People of honour
கெட்டாலும் மேன்மக்கள் மேன்மக்களே !சங்கு சுட்டாலும் வெண்மை தரும் !
Loosely translated, these words of Thamizh poetess Avvaiyaar (அவ்வையார்) means
Even in their fall people of honour remain high
A conch even if smelted by fire never darkens!
If there was any film maker who has taken this concept and created remarkable characters around them and make them stand tall and set example in Indian films – it must certainly be K.Vishwanath. I know very little about his filmography, but I have watched two gems of K.Vishwanath in which he has established the meaning of these words deep into my heart. The films are Shankarabaranam and Sagara Sangamam. Both films made me (and still make me) weep and the lump in my throat when they end is a medical condition I have not been able to escape from even after 2 to 3 dozen times of viewing right from the time when I was an impressionable kid.
He creates (in his films) some amazing characters who are the epitome of the ideals that we aspire for and dream to possess in our life – but are unable to for the need of courage and the compulsion of mundane existence that fills our bank accounts. Probably I lack the talent (vidwath) and the effortless command that fetches glory (shreyas) and most importantly the innocence that is very much required to be honorable.
Shankarabaranam Shankara Sasthri
The quintessential carnatic maha vidwan! Seek no further – here is the best sketch of a carnatic musician in Indian films. A pure aradhaka of the 7 swaras and a worshipper of Saint Thyagaraja as another GOD . A singular genius who ‘owns’ the raga Shankarabharanam and a legend whose head bows to none in the earth. Goddess Saraswathy has made his mind her abode and that also means that Goddess Lakshmi is always on the lookout for change of address from his house. Like a goldsmith polishing and burning the gold for making it shine even more gloriously, KV(I shall address him hitherto thus – an acronym with which he goes by among millions of Telugu and Thamizh movie fans) creates situations and plot twists to throw the character into fire and make us gasp in awe and melt to see the great man end his musical journey with a majestic aarohanam (crescendo) – head held high and honour intact inspite of the insults and penury and loss of outwardly identifiable merits. The character has a natural ego that a supreme artist possesses and a love and devotion to his musical deities. All of this is brought out beautifully by KV in sequences and scenes that remain etched in the minds of the film lovers even decades after this movie shined in the silver screen.
The scene where he asks a political bigwig to get out of the concert when the ignoramus creates distracting noise
The scene where he chides his daughter who sings an abaswara when she sings ’samaja vara gamana’ in her ‘prospective groom’ visit, totally unmindful that her alliance might fail because of his outburst
The scene where he teaches the young kid who doesnt know his father’s name under his wings and that awesome, emotional climax
and many more scintilliating scenes unravel making the image of the ‘turban’ headed Shankara sasthri grow to himalayan heights in the minds of the audience. The actor somayajulu who played the role never got to play anything like this after, yet must have died a happy man just for playing this role. KV was vastly aided by forces living and dead. The first and foremost aspect that helped the movie was the spirit of Sain Thyagaraja which must have been happy to see his imperishable divine melodies take new life in the medium of cinema. Secondly the channel of the spirit of Saint Thyagaraja – the music director, late K.V.Mahadevan (popularly known in thamizh as KVM and among the cine artists as mama). He complemented the many real kritis of Thyagaraja with some awesome compositions of his own – perfect pure ‘filter coffee’ style carnatic songs. They were tunes made out of honey and sugar and his assistant Pugazendhi made the remarkable decision of forcing the Singing giant SPB and they completed a trio who worked their magic into breathing the life and soul into the voice of Shankara sasthri.
The movie was a block buster of surprising proportions – for it ran in all the four south indian states like a craze. In Madras the movie was a phenomenon – running to packed houses in many theatres and even small centers like Salem(for Non thamizh movies) reported housefull shows. The public of the four south indian states surprised all the box office pundits by accepting with glee a film based on a carnatic musician’s life containing only carnatic classical style compositions. For a kid like me – this was the ear opener towards carnatic music – a taste I cherish till date. The movie and the character of Shankara sasthri was a trendsetter and it prompted veteran like KB himself to focus on the use of classical carnatic music in his movies and years later gems like Sindhu Bhairavi and Rudraveena resulted because of this phenomenon. On a mass impact perspective, even now every light music troupe in south india practice and take pride in performing the awe evoking ‘Shankara nadha sareerarpara’ every evening. Just one revisit of this movie makes my heart feel heavy and a sweet pain of missing the 80s begins in my mind that lingers on till I recede into dreams of hearing the scintillating songs from the sony tape recorder.
