Starry Day
My friend Kumaresh quite suddenly treaded into the movie industry. He just got into the groove and got caught in the web, before he could say “Bandha” (which was the name of the first movie he produced)!
Kumaresh was a flamboyant character who always set the ambience afire with his inscrutable personality and his inimitable humor. That was how he caught the eye of a rapacious film industry personality, in faraway Houston, who tried hard to tie him into the film industry and use his software money to fund insipid and sentimental yarns from Kodambakkam. And succeeded.
One thing led to another and Kumaresh, already one enamored by glamour and glitz, which was evasive in the software industry, fitted into the image-conscious industry like the pieces of a puzzle.
A year (and a few million dollars) later, when I met him in his film office, he was clad in a kitschy printed shirt, masticating a meetha pan. He sported a longer moustache that gravitated toward his proud chin, had a “chandana pottu” smeared prominently on his forehead, and mouthed invectives with a cavalier offhandedness.
He really liked it there, it seemed. He was being met by hoarding guys, Sun TV publicity managers, distributors from Ramanathapuram and Rayalseema and by aspiring actors and directors who wanted a chance to exhibit their skills. He smoked copiously, missed several appointments, shouted at his office attendants and took me to a movie at 2 PM and walked out at 2:30 PM (to my disappointment) cursing it within earshot of the theater owner and the executive producer of the movie who was hanging around to get the public’s opinion (I got to know from somebody else later that this was the film industry way of catching up on new movies!).
He talked about nuances of movie making, camera angles and techniques, why the movies, which failed, did and why other movies, which worked, did.
“Is our movie going to make it?” I asked him.
He took a puff off his Gold Flake Kings laboriously and exhaled it into the direction of Kodambakkam.
“The people have to decide!”, he said pointing to the crowded Kodambakkam High Road, “but it has got all the ingredients of a super-duper hit! Let us see how it ‘stands’ (which means ‘runs’ in film industry parlance!)” he sighed aloud.
“OK! Tomorrow, I am going to meet a number of film stars to hand over the invitations for the audio release! Are you coming?”
“Well, tomorrow, I have to go to work!”
“What work?!”, he looked at me with disdain as if I were doing something unthinkable, “come with me, da!” he insisted. “Besides, this is the only chance you will get to see some of them” he said.
“But is it OK if I come?” I asked not quite able to resist meeting the luminaries of Tamil filmdom.
“Who can stop you when you are coming with me?” he asked indignantly, “I am there, da! Machchi, you don’t know the respect people have for producers in this industry?”
“OK, then! I will come with you! If that is OK with you!” I said.
“Oyee! Trying to be too formal, eh? OK, meet me here at 9 AM OK? 9 AM sharp!!”
Kumaresh’s reputation for time unconsciousness was legendary. His sense of time and calculation of durations was based on very weird math. Once, for an appointment at 2 PM with a HR Manager of a leading computer manufacturer in the US, situated on another part of town thirty-eight miles away, he started at 2:05 PM. The manager, already restless, called him at 2:10 PM and asked him where he was. Kumaresh, a good 35 minutes away said he would meet him in two minutes!! The hapless manager called him at 2:25 PM again. Kumaresh gave him the same answer. At 2:35 PM he called Kumaresh again and this time cancelled the meeting. Kumaresh had to use all of his oozing charisma to placate the manager into accepting his phony explanation.
At 8.50 AM, the next morning, Kumaresh called home. By now, heavily influenced by Kumaresh and his sense of time, I was just coming out of the bathroom after my morning bath. Kumaresh was livid.
“Bastard! I told you we have to leave at 9 AM! What the heck, Machaan!”
“Sir, I will make it! I will be there in another twenty minutes or so!”
“Dai! Not to me asshole!” he laughed, “Ok, come fast!”
I was quite surprised how the film industry brought this one (and the only) positive change in Kumaresh, which even the biggest computer manufacturer in the world couldn’t inculcate in him!
I reached his office in Ashok Nagar at 9:40 AM and we left immediately in his Honda City driven by his trusted lieutenant, Mani.
The first stop was at Kamal Haasan’s film set at the AVM Rajeshwari Mandapam. Kamal was one of the chief guests for the audio release (the other was Mani Ratnam).
He was seated inside a room with half his moustache shaved off and an ominous make up on his face. He was accompanied by Santhana Bharathi, his assistant. He smiled and raised his palm to his chest to acknowledge Kumaresh.
“Sir, I came to give out the invitation!”
“Yeah, I saw it!” he said in his scabrous voice.
“Oh!” Kumaresh paused, “…where?” he asked.
