Disclaimer: I haven’t watched Kabali
India
was a much divided nation on Friday, 22nd July. It was divided
between people who had Kabali tickets and those who didn’t.
By Monday, the nation was still divided between people who had watched Kabali
and those who hadn’t. And between those who liked it and didn’t. People seemed
to be more interested in telling everyone that they were going for the movie
than they were in the movie itself. After the initial reviews started to
trickle in, the nation was still unclear on what stance it had taken. Was Kabali
a hit? A flop? After the smoke from the crackers has died down and the milk
used to pour on the star’s massive cut outs had curdled, the nation still wants
to know.
I’m
not a very religious person but I would presume that many people reading this
piece are. No one asks for proof of God. If you pray and your prayers aren’t
answered, you don’t stop praying. You will visit more places of worship but not
give up on your hopes and dreams.
Rajnikanth,
on the other hand, has only half the advantage that God possesses. People have
unreasonable expectations, pile all of their hopes, dreams and unmet
aspirations on him, stand in serpentine queues to see him and don’t mind paying
whatever the occasion demands to get a glimpse of their god. If you have
visited any major temple, you will be pushed and shoved and abused but
everything is forgiven because the end justifies the means. When you get a
glimpse of God, dormant religious forces from within surface and a sense of
quasi peace envelopes you.
Sometimes
what is prayed for is met in some form or the other. If it isn’t met, God is
waiting for the right time is the rationalization. No one writes reviews on God
if their expectations aren’t met.
That
is where Thalaivar is gullible. After
seeking his blessings, people come out of the theatre and try to justify what
they just saw. They try and derive the meaning of life from a celluloid picture.
Rajnikanth
is a wonderful actor whose fan base has made him bigger than the film itself.
The experience no longer lies in the plot but in seeing the movie in a theatre
full of people gone berserk, in the milk abhishekams,
the 3 a.m. screenings and the chartered flights that drop die-hard fans to the
temple of their idol. My favourite Thalaivar
movie is Thalapathi where he delivers
a brilliant performance as a young boy who was abandoned by his mother when he
was a baby. Those were the days when Mani Ratnam’s directorial brilliance was
paired with Illayaraja’s musical genius. In his repertoire of 184 films, there
are more a few classics that will stand as testimony to Rajni the actor and not
just Rajni the star.
In
Tamil Nadu, where the natural progression is for an actor to don the politician’s
role after achieving everything there is to achieve and film stars have temples
devoted to them, Rajnikanth has remained surprisingly grounded. He hasn’t
endorsed any product and doesn’t wear a wig to disguise his real age when he
steps away from the spotlight. His political utterances have been few and far
between and he is friends with the DMK and the AIADMK. When he took a stance on
the Cauvery issue that is a perennial thorn in the flesh between Karnataka and
Tamil Nadu, his fans didn’t burn is effigies on the street in Karnataka.
Does
Rajnikanth belong to Maharashtra, Karnataka or Tamil Nadu?
He
was born Shivaji Rao Gaekwad and then became a bus conductor in Bangalore before
he met K Balachander and became a God in Tamil Nadu. He resurfaces whenever a
movie is about to release and then seemingly disappears from the public eye.
With
Kabali, people have said he has finally come of age by playing his age. No one
wants their heroes to grown old and fans are finally coming to accept that while
their thalaivar is part God, he is
also part man. That hasn’t diminished their hopes. Rajnikanth single-handedly
created the cinematic experience of watching his movie in the theatre to a review
in its own right. That it may have compromised his acting abilities over the
years is up for debate.
Thalaivar’s journey can be summed up in
one line – he was a bus conductor who one day had a chartered flight to ferry
people to his movie.
If
that isn’t a film plot in its own right, tell me what is.
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