Yesterday in The Hindu dt. May 9, 2025, I read a very interesting article about how the well known Tamil novelist Asokamitran had in a couple of his popular novels described both the dark and bright sides of the Tamil Cinema world by using the now defunct Gemini Studios S.S.Vasan’s career as his template.
The most striking and thought-provoking part of the article was the last paragraph in which a scene taken out from Asokamitran’s novel is paraphrased as follows :
The fall of a great studio through the lens of writer Ashokamitrans novel, Karaintha Nizhalkal, is a fictionalised version of My Years with Boss that recounts the fall of men who once dominated the tinsel world of Tamil Cinema and how easily the world moves forward without them.
Gemini Studios, which once produced blockbusters like Chandralekha and Avvaiyar, faded into oblivion. Vasan being Vasan, who was also the owner of Ananda Vikatan, managed to keep up appearances — so true to his profession as a showman.
Nataraja lyer, is a character in Karaintha Nizhalkal. lyer, the production manager of Reddiyar, who is the producer, knows the film world like the back of his hand, but finally “ends up begging at the Saidapet bus stand”. Ashokamitran would have fashioned the character of lyer and others after real-life figures from Gemini Studios.
The essence of Asokamitran’s novel however, remains contemporary in the cinema world even today after more than half a century.
One scene in Asokamitran’s novel stands out. Going through rough times, Reddiyar (the cinema producer) who has been stood up and betrayed by an actress Jayachandrika, who reneges on her commitment to work for him in his film, goes home to her and hurls filthy abuses at her in a great fit of temper but then quickly expresses remorse by saying this: , “Don’t take my harsh words to heart. I can say one more thing… I have known your mother for 30 years since she first came her from Vaitheeswaran Koil . Maybe, I am your father, Who knows?”.
That one line captures the dark, stark, grim, venal and really sordid side of the film world! It also echoes countless other untold tragic stories of survival of desperate women in the harsh, morally-bankrupt quarter of the Tamil cinema industry.
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Then this morning a good friend of mine in Mumbai forwarded me a video-clip of how today in the modern cinema studio, movie scenes get filmed … And unlike the grim tale of The Hindu article above, it made me laugh, not brood over thoughts on the decadence of the cinema art world . Here below is the video :
A Telugu movie in the making 😂
Both the article on Asokamitran’s novel and the video-clip above got me thinking and starting to ask myself larger questions about the world of cinema in India , and more especially that in Tamil Nadu and the three other states of the South, Greater Andhra, Karnataka and Kerala .
These below were my stray thoughts which I share with you …
1. Many intellectuals today in Tamil Nadu hold the view that Cinema has done more to degrade, vulgarise or corrupt Tamizh culture and social/traditional norms than any other single cause such as political ideology, urbanisation, caste-wars or alcoholism.
The other view is that Cinema merely reflects society . It does not shape it in any fundamental way .
Which view is the true one ?
2. Wherefrom springs this obsessive love in the hearts of the masses for Cinema art? Is it a peculiar characteristic only of the Tamil psyche?
3. Otherwise, how else can anyone explain why and how this State came to be ruled for over 6 decades by cinema stars, cinema script-writers and tinsel town aficionados, all and sundry?
4. If that old world ideal of the “Philosopher-King” has been permanently banished and erased from the common man’s imagination everywhere in the world, nowhere else do we see that fact more starkly than in Tamil society today , don’t we? The Tamil people have much greater trust in celluloid matinee idols than in philosophers, don’t they?
5. Every cinema-screen hero from Kamalhasan to Rajinikanth, to Vijaykanth, to Vijay to also-rans like SV Sekhar and Sarath Kumar …. all try their hand at politics … to become rulers! What really drives them from the cinema silver screen to the political smoke screen ?
6. Why are Tamil people so pathologically enamoured or addicted to Cinema-culture …. on the big screen and on the TV idiot-box screen as well?
7. What is the true nature of this macabre show of the dance of death that Cinema and Politics in TN have been performing for nearly a century now? Do novelists like Asokamitran really have the answers ? I posed this question to my very revered friend and a master Tamil novelist and dramatist himself, Eepa (Sahitya Akademi and Sahitya Nayana Akademy winner, Sri Indira Parthasarathy) and his response was a dry, laconic and wry tongue-in-cheek comment : “Well… before cinema came on the scene, it was theatre. K.B.Sundambal was the star of Congress Party. We Tamilians believe more in shadows than substance”. But Eepa was also quick to add : “KBS did do propaganda work for the Congress but she didn’t get any benefit out of it. She was a great woman!”
8. As for the cinema-culture in the other Southern states, the pathology is not perhaps as bad as it is in Tamil Nadu. Apart from NT Rama Rao , no cinema star or movie-moghul has ever become a Chief Minister in greater Andhra … and none in Karnataka State either, although a few matinee- idols like Dr. Rajkumar and Ambarish did try to become CMs. In the state of communist Kerala , cinema and politics, strangely, are worlds apart. Only recently has one cinema star managed to win a Lok Sabha election : Suresh Gopi .
9. Although Bollywood is the big daddy of all cinema worlds in India by sheer size of revenues and audience-reach, it is odd that it has never produced a Chief Minister or Central Cabinet Minister… Bollywood produces really no big political icons … since it seems to only now and then give up sheltering its drug-addicts, flirtations with criminal underworld and its publicity-craving celebrity woke-warriors.
10. Now, there are some people who I know are certainly not going to appreciate my irreverent questions and reflections on the cinema world. They will stoutly defend it by pointing out to me the undeniable fact: the Cinema World of India provides employment and jobs for millions of ordinary people …
So, here’s the bottom line :
At the end of the day , to use an American Presidential expression : “It’s all about jobs , stupid!”.
Sudarshan Madabushi