“Our director had it! Probably your PRO gave it to him!” Kamal smiled.
“He is my friend from US, sir! A great fan of yours!” Kumaresh introduced me to Kamal.
Kamal did the same half-raised-palm-to-the-chest routine. My heart beat loud as I acknowledged my childhood hero in similar fashion. My cousin, Arun, a rabid fan of Kamal, would have given his palm for this!
The room was quiet for about thirty seconds.
“OK sir, we will take leave!” Kumaresh got up deferentially.
Kamal half got up from his seat and accepted our departure.
We came out of the room to the sight of around a hundred people standing outside trying to catch a glimpse of the “Super Actor”. There was a security guard with a 4-foot bamboo stick combating the over-enthusiastic, if required, with a mild pat with the stick, which the crowd took good-humoredly.
Kumaresh and I didn’t speak. It took me quite a while to digest the fact that I had “met” the man of my juvenile dreams. In college, I was an ardent fan of Kamal and pasted my room with his photographs as an emphatic statement and as a jibe at the Super Star of the North, Amitabh Bachchan. Somewhere down the line, I had lost interest in him and took a liking to Rajnikant.
“So, what do you think?” Kumaresh broke my reverie.
“About what?”
“How Kamal talked to me?”
“What about it?”
“He doesn’t meet people just like that! And he doesn’t agree to be part of audio functions of everybody! For us, he has done it twice!”
“So what do you think is the reason?”
“I think he wants to do a movie with me!”
I was always a great admirer of Kumaresh’s sanguine outlook on life.
“Mani, who else is in this area?”
“Sir, SPB, sir!” Mani said
“Bastard! Balu is not a VIP!” SP Balasubramaniam, who had sung more than 30,000 songs in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Hindi and a recipient of three National awards would have been distressed by this slight!
“Ok, doesn’t matter, go there!” Kumaresh said half-heartedly.
We went to SPB’s studio.
In all places we visited the rest of that momentous day, there was a routine that Kumaresh followed, which he informed was a standard convention that film stars (and he had not a glint of doubt that he was one of them) followed.
“As a VIP myself, I cannot just go into the office of some other VIP! I need to know if he is there or not and if he is available! Otherwise nobody will respect me!”
So he sent Mani to determine the appropriateness of the office ambience and the demography and whether he should walk in or not!
Mani made this judgment in each office, mostly incorrectly, and was fed with opprobrious epithets by Kumaresh when we came out from the office, which he took, more as a privilege, with shrill laughter.
SPB was not available at the studio and so we left the invitation with his assistant.
Mani reeled off a few names of illustrious people in Tamil filmdom who lived in the vicinity but Kumaresh waved all the names off censoriously and said they don’t make the grade as VIPs – at least, not one who could meet him!
“OK! Let us give it to the other Chief Guest!”
Mani turned his car and raced towards somewhere in RA Puram to Mani Ratnam’s office.
We went to Ratnam’s plush, multi-storied office. The office building was imaginatively designed and looked different from the rest of the drab offices we visited. Just like Mani’s movies, I thought. Of course, it was better lit than his movies!
Ratnam sat in his office with his good-looking assistants in a glass enclosure on the top floor of the building. He came out to receive us and Kumaresh handed over the invitation, with both hands and with a reverent stoop. Mani accepted the invitation.
“You know the date, na, sir?” Kumaresh asked him. Kumaresh’s baritone voice boomed in the spacious, granite interior.
“Yeah!” Mani replied economically.
“Are you in a meeting, sir?”
“Yes”
We stood there for a minute, Kumaresh half-expecting that Mani would call us in. Mani stood still with a bewildering silence. Kumaresh realized that it is not going to happen. Calling Mani Ratnam as the chief guest for a function doesn’t sanction one to quality time in his cabin and a discussion about the health of the Tamil film industry!
We left him to what he does best and hopped on to the car. Again, Kumaresh asked the, by now, familiar question, of who was nearby.
“K. Balachander” Mani said.
I was expecting to hear from Kumaresh the disqualification of the “Iyakunnar Imayam” as a VIP. It didn’t come. Kumaresh liked what he heard and asked Mani to drive us there.
Kumaresh related to me the previous conversations that he had with Balachander and how he had confided in Kumaresh about the film industry backstabbing him after all the contribution he had rendered to the industry for the last five decades.
“He is very close to me! He had told me last time that he was glad that a Brahmin boy had made it as a producer!”
“Dai, very good, da! Nalla pandringa da! Kumaresh, I want to see more people like you come to this industry! OK?” Balachander was supposed to have said.
