Rajinikanth was born on December 12 1950 in Karnataka, India. He was the
fourth child to his parents Ramabai and Ramoji Rao Gaekwad. His
original name was Shivaji Rao Gaekwad. He lost his mother at the age of
five. He had his schooling at the Acharya Patasala in Bangalore and then
at the Vivekananda Balak Sangh, a unit of the Ramakrishna Mission. His
mother tongue is Marathi, though he has not done any movie in it.
Before starting his career in the film industry, he had to take up all
sorts of odd jobs. He served as a bus conductor for Karnataka state
transport corporation in Bangalore. It was during this time that he
nurtured his acting interests by performing in various stage plays.
Rajini, the real mantra of Tamil Nadu. Rajinikanth, the
carpenter-turned-coolie-turned-conductor-turned Super Star says: "I
couldn't have asked God for more."
A bit of a recluse, Rajni may be. But everyone who's
had the privelege of a darshan with the thalaivar has come away with a
spring in his step and a warm glow in the heart. Warm, friendly and
affable, he's the sort who deserves all the superstardom he's earned.
Such men, indeed, are rare...
The evergreen unique actor and the Superstar of Tamil
industry, Rajinikanth was introduced by the renowned director,
K.Balachandar in the movie Aboorva raagangal as a co-artist. It's been
25 years, believe it or not, since the Super Star made his debut with an
inconsequential role in a Tamil film. From villain and antihero to
blockbuster supernova, the gifted actor has made the most of every
outing. And he's deserved every bit of the success. SCREEN analyses
why...
It's a wide angle shot. A man is seen opening a gate,
dressed in rags and smoking a beedi. A terminally ill disease writ large
on his face. Precisely on that frame appears the Sanskrit term shruthi
bedham, coupled with an off screen voice, an undoubtedly inauspicious
start to any debutante's first screen appearance, especially in the
maiden frame.
The film was Apoorva Raagangal (1975). The film itself
was thick in controversy, and nobody took notice of the young newcomer,
who was on screen barely for fifteen minutes, muttered a few apologetic
words to the wronged woman and ultimately died an unsung, unheroic
death.
No one in the audience, even in his wildest
imagination, would have thought this nondescript man, who had won the
least attention in the film would ever win over millions of hearts in
Tamil Nadu. Or ride the state like a colossus. Or even that his sway
over the masses would be so intense that he could rewrite the fate of
Tamil Nadu politics, exactly two decades after the release of his first
film.
K Balachander, the director who has an uncanny knack of
creating stars, first met Rajnikant at the film institute, where he was
a student. Balachander glanced at the dark young man and crisply asked
him to meet him in his office the next day. When Rajnikant walked into
his office gingerly, Balachander informed him he was going to act in his
next film. Overwhelmed by the sudden offer from a big director,
Rajnikant just could not believe his ears. It's a feeling Rajni still
recounts whenever in the mood of reminiscence.
Later, Balachander confided in his close friend and
associate Ananthu, Watch out! There is a fire in the young man's eyes.
One day he will take Tamil Nadu by storm. How true the prediction turned
out!
Producers went all out to capitalise on this new wonder
called Rajnikant, and a string of films projecting him as an anti-hero,
with all his stylish mannerisms in full swing, were released in quick
succession. Gayathri had him shooting blue films of his wife without her
knowledge, Bhairavi, Shankar Salim Simon and the like. Rajni had, by
now, become an indisputable star in his own right, a force to reckon
with.
Though Rajnikant persistently refers to K. Balachander
as his guru, it was director SP Muthuraman who actually revamped Rajni's
image entirely. Muthuraman first experimented with him in a positive
role in Bhuvana Oru Kelvikkuri, as a villain in the first half and a
refined man in the second, accepting a woman with a child ditched by her
lover. The success of Bhuvana Oru Kelvikkuri prompted SPM to make a
mushy melodrama with Rajni as a hero sacrificing everything for his
siblings, a role ideally tailormade for Sivaji Ganesan! That film was
Arulirunthu Arupathu Varai, in which Rajni's mannerisms were totally
missing and he even appeared as an old man in the last few frames. Even
while the film was in the making, Rajni had misgivings about whether the
audience would accept him in tear jerkers of this kind. But the film
got made and its box-office success made Rajni popular among women
audiences, too. These two films were a turning point in Rajni's career
he changed from an actor who merely enthralled the audiences, to one who
also made them weep. The acceptance of Rajni sans his mannerisms proved
he'd at last become an actor from a star. Around this time came Mullum
Malarum, directed by J Mahendran, which established Rajni as a hero with
a slight tinge of the negative.
Rajnikant's entry may have been humble, in an
insignificant role but the success he achieved in a very short span was
unimaginable. A popular Tamil magazine brought out a special supplement
at a time when his still on the make, and, he presto, the magazine's
sales doubled with that issue alone.
