Kamal Haasan – A Living Legend

The epic nature of the story will leave you breathless. Although it spans a period from the 12th to 21st centuries, the chunk of the action takes place over one week leading up to Boxing Day 2004. Kamal Haasan, the greatest living actor of Indian cinema, outreaches himself with his latest offering, a 1.3 billion rupee expensive, 166 minute blockbuster called Dasavatharam. He wrote the story and screenplay in collaboration with the late litterateur Sujatha, gag writer Crazy Mohan and director K.S. Ravikumar. The highlight of the film is that Haasan appears in 10 different roles, a feat hitherto untried anywhere in world cinema. A couple of those roles seems to be to just fill the numbers and could have been done away with. But one can grant Kamal the satisfaction of this accomplishment as the crowning glory of a long career under the arc lights. The man is an entertainer par excellence. Also how many of today’s movies make you sit up and reflect on Karmic retribution, Chaos Theory and The Butterfly Effect?

Kamal Haasan is the actors’ actor. Almost all the actors we adulate in our land have this great for their idol. Many later day heroes like Mohan, Suman, Arjun, Karthik and the late Raghuvaran have tried to imitate him, with partial success. Kamal Haasan was born on 7th November 1954 to a criminal lawyer named D. Srinivasan and his devout wife Rajalekshmi in the village of Parmakudi in Ramanathapuram district of Tamil Nadu. Kamal was the youngest of three brothers, the others being Charu Haasan who is twenty years his senior and Chandra Haasan. They also had a sister Nalini. Charu’s daughter is Suhasini Mani Ratnam. The father and daughter are winners of National acting awards for Tabarana Katha (Kannada, Girish Kasaravally) and Sindhu Bhairavi (Tamil, K. Balachander) respectively. Kamal himself was thrice decorated with the coveted honor – for Moondram Pirai (1982), Nayakan (1988) and Indian (1996). He has also won an unprecedented eighteen Filmfare Awards including for Screenplay (Apoorva Sahodarargal) and Production. Seven of the films he acted in had entered the Oscar race. Like many of his peers including Sridevi, Ambika, Sarika, Sachin and Padmini Kolhapuri, Kamal was blooded early as a child in movies. When only six he was cast in the Tamil film Kalathur Kannamma made by A. V. Meiyappa Chettiar. He played an orphan who is raised by Gemini Ganesan. He walked away with the President’s award for best child actor. Soon after that he played the thespian Satyan’s son in the Malayalam film Kannum Karalum. Not formally educated beyond high school, the only education he had after that was his rigorous training in dance. He mastered the classical dances with religious fervor and in parallel set himself a strict regimen of fitness training. By the time he was in his late teens, he had blossomed into a fine specimen of a man. K. Viswanath, the doyen of dance films and director of the timeless Telugu classic Sankarabharanam, found a perfect hero in Kamal for a few of his ventures like Sagara Sangamam (Salangai Oli), Swathi Muthyam (Chippikkull Muthu) and Shubha Sankalkpam (Pasa Valai). But his guru and mentor in films was to be K. Balachander. KB gave the 19 year old newcomer hero his first break by casting him in his Arangetram. His first Malayalam film as hero was Kanyakumari (1974) which was written by M.T and directed by K. S. Sethumadhavan. His heroine was Rita Bhaduri. Songs like Swarna Pallunku Manimaala enriched the movie. Rajanikanth’s entry movie Apoorva Ragangal (1975) had Kamal as a young hero who falls for Srividya’s older woman. The movie was sentimentally special for Vidya since she played a classical singer like her famous mother M.L. Vasantha Kumari in it. Kamal’s first production Raja Parvai where he played a blind musician was also his 100th movie. Chartbuster songs like ‘Anthi mazhai pozhikirathe’ made it a raging hit. The popularity of Kamal as a lethal sex symbol – talented actor combination was now growing. By the late seventies, the name had become a rage with South Indian audiences. Girls swooned for him. Adolescent boys idolized him. Rebellious youth identified with the actor who gave vent to their dreams, aspirations and agonies on celluloid. Film after film after masala film, he was made to dance, fight, romance and also tear off his shirt in song sequences for apparently no reason. Kamal and Sridevi proved a terrific pair that came together in no fewer than 38 movies. Varumayin Nirram Shigapp, Pathinaru Vayathinile, Thulavarsham, Thyagadeepam and Premabhishekam are some of the better known ones. But their best to date has been Balu Mahendra’s Moondram Pirai. Although Kamal won the National award that year (1982), Sridevi narrowly lost it to ‘Umrao Jaan’ Rekha. Kamal has starred opposite all the leading ladies of his day like Sridevi, Ambika, Radha, Zarina Wahab, Jayabharathi, Jayapradha, Sulakshana, Poonam Dhillon, Unni Mary, Amala, Meena, Gowthami, Urmila, Khushboo, Rekha, Revathi, Shobhana, Manisha Koirala, Nirosha, Radhika, Aamni, Priya Raman, Dimple, Roopini, Urvashi, Meena, Seetha, Jyothika, Simran, Madhavi, Sukanya, Rani Mukherjee, Vasundhara Das, Ravina Tandon, Sneha and Asin to name a few. Some of the great character actors who graced his movies over the years include Nagesh, Jayasankar, Manorama, Dilli Ganesh, Nasser, Prakash Raj and Kovai Sarala apart from Prabhu, Rajanikanth and Sathyaraj who went on to become one-man industries themselves.

