We love to see him
as the child standing before Muruga and singing “Ammavum neeyae, appavum neeye,
anbudanay adharikkum deivamum neeyay’.
He grew up with us.
We saw him in the awkward age and then as a youth, pants
worn well over the stomach with bell-bots, different moustaches and wriggly
hair.
We imagined we were like him.
We saw only subconsciously that he had bandy-legs and that his
chin was more or less absent all the time.
We were embarrassed by his ‘over-acted’ dancing, which we
felt was his worst accomplishment.
To this day, barring a few rare instances, we are amused when
we watch his ‘dances’ and wonder at how such a self-conscious, labored contortionist
could ever have been deemed a gifted dancer.
Yet we can never tire of seeing him, and loving him in ‘Kalatthur
Kannamma’ as he hymned Muruga whom he addressed as his father and mother and
the only God that lovingly protected him.
Today that adorable, devout boy has grown up.
He is 63 and still looks cute, in a bovine way, in a
slightly deranged way.
However, he does not now believe in God.
Muruga is not his ‘amma and appa’ and the guardian deity.
He cannot disown Narayana or Vishnu. That would be like abusing the memory of his mother
whom he lost early, and his father who possibly worshipped them devoutly.
He can be harsh on the Kanchi seer but stay mum when the Srivilliputhur
Jeeyar creates a controversy.
He cannot let Aandaal down.
He cannot support Tamil Nadu’s asuric poet-laureate in his
Aandaal-bashing .
Our strength and our weakness, in short, our entire conditioning
comes with us like baggage right through our life whatever claims we may make
about being free thinkers.
So, in his famous movie ’10 avatars of Vishnu’, he saves an
idol of Vishnu of whom his girl-friend is crazy.
In other movies he has a go at Shaivites.
In this respect, he lives in the past, like many a fundamentalist.
Possibly his failed first marriage to a Shaivite was the
catalyst.
At his Party launch, he says pompously, ‘You believe in
Muruga and Shiva, I believe in Nyayam and Dharmam.’
As if they didn’t too.
As if you had to
forgo your faith to believe in nyaya and dharma.
He can say that he has evolved as a human without the help
of faith.
You know what- we will believe him.
Yet, if we speak today with pride about Valluvar, Kamban,
Bharati and Kannadaasan, do we think of them as writers whose faith didn’t
matter to them?
If something is important to someone you love, will you
disrespect that person by disrespecting that part of him that mattered hugely
to him?
When we love, we grow not just to see the other point of
view but actually change ourselves inside our hearts to see the ‘logic’ of that
view for ourselves.
If the common people are loveable is that so in a way that we
exclude that part of them (their faith) that is no less ‘them’ as the part we
empathize with.
Besides, don’t we get curious about why these simple folks ‘believe’?
Or do we presume they are fools and we know that the faith part
of them is bunkum?
In the same way, is that not like saying that Valluvar,
Kamban, Bharati and Kannadaasan are fools in that sense, in their religious and
spiritual persona?
Can we presume so much? Is our ego so huge?
Can we not see that shorn of their faith these poets are
still very great but are not irresistible, at any rate, not Whole as they are
with their faith?
When he speaks at his party-launch, he cannot avoid getting
carried away with himself and his own glory.
He feels sorry he feels for the ’voters’.
‘What was he doing for so long, if he cared so much for the poor
people?’, they ask.
‘I was in your heart then, I will be in your homes now’.
There is applause. It was an actor’s rhetoric. It was an
actor’s sentimental moment in a family drama.
The more honest, simpler reply would perhaps have been,
‘I am an actor, a committed one. I was doing my job as well
as I could. I trusted the politicians to do theirs. They let me down. They
cheated on you, on all of us. It’s a mess. Now I have the time and the heart
for politics.’
The political launch by Tamaraichirippon was held on Feb 21,
2018.
The date is the U.N day of the Mother tongue.
It was also a Shasti day, with krittika nakshatram, special
to Muruga, son of Shiva, and the Lord of warfare.
To many of us, this ageing thespian is still the little child
we love seeing again and again in ‘Kalatthur Kannamma’ hymning a caring God.
Ilayaraja,who spends most of his time in Sri Ramanashram, once
said to him on stage, with his white smile, “Even if you don’t believe in God,
he believes in you!’
Ilayaraajaa is a Shiva Yogi, practically a modern-day
Naayanmaar, and he should know.
----Ganesh Krishnamurthy is a poet and litero author and he can be contacted at krishtis@yahoo.com
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