When we entered Balachander’s house and he welcomed us with a trademark “vanakkam”, ten minutes later, he didn’t seem to recognize Kumaresh. He also spoke to Kumaresh in a very formal tone and referred to him as “vaanga”, “ponga”! Kumaresh tried to raise several topics about Balachander’s forthcoming projects and his TV serials (which kept stretching on…) but Balachander was in no mood to open up.
We left in mild disappointment and from the acknowledgement we received, I knew he was not going to make it to the function.
We landed up in Rajeev Menon’s office next. Rajeev Menon occupied a palatial, multi-storied office and had attempted to create an actual office ambience, with a receptionist, meeting rooms and waiting areas. He should have realized that that doesn’t go down well with film folks. When the receptionist asked us to wait for a few minutes as Rajeev was in another meeting, Kumaresh shook his head in incredulity.
“I am a producer and I have come to give an invitation!”
“Yes, sir! He is in a meeting and he will be out in a few minutes!”
Kumaresh couldn’t take that reasoning. What meeting could be more important for Rajeev Menon than receiving a NRI producer who had come to invite him for his audio release function!
As the argument ensued, the handsome Rajeev Menon emerged from a meeting room. Noticing, light-complexioned individuals with a paunch in formal attire who definitely didn’t look like his regular visitors, Rajeev approached the reception inquisitive to know our identity.
“Do you remember me, Rajeev?” Kumaresh quizzed extending his right hand to Rajeev Menon.
“Hmmm…No!” Rajeev replied, responding to Kumaresh by shaking his hands and trying to get a positive ID for the face from his memory.
“We met in Coimbatore once! I am “Bandha” producer, Kumaresh!”
“Well, I don’t remember meeting you! But I know who you are! Please come!”
“I just wanted to give an invitation for my audio release! Can I meet you now?” Kumaresh asked Rajeev in mild sarcasm not quite forgetting the receptionist’s “affront”.
“I just have a few minutes! Can we go to my cabin?”
Rajeev took us to his gorgeous cabin. Then for the next two hours, he reviewed Tamil movies, Hindi movies, Hollywood movies, Kamal Haasan, Aishwarya Rai, his meeting with Manoj Shyamalan, the multiplexes in Mumbai and Mira Nair.
Kumaresh, the normally effusive orator, listened for most of the time, and it seemed in admiration. For a person who didn’t recognize us, Rajeev, indeed, addressed us hospitably – and wordily.
Rajeev had a lot of ideas but in the reverse-snobbish Tamil film industry, none of those were going to see light. Even Kumaresh didn’t quite understand the English-speaking Tamil film director. But it made for a good two hours. Kumaresh wanted to see some guy in the film industry open up and it finally happened!
We came out of the office and had lunch at Saravana Bhavan and discussed some of the ideas of Rajeev Menon with respect to corporatization and the relevance of the industry status bestowed on Indian filmdom.
After lunch, we continued on our trip to offices of popular producers such as “Kalaipuli” ( ‘Tiger of Arts’) Thanu, AVM Saravanan, Vikram Singh, Oscar Ravi and a bunch of other guys... who would never relate to Rajeev Menon, Kumaresh commented.
Around evening, we went to meet the two reigning heroes of Tamil cinema, Vijay and Ajit.
Vijay was not in his house and had gone on a trip to Mumbai.
Ajit welcomed Kumaresh with a smile after a ten-minute wait that Kumaresh didn’t seem to mind. Kumaresh handed the invitation to him. Ajit had a slew of assistants surrounding him who performed menial tasks, which Ajit asked for with his piercing eyes. He just had to glance and they seemed to understand what he wanted. One assistant rushed to open the envelope. After Ajit read the invitation, he glanced at another who rushed to receive it.
“So Kamal sir has agreed to come for the function?” Ajit asked clearing his throat.
“Oh, yes! Otherwise, how can we put him on our invitation, sir?” Kumaresh asked.
Ajit cleared his throat again. He looked at the assistant near the door and the assistant got the cue and rushed to get a glass of water.
“Water?” he asked us before he drank it. We shook our heads.
The assistant waited for Ajit to empty the glass and received it from him with both hands.
When we left Ajit’s home Kumaresh was very impressed with the regiment of aides and the tasks they performed.
“See how the guys understand what he wants! What, Mani? Have you ever understood what I want?” he questioned looking out of the window. Kumaresh, I realized, secretly desired for his own contingent whom he can order around.
Throughout the day, Kumaresh tried several times to reach Rajnikant through his associates but it was impossible to determine his whereabouts.
“Rajni promised he would make it!” he claimed.
“Did you talk to him?” I asked.
