I happened to see an interview of Kamal Haasan in a Malayalam channel when I was on holiday in Kerala recently. As usual, I was bowled over by his thought provoking views. I seem to be going very close to idolizing him!

I just wanted to put down two quotes from his interview as it struck me as very profound. So here goes.

1. To a question about religion (I didn’t hear the question fully as I just then switched on the TV), he said, “Would anyone ask a man if he is a man or a woman or what he did with his wife yesterday night? Religion is just as personal. No one should ask anyone else about it”. I thought this was a beautiful way of looking at religion and that if everyone thought of it this way, may be we will have more peace and harmony in our universe.
2. The host questioned him about whether he was afraid of aging. To which he answered, “No. Why would I? I look at life as a journey and death as a part of that journey; So, I can’t be scared of it. Every sentence has a full stop, otherwise the sentence will become boring. It’s the same with life.” I was so enthralled with this analogy, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. So, obviously the next thing was to blog about it.

I am not sure how this goes down with all of you, but because I caught myself thinking so much about it, I thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to put it down for those of you who would want to reflect on it.

[Original post on My mazed interior - My Mind blog]

It is a known fact that Kamal has a lot of friends in the literary circles. He has used many of them in his movies from Mahanadhi to Marudhanayagam. Recently, he took the time to felicitate one such person, Puviarasu the poet, for winning the Sahitya Akademi award.

During his speech, he spoke of his association with Puviarsu and various others. He also read out one of his poems, which is reproduced below, thanks to Behindwoods.

They have more photos and so does CineFundas.com. IndiaGlitz as usual has several photos and a long video featuring Kamal’s speech. IBNLive has a short news clip, featured below. The event received extensive coverage in the vernacular press too.

[Picture courtesy: BehindWoods]

Kamal’s close bond with Sivaji Ganesan and his family is well-known. The latter’s wife, Kamalammal, passed away a few days ago. Kamal had this to say about the lady who even had a name similar to his.

“I am grateful that she passed away after her husband expired, or the man could not have coped with her loss. They were such an intimate couple. I saw their love for each other grow beautifully over the years,” he said.

“She made sure that actors like us, who would not speak a word in front of Sivaji Ganesan, felt at ease. I played some of my films such as ‘Virumandi’ in her house and she gave me very honest, valuable feedback,” he said, adding, “She is the first lady in the history of Tamil culture.”

This was part of a report by The Hindu.

Such little information is available on this movie that I’m just going to put down whatever I know and found out. I tried in vain to rent the DVD too. [But it’s not available here in the Bay Area. Maybe, I’d have had better luck in Bangalore.]

Benkiyalli Aralida Hoovu (the flower that bloomed in fire) still remains one of Kamal’s popular ventures into Kannada cinema. It is the remake of Aval Oru Thodarkathai starring Sujatha, which had Kamal in a supporting role. He acted in the Bengali remake Kabita too.

This 1983 Kannada movie had his real-world niece Suhasini in the lead role, being the only movie in which they acted together. Kamal plays the role of a bus conductor, not the same part he played in the Tamil original. The “Mundhe Banni…” song (with playback by SPB) is still an old favourite.

Anyone knows more? Give us all some details in the Comments section.

Editor’s Note:
Unfortunately, this seems to be the only movie for ‘B’. Or does anyone know some other movie Kamal was atleast associated with and not necessarily acted in? Otherwise, let’s continue with more movies starting with ‘A’ for this fortnight. Send in your entries!

Apoorva Raagangal (more commonly pronounced as ‘Aboorva Raagangal’) was part of the second innings of K Balachander, one among the ’shock-and-shake-up-the-audience’ series of movies (the others being Arangetram, Aval Oru Thodarkathai and Avargal). Kamal featured in all of those, but got possibly his first opportunity as leading man in Tamil with this movie released in 1975.

Barely in his twenties, he stuns the audience with his fearless and mature performance. When one thinks back now, it seems like Balachander actually tapped the rebellious streak and raw energy in Kamal for the role of Prasanna. The intelligence, interest in arts and indifference to societal rules all seem to match with his real-life self. In that sense, Balachander and Kamal were working off each other.

This movie is also known for the debut of Rajnikanth. In the few scenes they have together, Kamal and Rajni are in a way pitted against each other, both being interested in the same woman. Again looking back, the slowly maturing relationship between the two seems to reflect their personal equation in the future superstar era.

But the image of the movie really is from the popular “Adhisaya raagam…” song — Kamal singing away and Srividya looking at him in wonder. Yesudas’s classical voice and Kannadasan’s simple yet meaning-laden lyrics add beauty.

