Rajinikanth

Naman Ramachandran

Description

Rajinikanth is, quite simply, the biggest superstar cinema-crazy India has ever seen. His stylized dialogues and screen mannerisms are legion, and his guy-next-door-cum-superhero image has found a hysterically appreciative following among millions of moviegoers. Naman Ramachandran s marvellous biography recounts Rajini s career in meticulous detail, tracing his incredible cinematic journey from Apoorva Raagangal (1975) to Kochadaiyaan (2013). Along the way, the book provides rare insights into the Thalaivar s personal life, from his childhood days to his times of struggle when he was still Shivaji Rao Gaekwad and then his eventual stardom: revealing how a legend was born.

Sujets

• Film

Informations

• Publié par: Penguin Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 15 janvier 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9788184757965
• Langue: English

Extrait

Naman Ramachandran

Rajinikanth
The Definitive Biography
Contents
Dedication
About the Author
Preface
Introduction
1. The Beginning
2. Madras
3. Apoorva Raagangal
4. Playing the Villain
5. 1977
6. Superstar
7. The 1980s
8. Thalapathi and Annamalai
9. Baashha, Muthu, Padayappa
10. Baba
11. Chandramukhi, Sivaji and Enthiran
12. Thalaivar
Illustrations
Filmography
Awards
Acknowledgements
References
Follow Penguin
Copyright
To T.V. Ramachandran and Ruma Ramachandran -this is your 50th wedding anniversary gift- and to Laxmi, for being
PENGUIN BOOKS
RAJINIKANTH
Naman Ramachandran was placed on Planet Earth with the express purpose of writing the definitive biography of Superstar Rajinikanth. Fate intervened, however, and he was separated at birth from his noble purpose by a metaphorical Kumbh Mela of sorts. His life journey took him across the world where he became a film critic with Sight Sound , a film journalist covering South Asia for Variety , and the UK and Ireland for Cineuropa , and the author of the book Lights, Camera, Masala: Making Movies in Mumbai , besides a few film scripts. A chance encounter with a Penguin revealed the Thalaivar tattoo seared deep into his soul, and the epiphany that followed resulted in this book.
In an autobiography, I ll have to write the truth, I shouldn t hide anything. Just to avoid hurting people s feelings, I should not be hiding things. If I don t present events as they happened, truthfully, it s not an autobiography at all. I have read Mahatma Gandhi s autobiography and if I can muster up the kind of courage that he had, I will write one.
-Rajinikanth in response to mentor K. Balachander s question during an on-stage Q&A session in Chennai, 23 October 2010
Preface

It all began, appropriately enough, at the hallowed portals of the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, a venue that has hosted literary legends like Ernest Hemingway, Somerset Maugham and No l Coward, to name just three. It was a fiery Sunday in May at the hotel s Empire Caf where a fortuitous, or perhaps divinely ordained, meeting with a literary agent led to a conversation tracing our mutual Bangalore roots and, inevitably, to a discussion about one of the city s most famous sons: Shivaji Rao Gaekwad, also known as Rajinikanth. The agent wondered aloud about a possible biography and I wondered aloud about possibly writing it, as it had been for long a subject close to my heart. Incidentally, a little while later, Singapore was where Rajinikanth would recover after alarming millions with his illness.
I left Singapore shortly after the meeting and got busy with the ordinary business of life. Just weeks later, the agent and her business partner asked me to conjure up a concept note and a sample chapter. I did. Then Penguin came into the picture and the result, nearly two years later, is what you are reading now.

Rajinikanth entered my life early. As a little boy growing up in Alleppey (now Alappuzha), Kerala, I would watch practically every Rajinikanth film on the Saturday after its release, the Friday first-day first-show unfortunately clashing with school time. I would be accompanied by our faithful family servitor, now sadly passed on to the great cinema in the sky. Being from a village in West Bengal, he did not know a word of any south Indian language, but thrilled to Rajinikanth s style and action and physical comedy; looking back, his enjoyment was more visceral than mine as he was reacting to pure cinema and not to dialogue or plot. Inevitably, schoolboys like us were divided into Rajini and Kamal camps. I was, in those days, firmly in the Rajini camp.
My family s Alleppey idyll ended soon enough and we moved to Bangalore. These were the 1980s and though there were some gems, the Rajini films were getting formulaic. Kamal was doing much more interesting work and I slipped slowly into the Kamal camp. I would still watch Rajini films, but when it came to a choice, Kamal would win. When both Kamal s Punnagai Mannan and Rajini s Maaveeran released on Deepavali day in 1986, for example, the choice was clear, especially since I d already watched Amitabh Bachchan in Mard , which the Rajini film was a remake of. But then came Thalapathi and the Suresh Krissna films that elevated Rajinikanth to the stratosphere, and I was mainlining Thalaivar again.
All this of course raises the old biography versus hagiography question. No doubt it is a slippery slope or a thin line, call it what you will, but I am a journalist by training, specializing in film, writing for a variety of well-known Indian and international publications, and therefore believe in being objective. I am also a film critic for a publication that demands balanced analysis before proffering opinion, and I hope I have brought this discipline to bear in this biography. I have also tried to correct popular misconceptions and misinformation about Rajinikanth wrought by lazy research and user-generated information websites, and I hope I have been successful in this.