“Yeah! I talked to him and he had said ‘I will definitely come Kumaresh’!”
I looked at Kumaresh suspiciously. It was difficult to determine if Kumaresh was telling the truth. With his association with the film industry, there were a whole of things that he appended to the truth – probably in the name of artistic freedom.
We then went to Prasanth’s home. Prasanth was not there but his dad, Thyagarajan, who was an actor as well, received the invitation on behalf of his son. When we were leaving, Prasanth arrived and greeted Kumaresh.
Kumaresh and he talked about his future projects, which he spelt out, with much interest.
“I doubt any of his movies will run!” Kumaresh commented as Mani drove the car away from the posh Abhiramapuram locality.
“Mani, go to the Nadigar Sangam! Let us meet the Captain (Vijaykant)!” Kumaresh said smiling at me.
“He will be there?”
“He should be! He normally is not home till late at night!”
We drove to the Nadigar Sangam in T. Nagar. As we reached the compound there was a huge crowd, which had gathered there as the protest by the Tamil Film stars at Neyveli (for stopping power to Karnataka) was nearing its peak. Kumaresh took a few minutes to prepare himself. He starred at his image on the vanity mirror pensively, adjusted his hair, inspected his teeth and sprayed some cologne on his colorful shirt.
When we entered the Nadigar Sangam office, there were at least twenty-five actors crammed inside the small room. Prabhu, Murali, SS Chandran, Captain, Abbas, Arjun and everybody who had acted in Tamil movies in the past fifteen years. Kumaresh went across the room and shook hands with Vijaykant.
Kumaresh had filled me to the brim about what Vijaykant and he had talked about in their previous meetings. He seemed to be especially proud of being the receptor of Tamil curses, which he claimed with pride that Vijaykant often used on him
However, as I had come to accept, Vijaykant addressed Kumaresh formally.
“Vaanga Kumaresh! How are you?” Kumaresh would later tell me that the reason for that was the presence of other stars in the room.
“See Vijaykant knows his etiquette! He cannot call a producer ‘vaada poda’ before all those actors! These industry guys know their respect!”
I glanced around. Prabhu starred deadpan at me (wondering who the hell these guys were?). I smiled. He smiled back – just about. Kumaresh handed over the invitations to several actors and then he talked to Vijaykant about how the movie was going. As the 9 PM news started on TV, everybody’s attention turned towards it.
Kumaresh excused himself and as we headed out it bothered him that Vijaykant had referred to him with respect instead of using foul language and rationalized on why Vijaykant might have done it. “I will ask him tomorrow! ‘What party? Why are you doing this?’”
We then headed to the Thuglak office to hand over an invitation to ‘Cho’ Ramaswamy. Kumaresh, again narrated to me his previous meetings with Cho. By now, I had learnt to take the narratives with a pinch – several table spoons – of salt.
Predictably, ‘Cho’ didn’t recognize Kumaresh and was the most stubborn of them all as he was utterly uninterested in even trying to fix Kumaresh’s identity.
“Sunderaman from BJP is my brother, sir!” Kumaresh said.
“So?” Cho asked.
“Sir, I have the audio release function for my movie, sir!” Kumaresh said.
“I cannot come, so don’t waste the invitation” Cho said. It looked like he was in a very foul mood (due to the Neyveli protest? Kumaresh guessed later).
Kumaresh handed an invitation to Cho and we quickly left his office before he threw any more insults at us.
We had run out of steam. I had had my share of stars for the day. Kumaresh made a last bid to get Rajnikant on line. He couldn’t. So we decided to end our day. He checked his list to see if he had covered all the celebrities that he wanted to call in person.
“Oh! There is just one more, da! Yuhi Sethu!” Kumaresh remembered.
“Kumaresh, go tomorrow to Sethu’s!” I said warily and aware of Yuhi Sethu’s garrulity.
“Just this one!”
“But this one won’t let us go that easily!” I said.
“Aye! What is your plan for tomorrow? What are you going to crack up leaving early?”
“It is 10:30, Kumaresh!”
“It will only be half hour, da!”
We went to Yuhi Sethu’s home. For the next two and half hours, Kumaresh and I would listen to stories, screen plays, dialogues, tidbits about Kurusawa, “Run Lola Run”, lessons in cinematography, and why movies run when they do. I knew then where Kumaresh got most of his anecdotes about the movie industry. Yuhi spoke in a rapid accent and we listened to more than we could register.
When I finally left for home that night, I was absolutely thrilled. This was probably the most eventful day of my life, I thought. I was only in the periphery of these meetings but it gave me the best opportunity to see some of the brightest stars of Tamil filmdom.
