Can Rajini RescueThis Book?

Another time, Rajini is chased by a gangster. This time his gun has no bullets. Gangster turns and fires a shot. Guess what Rajini does? Nah, not even in your wildest imagination. He sidesteps, catches the bullet in his own gun chamber and bang.... The gangster is history.

As Rajini said in his classic line in Annamalai (1992), which can keep deconstructionists busy for years: "Naan sollarthayum seyiven, sollathathayum seyiven" (I’ll execute all that I say; as well as what I don’t say).

A book on this over 30 years old typhoon in the Tamil film industry, who has acted in 156 films, has over 63,000 registered fan clubs in his name and has more insertions in sections on ‘popular culture’ than any living performer other than perhaps, Michael Jackson, needs to believe in the magic of realism.

The book will need to explain why, after four decades of chubby, fair-skinned heroes, this lean, mean anti-hero emerges as a version of updated masculinity, which seems, in its exaggerations, to be a concession to a sense of ‘male lack’. He is the first of the dark superstars of Tamil cinema. Today the Tamil hero is getting darker and more misogynist. To capture this drama, one would need high narrative and analytical skills.

An ophthalmologist author presupposes an eye for detail and clarity of vision. Dr Gayatri displays a cheerful lack of either. She unleashes a flurry of malapropisms, swifter than her subject’s ‘punch’ dialogue delivery. My favourite is where his wife and daughters are described as "sleeping without batting an eyelid".

Some hundred proofing errors, names being spelt differently on the same page, often in the same para, provide comic relief. Written like a film script, what the book lacks, in cinematic terms, is ‘continuity’. The absence of narrative logic apart, there is constant ‘forgetting’ of what has been recounted earlier, leading to pathetic overlaps. The book is an ophthalmic folly, with blind spots even Rajini’s derring-do can’t rescue it from.

It is useful, though, for some confirmations. Yes, Rajini was part of a cycle-chain gang in Bangalore, before his job as a bus conductor. He slept for days on footpaths as a student of the Chennai Film Institute. He is a master of disguises and travels around incognito. He contemplated suicide and came on the verge of a divorce. Anbumani Ramdoss’s directive against smoking on screen is believed to be a move aimed directly at the hero and his flip tricks with cigarettes. In 1992, being stopped on the road to allow a Jayalalitha motorcade to pass, Rajini deliberately stepped out of the car to puff a cigarette, immediately creating a melee on the road, leaving security officers little choice but to let his vehicle pass, the source of his brief political position against the AIADMK supremo. In 1995, P.V. Narasimha Rao offered him the chief ministership of Tamil Nadu, in return for supporting the Congress in the upcoming election, an offer Rajini declined. Yes, he lives in an ascetic mode, following a spiritual guru and distributing his wealth liberally to the needy. He returned money to all distributors who incurred losses with his flop film Baba (2002). His Shivaji (2007) grossed over Rs 300 crore and his next film Tyandra (Robot), with Aishwarya Rai, will have an unprecedented Rs 100 crore budget. Yes, his lips are leucoderma-affected. And yes, he is a manic-depressive.

Perhaps no critique of the book can better what distinguished director K. Balachander, who introduced the dazed actor to films in 1975, writes in the foreword: "The ‘child’ in me adores Rajinikanth; the ‘man’ in me is proud of Rajinikanth; and the ‘age’ in me blesses him with all my heart and soul.... The undercurrent of the whirlpool in the mind of this marvel, who rose like a phoenix from a very humble beginning, has not been emphasised adequately. That is only my tiny quarrel with the author."All one can say is the star does not hide behind his aura and what emerges is the person, not the mask.