My research journey began in Chennai. My first port of call was a popular DVD store; I was armed with a printout of Rajinikanth s complete filmography. Of the 150-plus titles I was after, I found fifteen. I left the list with the shop along with my phone number, requesting them to call back when they had gathered a significant number of the discs on my list. After radio silence from them for a week, I went around to the store again. They had ten more films and vague promises for some other titles. I was appalled. This was Chennai, the home of the state s resident superstar. Surely a full set of Rajinikanth films could be had? Alas, this was not the case. I had to visit several shops across the city and had to gather the films piecemeal. These were just for the Tamil films. It took two visits to Bangalore to get all the Kannada films and one visit to Kerala for the Malayalam films. Rajinikanth s lone Bengali film was procured from a cousin in Kolkata, and his English film was ordered online from abroad. An old friend had great difficulty procuring his Telugu films from Hyderabad, but managed. The most efficient city was Mumbai. I left a list of Rajinikanth s Hindi films with a wholesaler, along with my number. He asked me to have a leisurely lunch. Halfway through my meal, he called me to say that he had most of what I wanted. The rest of whatever was available was delivered to a relative s home the next day. I have to say that there is a retail opportunity going abegging in Chennai.
Meeting and interviewing legends like K. Balachander, S.P. Muthuraman and Mani Ratnam, amongst many others, was one of the many pleasures of the research process-some other pleasures being related to rediscovering the culinary pleasures of south India, the tastes of my youth as it were. Rediscovering Rajinikanth s films, in chronological order, watching each film twice, once as a lay viewer and the next time with my analytical hat on, made for months of being steeped in Thalaivar territory. The writing, once it got going after months of false starts and dawdling, came in an almighty and seemingly never-ending gush. This was my classic, clich d writer phase-unwashed, unshaved, surviving on mere scraps of food; I lost four kilos in the process. Reading back my output, I was pleased that it was cogent and somewhat surprised that I d managed to pull it off.
However, much more than the research or the writing, it was getting to meet the Superstar himself that will stay in my memory till my dying day.
Happy reading!
Introduction

Chennai, capital of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, 1 October 2010, 4 a.m.
We are in the Royapettah area of the city. Chennai is a metropolis that rises much earlier than other Indian cities, but today, there is something in the air, and it is not just the strains of M.S. Subbulakshmi s Suprabhatam that is the soundtrack of all south Indian mornings. The retired gentlemen of the Brahmin caste in their veshtis who are pacing up and down their front yards sipping their first cups of filter coffee impatiently awaiting the arrival of The Hindu newspaper, and their freshly bathed wives who are drawing intricate kolams (rangoli) in front of their gates, look up in surprise as a trickle of men make their way past. This is heavier morning foot traffic than usual. The trickle becomes a deluge and in the middle of this surging mass is a grave-looking man holding a brass pot full of milk with mango leaves tied around its neck. Behind him is a long line of men carrying identical pots.
The newspaper arrives on schedule but the hitherto impatient recipients ignore it, choosing instead to gape at the heave of humanity. The men carrying the brass pots stop at a temple dedicated to Lord Ganesha, the remover of obstacles. A priest chants some Sanskrit shlokas and blesses the pots. The procession-yes, it is now a procession, complete with a brass band playing familiar Tamil film hits that has now joined in-wends its way towards the imposing mass of the Satyam cineplex. Even more imposing than the cinema is a single, gigantic 80-foot-high cut-out of a man in shades. Scaffolding has been rigged up behind the cut-out and the limber men clamber up, careful not to spill a drop of the milk from their pots. Once at the top, the men ceremoniously pour the sanctified milk over the head of the cut-out in a ritual known as the Paalabhishekam, an honour accorded only to gods.
The object of their deification is Rajinikanth, also known as Rajini, Thalaivar (chieftain), or, simply, Superstar.
At Screen 1 of the Satyam cineplex, the atmosphere is electric and anticipatory. A screening at such an early hour is unprecedented. However, cinemas across the world have laid on shows around the clock beginning as early as possible and ending well past midnight in order to cope with the massive demand. Every seat in the house is taken and there are many standing as wel