“Thanks, Kumaresh!” I told myself and dozed off with veritable contentment.
Kumaresh was a flamboyant character who always set the ambience afire with his inscrutable personality and his inimitable humor. That was how he caught the eye of a rapacious film industry personality, in faraway Houston, who tried hard to tie him into the film industry and use his software money to fund insipid and sentimental yarns from Kodambakkam. And succeeded.
One thing led to another and Kumaresh, already one enamored by glamour and glitz, which was evasive in the software industry, fitted into the image-conscious industry like the pieces of a puzzle.
A year (and a few million dollars) later, when I met him in his film office, he was clad in a kitschy printed shirt, masticating a meetha pan. He sported a longer moustache that gravitated toward his proud chin, had a “chandana pottu” smeared prominently on his forehead, and mouthed invectives with a cavalier offhandedness.
He really liked it there, it seemed. He was being met by hoarding guys, Sun TV publicity managers, distributors from Ramanathapuram and Rayalseema and by aspiring actors and directors who wanted a chance to exhibit their skills. He smoked copiously, missed several appointments, shouted at his office attendants and took me to a movie at 2 PM and walked out at 2:30 PM (to my disappointment) cursing it within earshot of the theater owner and the executive producer of the movie who was hanging around to get the public’s opinion (I got to know from somebody else later that this was the film industry way of catching up on new movies!).
He talked about nuances of movie making, camera angles and techniques, why the movies, which failed, did and why other movies, which worked, did.
“Is our movie going to make it?” I asked him.
He took a puff off his Gold Flake Kings laboriously and exhaled it into the direction of Kodambakkam.
“The people have to decide!”, he said pointing to the crowded Kodambakkam High Road, “but it has got all the ingredients of a super-duper hit! Let us see how it ‘stands’ (which means ‘runs’ in film industry parlance!)” he sighed aloud.
“OK! Tomorrow, I am going to meet a number of film stars to hand over the invitations for the audio release! Are you coming?”
“Well, tomorrow, I have to go to work!”
“What work?!”, he looked at me with disdain as if I were doing something unthinkable, “come with me, da!” he insisted. “Besides, this is the only chance you will get to see some of them” he said.
“But is it OK if I come?” I asked not quite able to resist meeting the luminaries of Tamil filmdom.
“Who can stop you when you are coming with me?” he asked indignantly, “I am there, da! Machchi, you don’t know the respect people have for producers in this industry?”
“OK, then! I will come with you! If that is OK with you!” I said.
“Oyee! Trying to be too formal, eh? OK, meet me here at 9 AM OK? 9 AM sharp!!”
Kumaresh’s reputation for time unconsciousness was legendary. His sense of time and calculation of durations was based on very weird math. Once, for an appointment at 2 PM with a HR Manager of a leading computer manufacturer in the US, situated on another part of town thirty-eight miles away, he started at 2:05 PM. The manager, already restless, called him at 2:10 PM and asked him where he was. Kumaresh, a good 35 minutes away said he would meet him in two minutes!! The hapless manager called him at 2:25 PM again. Kumaresh gave him the same answer. At 2:35 PM he called Kumaresh again and this time cancelled the meeting. Kumaresh had to use all of his oozing charisma to placate the manager into accepting his phony explanation.
At 8.50 AM, the next morning, Kumaresh called home. By now, heavily influenced by Kumaresh and his sense of time, I was just coming out of the bathroom after my morning bath. Kumaresh was livid.
“Bastard! I told you we have to leave at 9 AM! What the heck, Machaan!”
“Sir, I will make it! I will be there in another twenty minutes or so!”
“Dai! Not to me asshole!” he laughed, “Ok, come fast!”
I was quite surprised how the film industry brought this one (and the only) positive change in Kumaresh, which even the biggest computer manufacturer in the world couldn’t inculcate in him!
I reached his office in Ashok Nagar at 9:40 AM and we left immediately in his Honda City driven by his trusted lieutenant, Mani.
The first stop was at Kamal Haasan’s film set at the AVM Rajeshwari Mandapam. Kamal was one of the chief guests for the audio release (the other was Mani Ratnam).
He was seated inside a room with half his moustache shaved off and an ominous make up on his face. He was accompanied by Santhana Bharathi, his assistant. He smiled and raised his palm to his chest to acknowledge Kumaresh.
“Sir, I came to give out the invitation!”
“Yeah, I saw it!” he said in his scabrous voice.
“Oh!” Kumaresh paused, “…where?” he asked.
“Our director had it! Probably your PRO gave it to him!” Kamal smiled.
