The Hridayaragam function happened on February 24, Sunday. Kamal was there and he mesmerised the audience with 2 songs — “Ninaivo oru paravai” from Sigappu Rojakkal and “Kiliye kili kili kiliye” from Rasaleela. Hope we get to see the video soon.
Earlier, Kamal attended the wedding of Professor Ku. Gnanasambandhan’s daughter, along with Gowthami. His participation was kept a secret, though it leaked out the previous night. This news was published, along with photos, in the Tamil daily, Dinamalar (the link for which is now outdated unfortunately). Kamal’s asssocation with the literary personality can be understood from earlier posts on this blog: Post 1 | Post 2.
Kamal continued his mission of honouring artistes of various fields by participating in a book release function a few days ago. Azhiyaa Kodugal was the biography of the renowned artist KM Aadimoolam, who coincidentally passed away last month. Hence, the function also turned out to be a homage meeting. Many famous personalities including Jayakanthan and Sivakumar also participated.
IndiaGlitz has more photos and a nice video, featuring Kamal’s full speech. Kamal revealed that the angry Gandhi drawing featured in Hey Ram was done by Aadimoolam.
It seems like it just happened a short while ago. But it’s already a year since Kamal had an open meet with fans. On Sunday morning, Kamal felicitated 35 women and 8 disabled people who donated blood during the November drive. This was followed by a photo session. Around 5000 gathered in Savitri Ammal Oriental School, in the campus of Sanskrit College in Chennai.
Hridaya Ragam is a project to conduct open-heart surgeries for children (each costing 100,000 Rupees) from the lower strata of society. While the original target was 100, it has increased by 25% due to generous donation from the Malayala Manorama group. The requisite money will be collected by means of a music programme at Chennai, featuring folks from the Malayalam film industry and to be inaugurated by Illaiyaraaja. Kamal has associated himself as project ambassador. In the function / press conference held a few days ago, Kamal launched the ticket sales.
Kamal participated in yet another social service project called Hridaya Ragam. The World Malayalee Council is conducting free paediatric (for children) heart surgeries this year. There isn’t much news about this yet. But here are some photos.
There’s some more stuff to be shared on the AIDS campaign. We start with the earlier-mentioned TV ad. Then, we have a news snippet from IBNLive, which also touches upon Dasavatharam, including sound bites from Asin.
Kamal’s commitment to social welfare is proven once again with him becoming the UN ambassador for HIV/AIDS. He is featuring in a multimedia campaign, which started off with a TV ad. Check out the United Nations Web-site, letsmakeitright.in. Read reports from The Hindu and IANS. This campaign seems to have been launched in time for World AIDS Day, which falls on December 1.
Yesterday, he participated in a function at Justice Basheer Ahmed Sayeed College for Women (formerly and popularly known as SIET). Though news about it has been splashed across the media, let’s get some first-hand details from P, who was right there:
It is a campaign for giving HIV patients their due rights and Kamal is the campaign ambassador.
“He looks 100 times awesome in person than in screen”, exclaimed one of the girls. “What charisma”! The girls of the college kept shouting so much that he was overwhelmed. For each and every word he spoke, they yelled. Sporting a beard, he wore a grey blazer. “He really looks superbbbb…”, went another girl.
There were lots of press people and a photo session. He told the press that he would support this cause and include such subjects even in his movies.
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.
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.
The short movie made to commemorate the 150 years of Chennai police is out. As predicted earlier, it is like a documentary (remember “Films Division”?), with interludes featuring prominent stars of Tamil industry. Though some messages are useful, it is tacky as expected and has political sycophancy too. Check out Kamal around the 15th minute in this video brought out by KollywoodToday.com.
Would you like to contribute a news item, an old article or a rare photo? Even better, would you like to write on AllThingsKamal.info? Would you like to give feedback on the site? Write to:
randramble AT gmail DOT com
After first 
