On 'Amma, Appa and Rajnikanth'...

One of my junior collegaues at work recently pointed to me, when children are born in Tamil Nadu, they are introduced to three people even before devotion and temples beckon - Amma, Appa and Rajnikanth - and not necessarily in that order. Such is status accorded to one of the greatest filmstars ever to some on Indian screens. Adulations and deity like respect is not alien to film stars in South India, where a good percentage of the population have the pictures of a MGR or an NTR in their prayer rooms and also among the sepia tinted pictures of the yesteryears. These are film posters, cuttings from obscure film magazines and the like. There are also the framed pictures of them among the Hindu deities.

The current generation has seen less of this and there are some who attribute it to the waning influence of the medium of cinema in general and also the fact there are now more avenues of entertainment, increasing literacy and the birth of 'internetectuals'. But there are still times when one cannot ignore the impact of these phenomena of the past and we get live glimpses of this, even today. Such was the release of the movie ' The Robot' and its vernacular version 'Endhiran'.

As a first disclaimer, I must confess that I have not seen the movie die to work related exigencies and also will not attempt to review this movie as I have not had the firs hand feel. But I can't suppress the desire to write about what I hear about the movie and the frenzy around it. For firsts, the movie has got good reviews about it from nearly every quarter. The yardsticks are that of a standard Indian pot boiler with the regular recipe of good Vs evil and we are not looking for a arthouse critical claim and nor we have any illusion that the art of film making would have gained anything worthwhile from this contribution from Shankar. But like his earlier movies, he has managed 'scale' yet again and the demonstarted yet again that we are in no ways inferior to the Jerry Bruckheimers and the Camerons and can manage scale in our limited economics.

Now talking of the actor. It also needed someone like Rajni to pull this through. Look at the size of his fan associations. Among the four popular associations he has, there are appraoximately 25,00,000 fans. Which means if every fan watches his movie once ( @ Rs.100 ticket) - that is close to 25 crores which is the average collections of a decent hit in India. So most of his movies are guaranteed successes. We have not even delved into the astronomical ticket pricing of the theatres and the multiplexes etc. Rajni Saar has the filography which vouches for the fact. Added to this is persona of this man. He is as simple as an ordinary man in real life, spartan living style, does not unduly force his image into politics and stays miles from any product endorsements. he is the only actor at that who does not indulge in cashing his popularity any further with the pot pourri. A trend which is unimaginable in today's economics and inimitable.

On second thought, is it suprising that he has a fan following like this. He shows all virtues of great mind, simple living and has a saint like truthfulness in his appeals to the people. And these appeals are seldom requests to watch his film. While intelligence and 'rational behaviour' will still be tall excuses to us, the common man will still not flinch from telling his child his legend - Once upon a time there was this gentleman called Rajnikanth .......