“He is my friend from US, sir! A great fan of yours!” Kumaresh introduced me to Kamal.
Kamal did the same half-raised-palm-to-the-chest routine. My heart beat loud as I acknowledged my childhood hero in similar fashion. My cousin, Arun, a rabid fan of Kamal, would have given his palm for this!
The room was quiet for about thirty seconds.
“OK sir, we will take leave!” Kumaresh got up deferentially.
Kamal half got up from his seat and accepted our departure.
We came out of the room to the sight of around a hundred people standing outside trying to catch a glimpse of the “Super Actor”. There was a security guard with a 4-foot bamboo stick combating the over-enthusiastic, if required, with a mild pat with the stick, which the crowd took good-humoredly.
Kumaresh and I didn’t speak. It took me quite a while to digest the fact that I had “met” the man of my juvenile dreams. In college, I was an ardent fan of Kamal and pasted my room with his photographs as an emphatic statement and as a jibe at the Super Star of the North, Amitabh Bachchan. Somewhere down the line, I had lost interest in him and took a liking to Rajnikant.
“So, what do you think?” Kumaresh broke my reverie.
“About what?”
“How Kamal talked to me?”
“What about it?”
“He doesn’t meet people just like that! And he doesn’t agree to be part of audio functions of everybody! For us, he has done it twice!”
“So what do you think is the reason?”
“I think he wants to do a movie with me!”
I was always a great admirer of Kumaresh’s sanguine outlook on life.
“Mani, who else is in this area?”
“Sir, SPB, sir!” Mani said
“Bastard! Balu is not a VIP!” SP Balasubramaniam, who had sung more than 30,000 songs in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Hindi and a recipient of three National awards would have been distressed by this slight!
“Ok, doesn’t matter, go there!” Kumaresh said half-heartedly.
We went to SPB’s studio.
In all places we visited the rest of that momentous day, there was a routine that Kumaresh followed, which he informed was a standard convention that film stars (and he had not a glint of doubt that he was one of them) followed.
“As a VIP myself, I cannot just go into the office of some other VIP! I need to know if he is there or not and if he is available! Otherwise nobody will respect me!”
So he sent Mani to determine the appropriateness of the office ambience and the demography and whether he should walk in or not!
Mani made this judgment in each office, mostly incorrectly, and was fed with opprobrious epithets by Kumaresh when we came out from the office, which he took, more as a privilege, with shrill laughter.
SPB was not available at the studio and so we left the invitation with his assistant.
Mani reeled off a few names of illustrious people in Tamil filmdom who lived in the vicinity but Kumaresh waved all the names off censoriously and said they don’t make the grade as VIPs – at least, not one who could meet him!
“OK! Let us give it to the other Chief Guest!”
Mani turned his car and raced towards somewhere in RA Puram to Mani Ratnam’s office.
We went to Ratnam’s plush, multi-storied office. The office building was imaginatively designed and looked different from the rest of the drab offices we visited. Just like Mani’s movies, I thought. Of course, it was better lit than his movies!
Ratnam sat in his office with his good-looking assistants in a glass enclosure on the top floor of the building. He came out to receive us and Kumaresh handed over the invitation, with both hands and with a reverent stoop. Mani accepted the invitation.
“You know the date, na, sir?” Kumaresh asked him. Kumaresh’s baritone voice boomed in the spacious, granite interior.
“Yeah!” Mani replied economically.
“Are you in a meeting, sir?”
“Yes”
We stood there for a minute, Kumaresh half-expecting that Mani would call us in. Mani stood still with a bewildering silence. Kumaresh realized that it is not going to happen. Calling Mani Ratnam as the chief guest for a function doesn’t sanction one to quality time in his cabin and a discussion about the health of the Tamil film industry!
We left him to what he does best and hopped on to the car. Again, Kumaresh asked the, by now, familiar question, of who was nearby.
“K. Balachander” Mani said.
I was expecting to hear from Kumaresh the disqualification of the “Iyakunnar Imayam” as a VIP. It didn’t come. Kumaresh liked what he heard and asked Mani to drive us there.
Kumaresh related to me the previous conversations that he had with Balachander and how he had confided in Kumaresh about the film industry backstabbing him after all the contribution he had rendered to the industry for the last five decades.
“He is very close to me! He had told me last time that he was glad that a Brahmin boy had made it as a producer!”
“Dai, very good, da! Nalla pandringa da! Kumaresh, I want to see more people like you come to this industry! OK?” Balachander was supposed to have said.
