Kamal was interviewed for Puththagam Pesudhu (Tamil magazine on books), in its special edition released for the Chennai book exhibition held in January. Bubbling with enthusiasm and ideas, Kamal covers a wide range of topics related to books, movies, religion and society. In the end, the reader is astounded with his depth of knowledge and wisdom. Though we are unable to reproduce this very long interview or provide a link to it, here are some highlights.

• He encourages the efforts of the people behind this magazine.
• He talks about an aborted attempt with writer Balakumaran to provide meaningful stories as comic strips. He puts forward an idea of narrating stories through FM radio!
• He talks about his early inhibition to write in Tamil and how RC Sakthi helped him overcome it. He first wrote a short story titled “Ninaivugal” (Memories).
• Talking of the influences of books in his movies, he mentions Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. He says that Saket of Hey Ram was influenced by the character of Raskolnikov.
• He openly talks about his fascination for women and obsession with sex-related books during his adoloscent years. He also speaks about how he evolved into an atheist.
• He goes onto talk about his literary heroes incluing Jayakanthan, Jeyamohan and Sundararamasami. Regarding movies, he mentions his “Close net film society” efforts and is confident of changing the nature of movies in India.
• He praises fellow actor Sivakumar for not having a fans’ association. He also elaborately evaluates Sivaji Ganesan’s acting.
• During the interview, Kamal quotes a censored dialogue from Mumbai Xpress, which is based on Gandhi’s three monkeys!

Translation of some snippets:

• Since profound literature was boring, readers stuck to trivial magazines. As we forgot to mix it with honey, only honey bottles are being provided nowadays.
• Is the side-dish alone enough? Don’t we need to eat the main dish? People imagine that the side-dish alone would fill stomachs. That’s sad.
• There is this book called Tao of Physics. I like such ones…I promise I didn’t understand it.
• In my house too, there were people who read books. But in Brahmin households, English had the first priority. Only women used to talk about Tamil novels. Due to the interest of my mother and sister, I too got introduced to Tamil.
• I’m a pedestrian politician. I’m not searching for my leader in Delhi, but on the streets.
• When Ananthu died, two boxes full of books came to my house. I leaned on the box and cried out loud. That is my relationship with books.
• Great writers do contain themselves due to their desire to feature in Ananda Vikatan and Kumudham (top Tamil magazines). Sivaji did the same.
• Shouldn’t Sivaji and Satyajit Ray have worked together? Language is a reason. We don’t have a national language.
• Rajni came (without knowing Tamil), isn’t it? No one puts in efforts like his these days.
• The air-conditioner in my office runs because movies have become a business.

Let’s end with some seemingly outrageous statements on one of his pet topics, atheism:

• It is difficult to make me believe in God after all these years.
• If the religious heads didn’t keep dancing this way, a person like me wouldn’t have come to atheism.
• Ramanuja was an atheist too. Christ was an atheist too. In their times.

If you can get hold of the issue, enjoy another of Kamal’s dimensions.

[Via an unassuming source who wishes to remain anonymous]