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Confessions
of a Die Hard Fan…
Ramchandra PN, Direction 1991
Like many
others in this country, I too was appalled by
the violence that shook the city of Bengaluru
on the aftermath of the death of the Kannada
actor, superstar and icon Dr. Rajkumar. Who
and what caused this violence? Was it just an
emotional reaction or did people with vested
interests plan it all? These are questions whose
answers are probably buried deep within the
maze of files inside the Vidhana Saudha.
But the incident has triggered certain memories
that I had about the ‘legendary’
Dr. Rajkumar. I have never met Dr. Rajkumar
in my life. Yet I was a die-hard fan of his.
Historians
in my family say that, as a tiny tot, one of
the first films that I saw was in a makeshift
theater in Kundaapur. The film was Emme
Thammanna or Buffalo Thammanna.
The hero? Of course, it was our own Annavaru
(Elder Brother), Dr. Rajkumar. Through my own
little research later in life, I have gathered
that the film was about a simpleton called Thammanna
whose job was to herd buffaloes in a remote
village. It seems that I had taken a liking
to this film and its songs. For a few days in
my life, I had the misfortune of even being
nicknamed ‘Emme Thammanna’. Years
later, in school, whenever I got ‘just-passed’
marks in a couple of subjects that I didn’t
take a liking to, I was chided, “You can
herd buffaloes and be an Emme Thammanna!”
My
tryst with Rajkumar took a serious turn only
when I was a school going kid in Udupi. My cousins
Ravi and Shantaram were the first to be impressed
with his movies or shall I say, persona. By
then Rajkumar was already a well-established
hero in the Kannada Film Industry and had shifted
to playing swashbuckling roles as a crime buster.
His initial forays into movies were through
mythological and historical characters. He then
shifted to the social genre, playing roles mainly
of a simple and honest villager who fought against
feudal oppression. But we as children were impressed
by a string of ‘CID’ films that
he had recently popularized. These films caught
the fancy of an entire generation of kids like
me. I was never allowed to see these ‘CID’
films because the moral custodians of my family
felt that these films had a lot of violence
and were therefore not meant for children. But
nevertheless, we were all excited. News of Rajkumar’s
films used to filter down to us from friends
or friends of friends who had seen some of his
movies. Stories used to be exchanged –
how in this film Rajkumar did this, and how
in that film Rajkumar did that.
He
was a superhero. He could do no wrong. He was
always on the side of the downtrodden. He respected
elders and loved kids. He could always win a
verbal duel; bash up tough looking villains
or tame sharp-tongued heroines – all with
equal ease. He knew how to fight, how to use
a gun and had a great sense of wit. He was smart,
but could act dumb if he wanted to. Despite
being a James Bond-like spy, the glass in his
hand always had fruit juice in it and not alcohol.
Cigarettes were a big no-no. Traditional values
were most important to him, yet he could be
as modern as anyone else. And above all, as
they say in some movie title cards, he was a
true Kannadiga. He was the sort of person who
would die for anything even remotely connected
with Kannada and Karnataka – after all,
his songs said so.
So
obsessed were we about our superhero that we
used to pick fights with anyone who said even
a word against Rajkumar. And mischief-makers
within our extended family had a field day toying
with our emotions. They used to deliberately
say, “Your Rajkumar is a very bad actor!”
or “Your Rajkumar gets bashed up badly
in his latest film!” It was sufficient
for us cousins to quarrel with them and sometimes
even get violent!
Gandhada
Gudi or The Sandalwood Abode was
one of Rajkumar’s landmark movies. It
co-starred another star-actor of the Kannada
film industry, Vishnuvardhan. The film’s
climax required Vishnuvardhan to shoot at Rajkumar.
During the filming of this sequence, it was
rumoured that a bullet actually went off Vishnuvardhan’s
gun, missing Rajkumar by a whisker. Rajkumar
fans protested all over Karnataka and I vaguely
remember hearing Vishnuvardhan had to take security
cover for days thereafter. As for me, I hated
Vishnuvardhan for a long time for what he could
have done to my favorite hero!