Such mass adulation, the thunderous rain of applause
when Rajni delivered his lines, all put together, made him a phenomenon.
It was at this point that Rajni realised the onus had been thrust on
him. The fate of producers hinged on him alone. This sudden exposure to
the glare of the media and the popularity and money he never imagined
would be his, created a lot of stress in his mind. At that crucial time
in his career when his market price had just begun to zoom, he decided
to opt out of films completely, sending shock waves to his fans.
Balachander, Kamalhaasan and his other well-wishers somehow, coaxed him
into staying on.
The second phase of his life started with K Balaji's
Billa, a superhit disproving the canard spread by detractors that
Rajnikant was finished. He was accepted as a full-fledged hero. Billa
was followed by a row of hits like Pokkiri Raja, Thanikkattu Raja, Naan
Mahaan Alla and the all-important Moondru Mugham, in which Rajni essayed
a triple role. Even two decades after its release, the last continues
to be a box-office draw and Rajni's fans can never tire of the
thalaivar's verbal clash with villain Senthamarai.
K Balachander's first home production, Nettrikkam proved to be yet another milestone in Rajni's career.
An analysis of Rajni's career graph shows a remarkable
absence of fits and starts. It has been a slow and steady rise to the
very top. As Rajni sings in a hit song from Badshah, a man's life may be
divided into eight divisions. Rajni's own career may be divided into
three segments. The first as a villain, the second as a hero with
negative traits, and the third and present phase, as the reigning czar
of Tamil filmdom. With Rajni's films fetching crores and his market
price skyrocketing, the costs of production of his films became
unmanageable. And Rajni has since had to stick to a one film per year
formula, sometimes, he could do a film once in two years.
The new trend where his films' collections exceed
normal regional film expectations started off with Badshah, followed by
Annamalai, Arunachalam, Ejaman, Muthu and Padayappa. It's now an
accepted fact that only a Rajnikant film can break records set by his
own films.
As an actor, Rajnikant's greatest asset, apart from his
style is his sense of humour and comic timing. Like Amitabh Bachchan is
popular for his drunken soliloquies, Rajnikant is famous for his comic
encounters with snakes, repeated umpteen times.
In the early 80s, Rajnikant made a foray into Bollywood
with Andhaa Kanoon, a superhit. But Rajnikant could not concentrate on
Hindi films because he was already safely ensconced down South. He still
made a few films in Hindi, to mention specially Chaalbaaz which had
Sridevi in a dual role. Rajni also enjoys a special kind of popularity
in Telugu films and his Peddarayudu (remake of Tamil hit Nattammai)
seems to have broken all previous records. The Telugu version of
Padayappa has been a money-spinner, too. Rajnikant became a trendsetter
recently with his Muthu and its songs becoming a rage in Japan and now,
Padayappa running to packed houses in the UK and USA.
Basically a religious person, Rajnikant has always
owned up his faith. "I was brought up by the Ramakrishna Mission and
it's from there that I have inherited this religious frame of mind," he
keeps saying. Even his films have him openly sharing his faith. In
Arunachalam he mouths that famous line, "God decides and Arunachalam
executes it." His public meetings are always spiced with humour and
embellished with anecdotes from mythology.
Married to Lata, an English literature graduate,
hailing from an elite Iyengar family in 1980, Rajni has two daughters
who are carefully kept away from the limelight. Lata herself a versatile
singer, now runs a school called The Ashram. The couple indulges in a
lot of charity, the latest being converting his Raghavendra Kalyana
Mandapam into a charitable trust to help the poor and needy.
Ego and starry airs are unknown to Rajnikant. During
breaks he hardly ever rushes to his air-conditioned makeup room.
Instead, he prefers to sleep on the sets, even without a pillow, merely
covering his eyes with a wet cloth. He never comes to functions with a
retinue behind him and even prefers to drive his own car.
Rajnikant's phenomenal success and his sway over the
masses make people speculate whether he will follow the footsteps of the
late MGR and enter politics. Though there has been a lot of pressure on
him to enter politics by the likes of actor turned journalist, Cho
Ramaswamy ("Rajnikant is the best choice for chief ministership because
he has a basic integrity and simplicity, a quality which is very rare
these days") Rajnikant has persistently maintained a diplomatic silence,
except for the fact that he openly supported the ruling DMK in the last
assembly elections and discreetly in the recent Lok Sabha elections.
When pressed, Rajnikant answers in his own inimitable style, "Yesterday I
was a conductor, today I'm a star, tomorrow what I'll be only He
knows!"
A bit of a recluse, he may be at heart, but everyone
who's had the privilege of a darshan with the thalaivar has come away
with a spring in his step, and a warm glow in his heart. Warm, friendly
and affable, he's the sort who deserves all the superstardom he's
earned. Such men, indeed, are rare.
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