At the age of twenty four, Kamal met and married danseuse Vani Ganapathy who was a year elder to him. Vani put on the mantle of costume designer for her superstar husband’s movies. They split after seven years together. By then Sarika, the quiet and light-eyed actress of Hindi cinema had entered Kamal’s life. Coincident with the birth of their daughter Sruthi, the couple wed. Another daughter Akshara followed. After 17 years the curtains came down on that marriage as well. Sarika re-entered films with an award-winning comeback effort called Parzania. Kamal today lives with former actress Gowthami, along with her daughter from an annulled marriage, Subhalakshmi. As for his children, Shruthi studied at the Musician’s Institute in California and has albums to her name while Akshara is in to dance and plans to compete in the Ballroom Latin dance event at the 2012 London Olympics.

At his peak Kamal the sex symbol and Kamal the actor could not quite be separated for analysis. Even when he starred in those stereotype formula films of the late seventies and early eighties, which never actually called for histrionic merit of any kind, Kamal’s abundant talent would somehow surface in them, inviting the accolades of critics of mainstream cinema. But the credit for thoroughly exploiting the actor in Kamal should go to one man – K. Balachander. Right from his early B/W films like Apoorva Ragangal, Avarkal, Aval Oru Thudarkkadhai to later ones like Varumayin Niram Sigapp, Punnagai Mannan, Ninaithaal Inukkum, Unaal Mudiyum Thampi and Ek Duuje Ke Liye, KB’s and Kamal’s was a highly fruitful partnership which saw 25 projects taking wings. In village balladeer Bharathi Raja’s path-breaking debut film Pathinaru Vayathinile (1977), Kamal plays a village simpleton to Rajani’s rowdy. In Balu Mahendra’s Moondram Pirai Kamal is a Ooty school teacher who rescues and nurses the amnesia-stricken Sridevi only to be painfully deserted by her once she regains her memory, or takes her ‘third birth’ as the title says. Lilting songs like ‘Kanney Kala Maane’ (‘Surmey Akhiyon Mein’ in Hindi) sung by Yesudas added luster to it. Another outstanding yet anti-hero part is that of the psychopath in Raja’s Sigappu Rojakkal. With Ek Duuje Ke Liye (1982) not only KB, but also singer S. P. Balasubramaniam made his Hindi debut. The Rathi Agnihotri – Kamal Haasan pair sculpted one of the many memorable Indian love tragedies that clicked casting fresh faces in that period, the Kumar Gaurav – Vijetha Pandit starrer Love Story being another case in point. A tale of the doomed love of a Tamilian boy for a Hindiwala girl set in neutral Goa, the film had many a teenage heart throbbing. The climactic end where the lovers are united in death in the beach was a bit contrived though. Culture clash is a theme KB has always handled well. In Punnagai Mannan you have a Tamilian boy going for a Sri Lankan girl. The impish Revathi shone in the heroine’s role. It is a wholesome movie with all the ingredients of life in the right mix. Song, dance, romance, humor, comedy, tragedy, fight, paternal love, friendship, kindness and cruelty lace a finely scripted plot. The Athirappilly Falls is as good as a character with a soul of its own. The uncle character Chaplin Chellappa played by Kamal was the much awaited chance for him to pay obeisance to the maestro of silent and talkie cinema. In an interview with Trivandrum Doordarshan he once quipped, ‘Imitating Chaplin is the best way one can pay tribute to him. Who would not want to imitate Chaplin, unless he has not seen Chaplin?’