Get more details about the movie from the entries on IMDb and Wikipedia. Kamal reprised this role 9 years later in the Hindi remake, Ek Nai Paheli, with Hema Malini and Raaj Kumar.

Considering the current discussion going on in the Comments sections, now is a good time to look back at one of Kamal’s interviews on Rediff.com, done just after the release of Panchathanthiram. The setback of Aalavandhaan (aka Abhay) wasn’t too far behind. A lot was going on in Kamal’s personal life too at that time. So, there are peeks into all that. Excerpts:

The mahurat of Abhay was a huge, unmanageable affair, unlike anything we had seen before. But he could not maintain that grand momentum.

It is so ridiculous. There should be a law as to who should cut the film and for what purpose.

Now I am working towards settling my debts. Instead of one film, I will probably do two or three films per year at the same fee that I got one doing one film per year.

You know directors who have treated me as a comrade instead of just an actor, have always got the best out of me. Even great filmmakers like K Balachander, Mani Ratnam and Balu Mahendra have treated me like an ally. That helped the entire project….I am sure Mani doesn’t take all his actors into confidence. But he would discuss the screenplay during Nayakan. That was really reassuring for me. My chest heaves with pride when my directors take me into confidence.

My comedies have always done well. I am grateful for that.

We all worked like lunatics to complete the film in three months. While director K Ravi Kumar was cutting editing and mixing, I got busy writing Anbesivam.

Despite the turmoil in my personal life, the film will always brought a smile to my face. It was just the balm I needed to keep me calm.

Read the whole interview.

On the occasion of India’s 60th Independence Day, I chanced upon some of Kamal’s thoughts on the Indian flag and patriotism in general.

Every year I hoist my National Flag in my terrace and sing my National Anthem. This habit was to let my children enjoy the same naive patriotism that I enjoyed as a child. It has become a habit.

The flag solicits a certain emotion like the insurance company symbol or the medical symbol or the Red Cross. No symbol is worth the cloth it is printed on if it empowers dictators or facilitates division. I, by mindset, would like to stretch borders. I think patriotism as per lore is quite ridiculous and impractical. I am a dreamer who dreams of a war free silk route. When that happens we can proudly and legitimately call America as nephew Sam. We will then be the big uncles by any global standards.

Read more on the site of Flag Foundation of India, established by Naveen Jindal.

Many are confused about Kamal’s name — the way it’s supposed to be written especially. I mentioned this in passing in the very first post on this blog, but realised that the name is tangled beyond redemption. Anyway, let me do my bit in clearing it up.

Till around the early eighties, his name was featured in movies as ‘Kamalahaasan’ (or ‘Kamalhasan’, if you will — Tamil: கமலஹாசன்). That is his original name. I’m not so sure about the unusual ‘Haasan’ suffix being attributed to his father’s fondness for an friend though. The name actually means something like the man who laughs whole-heartedly just as a lotus blooms wide, in Sanskrit.

When he ventured into Bollywood, In all probability, it got distorted as ‘Kamalahassan’ or ‘Kamal Hassan’. In fact, due to this, there are many who believe he’s a Muslim!

For whatever reason, he seemed to have felt the need for a surname, much like many South Indians have discovered in recent times. So, he split up his name into two — ‘Kamal Haasan’. His daughters use the surname; even his ex-wife Sarika used to.

So, that’s about it. No big mystery. Just something people didn’t pause to take note of and understand.

[Thanx to Wikipedia for filling in a few gaps.]

When Nagesh, one of Kamal’s favourites, was being felcitated, would he miss out? He was there, along with K Balachander, Cho, Vaali and MS Viswanathan. Some excerpts from The Hindu’s report:

“The only picture you can find in Kamal’s room is that of himself with Nagesh. He reveres him so,” Vaali (sic)…

“True,” said Kamal. “I watch his films seriously. I’m so much in awe that I forget to laugh. Such is my admiration. It’s not jealousy — only complete surrender to this great talent. ‘Crazy’ Mohan, a few other friends and I celebrate Nagesh almost every day at my office…Hindi film actor Mehmood once told me, he considers Nagesh his guru, whereas Amitabh gave Mehmood a similar status. So you see where the root actually is?” he smiled.

Also, check out some photos from Aaron Selvaraj.

PS: Sorry for reporting this a bit late. I was trying to get some photographs for using in this post, but didn’t succeed and ended up being late.

Shruthi seems to be back — is it temporary? There’s news of her releasing an album and meeting MS Viswanathan with her father. She has also talked about her interests, including acting. We’re waiting to see you in action, Shruthi!

Update on 5 July: We even have some imaginative reporting to provide some variety — Shruthi not being able to recognise her father on the sets of Dasavatharam.