The halo never fades

Rajinikanth's reach is clearly beyond films. So what makes the superstar what he is?

January 27, 2016 04:32 pm | Updated December 09, 2016 08:48 pm IST

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So Rajinikanth has got the Padma Vibhushan. Or did — as a tweet joked — the Padma Vibhushan get Rajinikanth? It doesn’t matter. It also doesn’t matter that he has been honoured with an award. Rajinikanth is beyond the realm of recognitions. He could well institute an award in his name and that would easily count among the most prestigious in the country. So the latest joke, unlike other ‘Rajinikanth jokes’, isn’t entirely a joke.

What makes Rajinikanth what he is? The most satisfactory answer can only be given by the man himself, though I did try to find my own answers when I wrote a lengthy piece on him, barely months after I relocated to Chennai in January 2001. To write the piece, which appeared shortly before the release of Baba (2002), I spent a night at a friend’s place to watch Thalapathi (or should it be ‘Dalapathy’?), the 1991-released Mani Ratnam blockbuster that had turned Rajinikanth into a superstar — the filmdom’s equivalent of superman.

I also interviewed a number of people — other than the man himself, of course — and they included actress Meena (the first time I ever spoke to an actress) who had paired with him in Muthu (1995). I don’t remember who said exactly what about the superstar, but the essence of their opinion boiled down to the fact that he was absolutely 'down to earth' and that he, in his roles, sat lightly on the shoulders of the audience. Their opinion was honest, because arrogance is a ladder that can bring down a superstar faster than he had taken to reach the peak, whereas Rajinikanth, at the time, had only been climbing up and up, creating a new peak for himself with every new release. Before moving to Chennai, I had watched four films in which Rajinikanth had acted: Geraftaar (1985), Uttar Dakshin (1987), Bhagwan Dada (1986) and Hum (1991), in that order. For some reason, I missed Chaalbaaz (1989).

Even though Rajinikanth made his debut in Hindi cinema in 1983 in Andha Kanoon (another film that I missed), it was his cameo role as police inspector Hussein in Geraftaar that endeared him to the masses up north. His south Indian accent was more than made up for by his style: he would always flick a cigarette into his lips — in one scene he tosses the cigarette up in the air and lights it up, mid-air, by shooting at it with his service revolver — and even during his final moments in the film, as he dies fighting the bad guys, he has a lit cigarette intact between his lips. Back then, one did not find all this funny; one saw such antics as Rajinikanth’s ‘style’, which made him immensely likeable.

Then, over time, one got to know that Rajinikanth had become a very big star — sorry, superstar — down south, so big that he had helped decide the outcome of the 1996 Lok Sabha as well as Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu.

I happened to be one of the journalists flocking to G.K. Moopanar’s room in Western Court at Janpath in New Delhi, where Moopanar and P. Chidamabaram just couldn’t stop smiling as they entertained queries. Their Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC), in alliance with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), had swept both the elections in the State — all because Rajinikanth had warned voters on Sun TV that if Jayalalithaa returned to power, “even God can’t save Tamil Nadu”.

There are countless instances of movie stars joining politics as crowd-pullers and even winning elections, but this was the first and the only time when the charisma of a star, who had not even gone out campaigning, decided the outcome of an election. Rajinikanth was now beyond being just a superstar.

Which is why even though Baba flopped, Rajinikanth did not. He remained the most sought-after actor. I have lived in Chennai for 15 years now, during which I have seen about half-a-dozen of his films release. Some did extremely well, some bombed, but not to diminish the halo around his head. He is now clearly beyond his films.

So coming back to the question: what makes Rajinikanth what he is? The answer, I think, lies in what he is.

It’s very easy for one to proclaim ‘I am what I am’ but very difficult, especially for someone in showbiz, to show the ‘this is how I really am’ self in public but not for Rajinikanth. He is 65 and his age, naturally, shows. But he has not gone for a hair transplant, or does he wear a wig or dye his hair. He looks exactly the same in public as he looks in the privacy of his home — the opposite of how he looks in his films. It is like as if he wants to say, “Look, I may be an ageless superman in my films, but in real life I am just like any other human. Don’t mix the two.” It takes a lot of humility and confidence to make such a statement, and it is these two attributes that accord him the halo.

I am waiting for the day when he appears in a film just the way he appears in public — a normal human, without makeup — and plays his age. I will watch it first day, first show. But that day may never come.

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