Kamal is an astute businessman who has been quoted as saying, ‘I am a marketing man, and the product that I market is called Kamal Haasan.’ Is he a narcissist? Well, how many out there who carry the ‘achiever’ tag aren’t self-lovers? His relationship with the Mumbai movie moguls, the enormity of whose arrogance is matched only by the extent of their ignorance, was never smooth. Apart from Ek Duuje Ke Liye, he has Hindi hits to his name like Giraftar, Karishma, Sanam Teri Kasam, Yeh Tho Kamaal Ho Gaya and Ramesh Sippy’s Sagar, which was Dimple Kapadia’s comeback movie. Sadma, the remake of Moondram Pirai, bombed at the box office. Also his Ek Nayi Paheli (remake of Apoorva Ragangal), Dekha Pyar Tumhara, Zara Si Zindagi, Appu Raja or Mayor Saab did not quite rock and roll. Still twenty five years ago he commanded a fee in Hindi that was second only to Amitabh Bachan’s. The self-righteous Bombay bosses however could not see eye to eye with this talented’Madrasi’ who was as free-willed as he was business-minded. A disgusted Kamal quit Bombay tinseldom. Thereafter many remakes and dubbing of his Tamil hits have appeared in Hindi, that’s all. Avvai Shanmughi’s remake Chachi 420 came to be directed by Kamal himself after differences arose with the designated director Sridhar Shenoy. With the novel experiment of a silent Pushpak Vimanam (a.k.a Pesum Padam) directed by Singeetam Srinivasa Rao in 1988, Kamal appeared first time on screen sans his famous moustache. The film, shown to audiences all over India, struck an instant rapport with the public. The poignant tale of the unemployed young man and his daily struggles struck a chord in their hearts. Arousing pathos and comic laughter at the same time, it had the dazzling Amala opposite Kamal. They were to pair again in Sathya and Vettri Vizha (a take off on Bourne Identity). Kamal devoured huge quantities of rice and put on weight in studious preparation for the role of Velusamy Naickar, a character inspired by the underworld don Varadaraja Mudaliar, for Mani Ratnam’s Nayakan. The performance was arguably his best but the movie also paved the way for differences with Ratnam and unfortunately the two titans parted filmi ways. Nayakan became Dayavan with Vinod Khanna in Hindi and not surprisingly fell flat.

Kamal has always loved Kerala. His favorite food is the Malayali dish of fried Karimeen fish. He counts among his best friends Mammotty, Mohanlal and Nedumudi Venu and from the past, Jayan who was our superstar when he died during a film shooting 28 years ago. Nedumudi is among Kamal’s favorite Indian actors, the others include Shivaji Ganesan (Nadikar Thilakam was a father-figure to him), Dilip Kumar and Naseeruddin Shah. In Indian Kamal and Venu matched wits in the respective roles of the freedom fighter and CBI officer. His last Malayalam movie, debutante Rajeev Kumar’s Chanakyan was an early Jayaram film in which a serious faced Kamal played the avenging violinist Johnson rattling sabres with Thilakan’s villain Chief Minister, with consummate aplomb.

Post-Nayakan, Kamal began to streamline his choice of films more. He became choosy about the roles he accepted and did not do more than two movies a year, and certainly no two movies at a time. The immediate reward of that strategy was a superbly crafted Apoorva Sahodarargal with which Kamal reached the pinnacle of his acting career. There were no more heights he could scale from there. The peak had been attained. Playing a dwarf in a circus was something he had always wanted to do. It posed exciting challenges, obviously. In many ways, the film was to him what Mera Naam Joker was to Raj Kapoor, a soul-searching exercise. But unlike the Kapoor film, Apoorva Sahodarargal set the cash registers ringing at the box office. He followed it up with another incredible act Indran Chandran (Indradu Chandradu in Telugu). The diabolical Mayor Rajendran and the simpleton Chandran were a perfect contrast of double roles. Soon after came Michael Madan Kama Rajan, a slapstick comedy experimenting with four roles. In Anbe Sivam, Madhavan as the young ad-man Anbarasu ridicules the communist relic Nallasivam played by Kamal saying communism is extinct since the Soviet Union has collapsed. Retorts Sivam,’If Taj Mahal falls down, will you guys stop loving as well?’ In this film that came before the big Tsunami happened, Nallasivam also lectures impromptu to Anbarasu about that natural disaster! In Hey Ram, Saket Ram sets out to kill Gandhi, convinced that the latter is the root cause of his personal tragedy. The work which also features Hindi sensation Shah Rukh Khan, is a serious examination of what the Father of our Nation stood for. It went above the head of the common moviegoer and miserably flopped. Ditto success for Alavandan (Abhay) where Kamal plays a cop and his lunatic twin brother. His Virumandi employed the Kurosawan technique of revisiting a scene later from different perspectives. Tenali, Pammal K. Sambandam, Panchathantram and Mumbai Express are the kind of racy stuff that didn’t do his talent justice. Cop flick Vettayadu Vilayadu was a focused work that brought out director Gautam Menon’s technical artistry. It is true that Kamal is in a sense a ‘great imitator’. He has liberally copied from the riches of Hollywood cinema apart from drawing from his own vast reading. But in an industry which refuses to grow out of song and dance musicals like a obdurate kid, he is one artist who has raised the bar every now and then and stretched the realms of the cinematically possible. Kamal’s businesses have done creditably well. He started a production company called Raaj Kamal International in 1985. Kamal has choreographed songs and runs a film distribution office. A slight downslide in quality seems to have affected his films since Singaravelan. Mahanadi portrayed the most needlessly sickening violence that I have seen on screen. Kuruthi Punal, a film without songs, was restrained and good, but the credit should go to Govind Nihalani whose Hindi original Drohkal, it was a remake of. Vasool Raja MBBS was popular but could not hold a candle to its Hindi master Munnabhai MBBS which I believe is based on an idea nattily lifted from Robin Williams’ Patch Adams.