Both
Ravi and Shantaram got over their Rajkumar trip
quite soon. Ravi, I don’t know what made
him do so, but Shantaram – I came to know
later – was disillusioned to learn that
Rajkumar’s age was the same as his father’s!
Just how could a man of his father’s age
sing and dance around with heroines half his
age? Shantaram began concentrating on his studies,
but I continued being a die-hard fan of Namma
Annavaru or ‘our elder brother’.
Needless to say, Shantaram is in the United
States working happily as a successful software
engineer and I am here in Mumbai still struggling
to make films that don’t look like Rajkumar’s
films.
We
were then transferred to Dharwad. By now, I
was allowed to see Rajkumar movies, but not
on the first day. It was too much of a risk,
the Security Department of my family had decided.
There were newspaper reports emitting from Bengaluru
of how people had taken to violence when they
did not get tickets to watch their favourite
Rajkumar movie on the first day-first show.
They broke glass and burnt government buses
to vent their frustrations. But I did manage
to see a first day-first show of a Rajkumar
film. After all, I was in the eighth standard
and was a big boy! The film in question was
Shankar-Guru. It was a great sense
of achievement to do so. There was already a
certain amount of hype about the film, that
Rajkumar was playing a double role – Shankar
and Guru. One was a bad conman and the other
was a good police inspector. And they were twins
separated at birth! Sometime, if I get the opportunity,
I would like to revisit the film – if
nothing else, only to clear my doubt whether
Rajkumar played the role of the father too!
And
then one day, while we were still in Dharwad,
I came to know that Rajkumar was in town. Without
informing my parents, along with a few friends,
I rushed to Hotel Dharwad, the place where he
was put up. A large expectant crowd had gathered
at the gate. I too was desperate to get a glimpse
of my idol. After a long wait, a man came out
of his room to his balcony and waved to the
crowd. I would be lying if I said that I was
not disappointed. Here was my idol – in
a plain dhothi and a simple, almost crumpled
white shirt, half bald and waving to us with
a tired smile. Was he the swashbuckling superhero
that I knew? After a few seconds he went inside
and closed his door. And I started walking back
home. That day, probably for the first time
in my life, I managed to differentiate between
the image and what was beyond the image.
The
closest I got to being realistically associated
with Rajkumar was when the late Chi. Udayashankar,
a top Kannada script and dialogue writer during
his time, asked me whether I would like to work
in the Rajkumar camp or the Vishnuvardhan camp.
I had just completed my Direction course at
the FTII and thought I’d settle down in
Bengaluru. Udayshankar used to hire a room in
Hotel Jhanardhan – an establishment owned
by my uncle – to write his scripts. I
selected the Vishnuvardhan camp and I still
don’t know why! That I left Bengaluru
after working for just one schedule of twenty
days in a Vishnuvardhan camp film is a different
story altogether.
For
old time’s sake, I still sometimes see
Rajkumar’s movies that are shown on Kannada
channels, aired in Mumbai. As I watch these
reruns, I now truly wonder, how come this actor
who always overacted and hammed so outrageously
managed to hold his audience spellbound for
such a long time? Is it because he had consciously
built an image (and therefore an industry) around
himself that people mistook for the real self?
MGR, NTR, Jayalalitha and a host of other actors
have managed to piggybank on their respective
images, thrived on regionalism and have ruled
states.
Rajkumar,
people say, was never inclined towards politics.
But he did plunge himself into the ‘Gokak
Agitation’ – an agitation that fought
for the Kannada language. It may be true that
the agitation gained momentum after the superstar
lent his support to it. Conversely, maybe it
is also true that the agitation helped Rajkumar
to maintain and further the momentum of the
image that he had so carefully developed during
his time. Can it be said that the Gokak agitation
propelled his image, his films and his career?
I
am writing this within the anonymous comfort
that the city of Mumbai provides me. If I were
in Bengaluru, die-hard Rajkumar fans would have
probably lynched me for holding this opinion
– like they lynched those policemen immediately
after Rajkumar’s death. Even if I were
to shout at the top of my voice, they probably
wouldn't consider the fact that I too was once
a die-hard Rajkumar fan!
This
article has been taken from Ramchandra PN’s
blog with his permission. To visit his blog,
go to www.ramchandrapn.blogspot.com.
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