When we entered Balachander’s house and he welcomed us with a trademark “vanakkam”, ten minutes later, he didn’t seem to recognize Kumaresh. He also spoke to Kumaresh in a very formal tone and referred to him as “vaanga”, “ponga”! Kumaresh tried to raise several topics about Balachander’s forthcoming projects and his TV serials (which kept stretching on…) but Balachander was in no mood to open up.
We left in mild disappointment and from the acknowledgement we received, I knew he was not going to make it to the function.
We landed up in Rajeev Menon’s office next. Rajeev Menon occupied a palatial, multi-storied office and had attempted to create an actual office ambience, with a receptionist, meeting rooms and waiting areas. He should have realized that that doesn’t go down well with film folks. When the receptionist asked us to wait for a few minutes as Rajeev was in another meeting, Kumaresh shook his head in incredulity.
“I am a producer and I have come to give an invitation!”
“Yes, sir! He is in a meeting and he will be out in a few minutes!”
Kumaresh couldn’t take that reasoning. What meeting could be more important for Rajeev Menon than receiving a NRI producer who had come to invite him for his audio release function!
As the argument ensued, the handsome Rajeev Menon emerged from a meeting room. Noticing, light-complexioned individuals with a paunch in formal attire who definitely didn’t look like his regular visitors, Rajeev approached the reception inquisitive to know our identity.
“Do you remember me, Rajeev?” Kumaresh quizzed extending his right hand to Rajeev Menon.
“Hmmm…No!” Rajeev replied, responding to Kumaresh by shaking his hands and trying to get a positive ID for the face from his memory.
“We met in Coimbatore once! I am “Bandha” producer, Kumaresh!”
“Well, I don’t remember meeting you! But I know who you are! Please come!”
“I just wanted to give an invitation for my audio release! Can I meet you now?” Kumaresh asked Rajeev in mild sarcasm not quite forgetting the receptionist’s “affront”.
“I just have a few minutes! Can we go to my cabin?”
Rajeev took us to his gorgeous cabin. Then for the next two hours, he reviewed Tamil movies, Hindi movies, Hollywood movies, Kamal Haasan, Aishwarya Rai, his meeting with Manoj Shyamalan, the multiplexes in Mumbai and Mira Nair.
Kumaresh, the normally effusive orator, listened for most of the time, and it seemed in admiration. For a person who didn’t recognize us, Rajeev, indeed, addressed us hospitably – and wordily.
Rajeev had a lot of ideas but in the reverse-snobbish Tamil film industry, none of those were going to see light. Even Kumaresh didn’t quite understand the English-speaking Tamil film director. But it made for a good two hours. Kumaresh wanted to see some guy in the film industry open up and it finally happened!
We came out of the office and had lunch at Saravana Bhavan and discussed some of the ideas of Rajeev Menon with respect to corporatization and the relevance of the industry status bestowed on Indian filmdom.
After lunch, we continued on our trip to offices of popular producers such as “Kalaipuli” ( ‘Tiger of Arts’) Thanu, AVM Saravanan, Vikram Singh, Oscar Ravi and a bunch of other guys... who would never relate to Rajeev Menon, Kumaresh commented.
Around evening, we went to meet the two reigning heroes of Tamil cinema, Vijay and Ajit.
Vijay was not in his house and had gone on a trip to Mumbai.
Ajit welcomed Kumaresh with a smile after a ten-minute wait that Kumaresh didn’t seem to mind. Kumaresh handed the invitation to him. Ajit had a slew of assistants surrounding him who performed menial tasks, which Ajit asked for with his piercing eyes. He just had to glance and they seemed to understand what he wanted. One assistant rushed to open the envelope. After Ajit read the invitation, he glanced at another who rushed to receive it.
“So Kamal sir has agreed to come for the function?” Ajit asked clearing his throat.
“Oh, yes! Otherwise, how can we put him on our invitation, sir?” Kumaresh asked.
Ajit cleared his throat again. He looked at the assistant near the door and the assistant got the cue and rushed to get a glass of water.
“Water?” he asked us before he drank it. We shook our heads.
The assistant waited for Ajit to empty the glass and received it from him with both hands.
When we left Ajit’s home Kumaresh was very impressed with the regiment of aides and the tasks they performed.
“See how the guys understand what he wants! What, Mani? Have you ever understood what I want?” he questioned looking out of the window. Kumaresh, I realized, secretly desired for his own contingent whom he can order around.
Throughout the day, Kumaresh tried several times to reach Rajnikant through his associates but it was impossible to determine his whereabouts.
“Rajni promised he would make it!” he claimed.
“Did you talk to him?” I asked.
“Yeah! I talked to him and he had said ‘I will definitely come Kumaresh’!”