Kamal, ever the perfectionist takes extreme pains to hone his professional skills. For the Avarkal role, he learnt ventriloquism. For a scene in the underworld film Sathya, where he breaks in the glass pane of a building, he met Hollywood stunt masters and learnt the techniques from them. Similar efforts were made for Santhana Bharathi’s Guna – a difficult story about a man’s obsession for a woman who is, with apologies to Churchill, a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. For Avvai Shanmugi inspired by Mrs. Doubtfire, he had none other than the original film’s make-up man Michael Westmore working for him. The association continued in Dasavatharam. When quizzed as to why he takes all that trouble Kamal in reply cited the bravura of Kathakali artists who take up up to four hours to don their greasepaint. Compared to those great men, he contented, his efforts are way too miniscule. If I am to draw a comparison of Kamal to Hollywood stars, Al Pacino should be the closest – in terms of versatility if not looks. His own favorite foreign actors include Marlon Brando, Robert de Niro and Marcello Mastrioni. The adored actresses are Vanessa Redgrave, Sandra Bullock, Ingrid Thulin among the foreign and Madhuri Dixit, Savithri, Urvashi, Sridevi and and Meena Kumari among the Indian.

Kamal’s home in Alwarpet, Chennai is a veritable haven of the best collection of world cinema and literature. Always a keen student of cinema, Kamal claims to have seen Orson Welles’s 1942 classic Citizen Kane, on the life and times of a newspaper tycoon,’at least a hundred times’. His directorial venture about a Chola chieftain that got stalled, Maruthanaayagam should turn out to be highly authentic, researched and at the same time obscenely expensive when it finally sees the light of the day. It might surprise Kamal’s admirers to learn that he still considers himself a reluctant actor. His passion is more in writing. In fact he has written the script for many of his films. Even before making it big as an actor, when only 19, Kamal wrote a treatment about prostitution called Unarchigal and made his presence felt in the big league. His other screenplays include Vikram, Indran Chandran, Thevar Magan, Mahanadi, Apoorva Sahodarargal, Avvai Shanmugi, Anbe Sivam, Hey Ram and Dasavatharam. Before entering films big time, he briefly worked with the drama troupe of T. K. Shanmugham, a stage producer who also was popular for his role of Avvaiyar, the poetess. In 1996, Kamal dedicated his film Avvai Shanmughi to his guru TKS. He has even brought out a collection of poems called Thedi Theerpom Va. Kamal who has acted in many languages insists on lending his own voice to his characters. This sometimes led to much hilarious dubbing in his non-Tamil films, for instance, Malayalam. Kamal wrote the lyrics of Hey Ram. He has sung many songs in his movies. I particularly love the ones in Thevar Magan (Kshatriya Putrudu in Telugu. Remade in Hindi as Virasat by Priyadarsan, casting Anil Kapoor and Amrish Puri). Imagine a confluence of greats like Shivaji, Kamal, Illayaraja and that artist with the utmost aesthetic sense among Southern mavericks, Bharathan! Thevar Magan was such a unique and marvelous summit.

The Juggernaut of Kamal Haasan will roll on. He is, to borrow the title of one of his early films, a ‘Sakala Kala Vallabhan’ (All round Artist). The director of Dasavatharam KSR is shown doing a a jig towards the fag end of the movie to singer Vinith’s croon of ‘Ulaga Naayagane’ (Universal Hero) as his unabashed admiration for his lead actor floods over on screen. FICCI bestowed on him the title of ‘Living Legend’ last year. A couple of years back Satyabhama University conferred an honorary doctorate on Haasan. He was the first person to convert his fans’ associations into a welfare organization called Narpani Iyakkam. Kamal also published a magazine called Mayyam to convey his messages across to followers of his cinema. His birthday every year is marked by eye and blood donation camps as well as distribution of free clothes and educational material. The Kalaignani has not pawned his conscience to any religion or political party. Now in his fifty fourth year and with more than 150 films under his belt, Padmashree Kamal Haasan’s is a name that is sure to be printed in pure gold in the annals of Indian Cinema history. As his legion of admirers eagerly await his next film Marmayogi, allow me to list out five of my best loved works from the opulent oeuvre of the Alwarpet Almighty:

Punnagai Manna
Pathinaaru Vayathinile
Apoorva Sahodarargal
Nayakan
Moondram Pirai

(July 2008)