for a long long time. I joined www.rajnifans.in in class 8, which was then Thalaivar's official fans' club, the pre-social networking days. I used to be able to block tickets for movies in advance, something that I wasn't able to utilize even once but. The name went global, and inevitably, the fame too did. People walked out of the closet, publicly acknowledging their love for the man, which included my best friends. When Endhiran released, it had to overlap with Shaastra. I was the math-modeling coordinator, and one of my best friends and co-Rajini fanatic, who was my volunteer then, both of us were left cribbing about how we'd have to go not so early to the movie because of the quizzes which started right after Shaastra. I watched Endhiran on day 10 after release, something I'm ashamed of to date! Nevertheless, my love for the man has just grown, his larger-than-life onscreen persona, coupled with that humble, down-to-earth offscreen has helped matters, after all he is a celebrity who I not only love wholeheartedly, but also someone I could look up to in all matters, the man who shows right from wrong, who validates my age-old ideas of a good leader, someone who gives every single fan of his, that he is his own, his personal Superstar! Love you Thalaiva! May you live long, that "Kanna" you say, is just priceless.
P.S: Thalaivar, no politics ever please! I respect you totally for that! Neenga nenacha aatchiye maathalam, aana adhula involve aagadhadhu thaan unga greatness! :-)
I wanted to write something on 12.12.12, for it is my thalaivar's birthday, and I didn't know what to write about. So I thought I shall randomly babble about whatever comes to my mind. Well, today I managed to watch a thalaivar movie first day first show, a first for a Thalaivar birthday! I have been quite hyper almost through out the day, screaming my guts out in the theatre, and pretty much talking only about the movie for the rest of the day. I happened to visit my physiotherapist who was kind of pained with all the hype given to the man's birthday in the city, and she was complaining about it to me, and to her discomfort, I added that I was a fan(atic)! On my way back home, I was thinking about what makes the man such a rage. The actor Raja Krishnamurthy talks in his book "Rajini's Punchtantras" about how it was an ideal mix of attitude, hard work, luck and style that made the man the empire he is today. But I wanted to analyze the entire thing from my point of view.
I grew up in the post-Rajini-mainstream era. What I mean by this is, by the time I was in my teens, Thalaivar had stopped acting in more than a movie in three years. Twenty-five Rajni movies have released post my birth, less than 15% of his body of work, and only five of those have released after I moved to Chennai. There are many who love Rajini for the man he is, but I'm sure all of his were at first floored by his films, after all the man is an actor. I've talked earlier in this blog about how it wasn't Maanikbasha, or Surya fighting for Deva, or the cigarette flipping Hussein in Geraftaar who floored me, but it was Maathadu Maathadu Mallige! I watched it for the first time at an age when I didn't have a clue about films, all I'd watched upto that point were mythological films of Sivaji Ganesan, thanks to the age-old rented VCR shop in Bahrain! When I watched the song, I was desperate to watch the movie, I was totally floored by the sherwani-wearing, vibhuti-clad man in the song, I'd not seen dance steps half as attractive as them, attention grabbed! I watched the movie, and fell in love with the hero. I watched the movie, not once, not twice, but thirty times, to the point of my parents telling me that the VCR shop guy will get pissed if I kill the video-casette with all the repeated viewing. Then started the period of catching up on other Thalaivar movies. I watched Basha on Sun TV (The only Tamil channel that was available in Bahrain then) for a Pongal, and Muthu the following Diwali on Sun TV. I also watched Annamalai on DD National, when they decided to play a Tamil movie with subtitles for some reason, ever thankful to them for that! I caught up with Padayappa on another VCR. By then, I was a fanatic, and all this for someone who I didn't know anything about other than on the screen, in my case the television screen.
Then, Sun TV played Marudunayakam's inaugural function, which had Queen Elizabeth visiting and all that fanfare. I saw Thalaivar's true getup for the first time, and was paralyzed with shock for a day. For close to two years, the man I had been worshipping on TV, whose punch dialogues I would reel out to my younger brother, who would stand in front of me like Raghuvaran trying to give counters to those dialogues, that man was nothing like the man I knew. Well, I then brought my spirits up when I saw Kamal Haasan in a beard and all that, since I had watched only Avvai Shanmugi up until then, and he wasn't like anything I'd seen before either. Then homecoming happened, a couple of years down the drain, and evening 3-5.30 pm Sun TV movies happened. I caught up on a lot of old Thalaivar movies, and slowly got into the groove of Thalaivar jargon. I got to know what "Idhu epdi irukku" meant, what "Alex Pandian" meant, what "Ayyampettai Arivudainambi Kaliyaperumal Chandran" meant, and so on! I loved Baba, and for some reason others didn't, so lets not delve much into it. The movie was a disaster, and Thalaivar went on a hiatus. I went on an old Thalaivar movies watching spree, I guess it was during this period that I watched most of his movies. This was also the blossoming of the Vijay-Ajith-into-megastars period. In school, people were fans mostly of these two, there were even people who were fans of Simbu (If your reading this, I still remember :P) what I didn't realise was many of them were closet-Thalaivar fans too. I was a very vocal Thalaivar fan even then, with a few classmates, guys who would shout (sometimes even abuse) someone who spoke something even remotely against Thalaivar out of an argument. It was also during this period that I got to study the man better. It is common knowledge what everyone says about the amazing human being he was, and all of that, but I tend not to trust anyone on such hearsay value. I tried to dig up on this man's dirt, his past, and there were loads of it in the past, but his immediate past, say from around 1985 was clean, so clean that if it were a plate, I could eat from it. My respect started growing. The man's humility and down-to-earth nature, amidst a million other stuff floored me. The rest, as they say is history.
Everyone knows the elephant-horse story from just before Chandramukhi, and those who watched Sivaji in the theatres are not likely to forget that experience for a long long time. I joined www.rajnifans.in in class 8, which was then Thalaivar's official fans' club, the pre-social networking days. I used to be able to block tickets for movies in advance, something that I wasn't able to utilize even once but. The name went global, and inevitably, the fame too did. People walked out of the closet, publicly acknowledging their love for the man, which included my best friends. When Endhiran released, it had to overlap with Shaastra. I was the math-modeling coordinator, and one of my best friends and co-Rajini fanatic, who was my volunteer then, both of us were left cribbing about how we'd have to go not so early to the movie because of the quizzes which started right after Shaastra. I watched Endhiran on day 10 after release, something I'm ashamed of to date! Nevertheless, my love for the man has just grown, his larger-than-life onscreen persona, coupled with that humble, down-to-earth offscreen has helped matters, after all he is a celebrity who I not only love wholeheartedly, but also someone I could look up to in all matters, the man who shows right from wrong, who validates my age-old ideas of a good leader, someone who gives every single fan of his, that he is his own, his personal Superstar! Love you Thalaiva! May you live long, that "Kanna" you say, is just priceless.
P.S: Thalaivar, no politics ever please! I respect you totally for that! Neenga nenacha aatchiye maathalam, aana adhula involve aagadhadhu thaan unga greatness! :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment