The young audience of today defines Rajinikanth solely by his popular — and populist — roles, conveniently forgetting that, like his contemporary Amitabh Bachchan, it takes talent to make a formula work and something much more than mere talent to transcend it and achieve greatness
He is faster than a speeding bullet. He defies gravity and logic. He performs death-defying stunts. What he cannot do with a cigarette and a pair of shades is not worth knowing. He is the sultan of style, the epitome of flash. Jokes revering him are now so commonplace that he is an Internet meme. And there you have the conventional, clichéd perception of the greatest star India has ever known — Rajinikanth. However, audiences from the world over, especially those outside of south India (if you’ll pardon the generalisation), have little or no idea of exactly who the person born as Shivaji Rao Gaekwad is. The hype accorded to his last two releases Sivaji and Enthiran focused solely on his larger-than-life image, which may have been beneficial for the box office outside of south India, but otherwise did the man a disservice by putting in the shade his considerable acting and human achievements.
Today, the Ramakrishna Math, at Bangalore’s Gavipuram locality, is an oasis of calm amidst a traffic snarl typical to the city. In the 1950s, the area was considerably quieter, and the math provided a degree of calmness to the young Shivaji. It is at the math where the boy learnt the foundations of religion and the tenets of spirituality. The math instilled a basic sense of calm and an inner stillness in Shivaji, according to his elder brother Satyanarayana. This would stand him in good stead in the years to come, both in his acting career and his life.
Rajinikanth did not spring into the acting arena fully formed. Years of performing in plays, both mythological and social, beginning with the math, and then at his schools at Gavipuram and Narasimharaja Colony, and finally with the Bangalore Transport Service players, where he performed a variety of roles with aplomb on his times off from selling tickets on the 10A bus plying the Srinagar to Bangalore Bus Station route, honed his craft. He received formal acting training at the Madras Film Institute where he was a part of the inaugural batch, in the Kannada stream. It is at the institute where he wangled a meeting with Tamil directorial legend K Balachander, already a veteran of the Tamil stage and screen. Balachander’s keen eye for talent led him to cast Shivaji in his multi-starrer Apoorva Raagangal (1975). Shivaji had to learn Tamil, a language he was only tangentially familiar with, as compared to his native Marathi and Kannada, in some 20 days. And learn he did, with the help of his best friend Raja Badhar, the man who drove 10A, while Shivaji was selling tickets with a flourish.
Apoorva Raagangal was a tough film to debut with. The cast was groaning with stars. Kamal Haasan was a star on the cusp of a meteoric rise; Nagesh and Major Sundararajan were already heavyweights; and Srividya and Jayasudha were known names. When the newly-christened Rajinikanth, in his introductory scene, haggard and emaciated as the role demanded, threw open the gates of the house where Kamal Haasan was living with Srividya, arriving as a ghost from the past as it were, a star was born. It wasn’t a grand entry like many of his later films would feature, but the throwing opening of the gates had a symbolism that Balachander surely would not have missed, with his keen eye for talent. That the scene was with Kamal Haasan, already known then as a roiling cauldron of acting talent, made the job even more difficult.
To set the scene for those unfortunate enough not to have watched Apoorva Raagangal, Kamal Haasan is in a relationship with Srividya, a woman older than him. Rajinikanth plays the man who impregnated and then abandoned her. Rajinikanth throwing open the gates marks his return into Srividya’s life, an event that Kamal Haasan is desperate to prevent at all costs. In the scene, Kamal Haasan is busy. He is nervous, fidgety, aggressive, a bundle of energy in fact. As directed by Balachander and also drawing upon the inner stillness and calm inculcated all those years ago at the Ramakrishna Math in Bangalore, Rajinikanth is at the centre of the vortex created by Kamal Haasan’s energy, making a mark with just body language and very few dialogues. Not bad for a debut and a far cry from the energetic persona associated with him in later years.
