My First Tamil Movie

Last Thursday, for the first time in my life, I went for a Tamil movie.

Please note, I went for a Tamil movie. I did not pause on a South Indian movie while flipping channels on TV, curious about some exotic location or fast car or skimpy dress. I did not try to see the classic movie (Tamil or Malayalam, I haven’t figured out) that Ashima Didi got one of her students to send me on a DVD – that one is still lying in the drawer, discontinued after the first couple of scenes. This wasn’t even a college escapade – we never went for a “Southie” movie in college, no matter how drunk we were or how “hot” the movie was reputed to be or even how broke we were – admission to a Southie movie was only a buck against 3 bucks for a regular Hindi movie and 5 for a blockbuster.

No, this was a regular Tamil movie, in a cinema hall, a special pre-release show, I went intentionally, very sure I would watch it from beginning to end. No, I have not suddenly learned Tamil, nor am I studying Tamil and trying to practice by watching a movie in the language. In fact I have no Tamil, except perhaps Aapudiya (Is That So?), and Inge Verta, which I think means Come Here but will not be surprised if it turns out to be Good Afternoon or Wife’s Uncle or something. And of course I can count – Unn, Rundd, Moonn, Naall, Anjh – though I never needed to count more than five in Tamil because 5 hours was the absolute limit of overtime I would allow my workers during my engineering days (in Baroda I had Tamil fitters and Mallu welders, do forgive me if I have mixed up Tamil and Malayalam). Anyways, the nub is that I guess I was justified in feeling a mite uneasy about what I would do if I could not understand anything in the movie. But I refused to let myself think about it, and chanting “Aapudiya Inge Verta” for strength I overcame my trepidation.

For the movie was Kanden Kadhalai, Tammu’s big film, Tamannah to use her screen name. We had a special invitation from her and her parents, and I so eagerly wanted to see her on the Big Silver Screen. It is the Tamil remake of a recent Hindi blockbuster and Tammu plays the lead role, the one Kareena Kapoor had played in the Hindi version (I hesitate to use the word “original” in relation to any Indian film). I had enjoyed that movie, seen it a number of time on TV, and even today can easily see it again and again. But mistake not, the movie itself was not as important to me as the star.

As it turned out, I need not have worried about my language handicap. For one thing, with the Tamil version sticking quite closely to the Hindi one, I was quite comfortable in terms of knowing what was going on. OK, I did not get many of the jokes, and even if I knew the words I would have missed the finer nuances, not knowing the culture, the way of life. Still, I did not have to ask Geeta’s help even once.

But mostly I was too busy watching Tammu to even realize that I could not follow the dialogues. She breathed so much life into her character that I was left quite breathless. She filled up the screen with her smile, with her energy, her sheer effervescence. Like the lady sitting next to us (a director at Rajshri) exclaimed, “She lights up the screen!”

And when Tammu was not on the screen, I found it gave me time to get back my breath, and try to remember what came next in the original version, and compare the two, and critique the film. I found that Tammu as Anjali was very, very close to Kareena as Geet, in a few scenes perhaps even better. If anyone says that Kareena was just a tad better, it would be because she was acting in her own language and more importantly, she was acting opposite her real life boyfriend, benefiting from a chemistry that can never be replicated by actors.

Net result – I fell in love with Tammu, just as I have fallen in love with all the accomplished actresses in the past – Waheeda, Sharmila (I was the President of the IIT Kanpur Sharmila Tagore Fan Club, and Khushwant Singh printed a letter to the editor I wrote during the Sharmila acting controversy about an year after Aradhana), Sadhana, Kareena, Zinta – a whole string of them. As friend QJ pointed out, the names all end in the same sound (onomatopoeia, he called it, he was always the brainy one), and I pointed out that the sound of Tamannah fits right in the list.

So with all our blessings and good wishes, Tammu is going to be an even bigger star. Watch this space, one day she will be the undisputed Queen of all filmdom, and I will be writing about a super-duper blockbuster hit of hers. Meanwhile, I’m really glad Neelam and I got exclusive pictures taken with her, now to pin her down and get them autographed while we can!