I looked at Kumaresh suspiciously. It was difficult to determine if Kumaresh was telling the truth. With his association with the film industry, there were a whole of things that he appended to the truth – probably in the name of artistic freedom.
We then went to Prasanth’s home. Prasanth was not there but his dad, Thyagarajan, who was an actor as well, received the invitation on behalf of his son. When we were leaving, Prasanth arrived and greeted Kumaresh.
Kumaresh and he talked about his future projects, which he spelt out, with much interest.
“I doubt any of his movies will run!” Kumaresh commented as Mani drove the car away from the posh Abhiramapuram locality.
“Mani, go to the Nadigar Sangam! Let us meet the Captain (Vijaykant)!” Kumaresh said smiling at me.
“He will be there?”
“He should be! He normally is not home till late at night!”
We drove to the Nadigar Sangam in T. Nagar. As we reached the compound there was a huge crowd, which had gathered there as the protest by the Tamil Film stars at Neyveli (for stopping power to Karnataka) was nearing its peak. Kumaresh took a few minutes to prepare himself. He starred at his image on the vanity mirror pensively, adjusted his hair, inspected his teeth and sprayed some cologne on his colorful shirt.
When we entered the Nadigar Sangam office, there were at least twenty-five actors crammed inside the small room. Prabhu, Murali, SS Chandran, Captain, Abbas, Arjun and everybody who had acted in Tamil movies in the past fifteen years. Kumaresh went across the room and shook hands with Vijaykant.
Kumaresh had filled me to the brim about what Vijaykant and he had talked about in their previous meetings. He seemed to be especially proud of being the receptor of Tamil curses, which he claimed with pride that Vijaykant often used on him
However, as I had come to accept, Vijaykant addressed Kumaresh formally.
“Vaanga Kumaresh! How are you?” Kumaresh would later tell me that the reason for that was the presence of other stars in the room.
“See Vijaykant knows his etiquette! He cannot call a producer ‘vaada poda’ before all those actors! These industry guys know their respect!”
I glanced around. Prabhu starred deadpan at me (wondering who the hell these guys were?). I smiled. He smiled back – just about. Kumaresh handed over the invitations to several actors and then he talked to Vijaykant about how the movie was going. As the 9 PM news started on TV, everybody’s attention turned towards it.
Kumaresh excused himself and as we headed out it bothered him that Vijaykant had referred to him with respect instead of using foul language and rationalized on why Vijaykant might have done it. “I will ask him tomorrow! ‘What party? Why are you doing this?’”
We then headed to the Thuglak office to hand over an invitation to ‘Cho’ Ramaswamy. Kumaresh, again narrated to me his previous meetings with Cho. By now, I had learnt to take the narratives with a pinch – several table spoons – of salt.
Predictably, ‘Cho’ didn’t recognize Kumaresh and was the most stubborn of them all as he was utterly uninterested in even trying to fix Kumaresh’s identity.
“Sunderaman from BJP is my brother, sir!” Kumaresh said.
“So?” Cho asked.
“Sir, I have the audio release function for my movie, sir!” Kumaresh said.
“I cannot come, so don’t waste the invitation” Cho said. It looked like he was in a very foul mood (due to the Neyveli protest? Kumaresh guessed later).
Kumaresh handed an invitation to Cho and we quickly left his office before he threw any more insults at us.
We had run out of steam. I had had my share of stars for the day. Kumaresh made a last bid to get Rajnikant on line. He couldn’t. So we decided to end our day. He checked his list to see if he had covered all the celebrities that he wanted to call in person.
“Oh! There is just one more, da! Yuhi Sethu!” Kumaresh remembered.
“Kumaresh, go tomorrow to Sethu’s!” I said warily and aware of Yuhi Sethu’s garrulity.
“Just this one!”
“But this one won’t let us go that easily!” I said.
“Aye! What is your plan for tomorrow? What are you going to crack up leaving early?”
“It is 10:30, Kumaresh!”
“It will only be half hour, da!”
We went to Yuhi Sethu’s home. For the next two and half hours, Kumaresh and I would listen to stories, screen plays, dialogues, tidbits about Kurusawa, “Run Lola Run”, lessons in cinematography, and why movies run when they do. I knew then where Kumaresh got most of his anecdotes about the movie industry. Yuhi spoke in a rapid accent and we listened to more than we could register.
When I finally left for home that night, I was absolutely thrilled. This was probably the most eventful day of my life, I thought. I was only in the periphery of these meetings but it gave me the best opportunity to see some of the brightest stars of Tamil filmdom.
“Thanks, Kumaresh!” I told myself and dozed off with veritable contentment.
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