Apoorva Raagangal is just one example of a Rajinikanth performance in an early career littered with defining ones, before the Rajinikanth formula of today was manufactured with SP Muthuraman’s Murattukkalai (1980). Muthuraman, who directed Rajinikanth in 25 films, can be credited with giving the actor some of his best roles, whether it is the sacrificing, tragic friend to the philandering Sivakumar in Bhuvana Oru Kelvikkuri (1977); the double role of a lascivious father and responsible son in Netrikkan (1981); or the tour de force that was Aarilirirunthu Arubathu Varai (1979). With Murattukkalai, Muthuraman and the team at AVM Studios fashioned a script that had the correct doses of action, emotion, comedy, romance, and song and dance, and thus the Rajinikanth formula was born.
Sadly, the young audience of today defines Rajinikanth solely by his popular and later populist roles, conveniently forgetting that, like his great contemporary and friend Amitabh Bachchan, it takes talent to make a formula work and something much more than mere talent to transcend it and achieve greatness. To write a punch-line is relatively easier — to deliver it with the kind of panache and conviction that sends millions of people in darkened cinemas into raptures requires that rare superstar quality that so few are gifted with. Otherwise, the Indian film industry would be littered with Bachchan and Rajinikanth clones, and indeed many have tried and failed to cash in on the formula while being ill-equipped to do so.
Despite his humongous superstardom, Rajinikanth was and is a man of the people. He is well aware that his Dravidian looks are amongst the reasons that have endeared him to south Indians, giving his fans the opportunity to see a fantasised version of themselves on screen, as opposed to the fair-skinned milquetoast heroes prevalent before his advent. The fact that his fans love his bewigged on-screen, stylish persona as well as his real life appearances where he is simply clad, unshaven and balding, proves that the actor and the man are equally popular. He has never made any attempt to conceal his smoking and drinking and yet he never loses an opportunity to inform his fans about the dangers of these vices. And, unlike many stars that perform charitable acts and promptly publicise it to the press, Rajinikanth prefers to let his charitable deeds do the talking. During one of his incognito, in-disguise walkabouts in Gavipuram with his friend Raja Badhar, for example, Rajinikanth found out that his old primary school was in a bad shape. Rather than conferring a cash grant, the star, ever alert to the endemic levels of pilfering, chose simply to pay directly for some reconstruction and ordered a batch of computers for the school. Similarly, in Tamil Nadu, the star distributes textbooks to indigent students instead of stumping up the cash for them.
Rajinikanth’s fans replicate these acts of charity, astoundingly self-funded. The release of a Thalaivar film is a red-letter day and a marquee event for these faithful fans. It is true that there are processions from temples to cinemas, and giant cut-outs of the superstar are bathed in consecrated milk. However, alongside these public activities, fan clubs around the world quietly organise blood donation camps, provide food and clothing for the needy and several other acts of kindness — all with their own hard earned money. They do it in Rajinikanth’s name, as, over the years, he has become a talisman for the downtrodden. On screen, in film after film, he has been the voice of the common man, and his fans, common men and women themselves, strive to give something back to society, as they know that their Thalaivar selflessly continues to do, disbursing more than half his not inconsiderable income to good causes, after providing for his own family.
We live in a jaded, cynical time, in a media saturated world where the only concern is the next headline, the fresh controversy, a world where a barber in Gavipuram proceeds to quote chapters and verses on the path on which Dhoom 3 can achieve collections of Rs 300 crore, resulting in lively debate with the object of his ministrations, a retired bank employee from Vanivilas Road. In such a world, a eulogy such as the one you have just read, about Rajinikanth, is a rarity. Filter it through cynicism goggles if you will, but in this, the 150th year of The Pioneer, for just one moment, if you can channel some goodness towards your fellow human being, then it will be a sesquicentennial worth celebrating for the publication.
Wishes for a happy new year will be incomplete without the mandatory Rajinikanth punchline, from Annamalai (1992): “Kashtapadaama edhuvum kidaikaadhu. Kashtapadaama kidaikrathu ennaikumae nilaikkathu.” (You’ll gain nothing without hard work. And if you do, it won’t last forever.)