Balakrishna Sastri
If Shankara sastri was a man who got recognition, ruled the roost and remained honourable even in the decline, Balakrishna was the artist who had all the talent and immense training and yet Life gave up on him – not once or twice, but repeatedly, till he flickers on to extend his life and talent to eternity by lighting up a chela with his knowledge and guidance proving that ‘True art has no end’. In spite of his failures he strides on with honour – living a life that has lost all reasons, dissolving every bit of it slowly and painfully in alcohol, yet his vidwath (knowledge – skill and training) keeps his head always high and that is what resurrects him for a fleeting passage of time that is very difficult for me to recount in any language – for the etching is not in the celluloid – it is in my heart and minds. KV teamed up with Kamal Hassan and created this wonderful portrait of the ‘failed’ genius who succeeds in the end when forces come together in the form of his ex-lover and a trusting friend. All languages fail me in description of this character because images of a bearded and bespectacled Balakrishna sastri with a hole in the sole sandals non chalantly walking into an auditorium to review a dance performance simply enters into my ‘being’ and the churning sensation in my stomach when Balakrishna is having a bout of liver pain while cycling back from the temple is a feeling I cannot forget. The funny passage of the ‘camera sequence’ in the temple where young Balakrishna tries to have his portfolio shot – culminating in a delightful romantic- yet melancholic scene where he gets overwhelmed with just the snaps of him in dance poses shot by Madhavi (what a restrained and dignified portrayal by Jayapradha?!!) – the entire sequence recounted by a Balakrishna who is on the verge of total dissolution into the alcohol – These are sequences that can hold their own in any great cinema of the world. To top it all the film was about a character who was sticking on to a traditional art form that is being slowly edged out by other modern art forms and in short it is about the greatness of an age old Indian art that has to rely on people like Balakrishna doing what he does in the climax to survive and flourish – So in effect it is about our Identity as Indians in this modern world bound only by art forms like this – Bharathnatyam (Dance of Bharath). The film though is not about subtleties of this art form – rather it is about a undying quest of a true artist who is obssessed to know all and master all forms to create the next evolutionary leap for himself and his beloved art. Balakrishna, loses all his holds to life, his doting mother, a noble soul earns in abject poverty by cooking for marriages, saving up every last buck to support her dear son’s artistic quest, his love of life, Madhavi who was his best fan and well wisher too and finally makes an acquaintance with alcohol that makes him a cynic. In the midst of his lowest points too – he shines with his upright attitude towards his friendhip and towards his duty – never compromising – he has lost all his soft edges and has acquired a sour tone in his dealings with the society that has failed to spot a genius in the place where he is standing. I question myself manytimes, ‘ can I hold myself to be this tender and honest if I had been put down ruthlessly by fate like Balu?’. His innocence, knowledge, talent and care for his friend (played wonderfully by Sharath babu) shines twice more when he is going through the worst phase of his life. At the same time – he does not play a humble soul when it is the time to show his real skills and correct mistakes that go unnoticed in a dance performance. Watch the following scene to observe how a demure self loathing, mild mannered person transforms himself to confront the ’stupidity’ around him..
To see the innocent Balakrishna sastri who is the polar opposite of this ‘alcoholic’ , KV aptly juxtaposes the ‘flashback’ scenes showing us just enough about the character before flashing back to the present. Every scene in the flashback is worth its visual weight in cinematic gold. The whole sequence still plays out in my mind, and one particular scene that remains fresh even today is that of Balakrishna giving the money back to his mother in the railway station. The performance of Kamal and Sharath babu in this remarkable scene is, well,remarkable. However it underscores the innocence and naivette of a true artist in a subtle way. The biggest asset to KV in the movie apart from Kamal was Ilaiyaraaja who scored signature tunes for every character in every mood, the songs and background score still popular and converting thousands every day into Raajaism. The movie was a rage among cine goers much like Shankarabharanam – in all 4 south indian states again. There were numerous youngsters who took to dancing as either hobby or as profession, inspired by awesome dance performances in the movie – that of Kamal an expert dancer himself, Manju Bhargavi in that awesome ‘Bala kanakamaya’ – wedding dance (Balakrishna dancing for his mother in the kitchen of a wedding hall parallelly is shot so beautifully and affectionately) is an absolute treat!!
The most winning aspect in both these characters is that the director/creator is in asolute love/awe with/of these characters and it shows in the way he has shot the sequences involving them. The characters surrounding them are designed in such a way that they resemble (in their behaviour and arrangement) the minor deities of a traditional south indian temple, that you have to visit before entering the sanctum sanctorum of the temple itself – They align up like planets around the Sun (which these characters are), describing and building a majestic image of honour that is unforgettable and in itself is an awesome achievment. In the new age of cinema where the only thing novel by way of characterisation seems to be adding more ‘negative’ tones to make them interesting, K.Vishwanath’s characterisation is an apt lesson of how to make straight as arrow characters without making them look like single dimensional caricatures.
KV is another good reason why I feel that 80s were not torture, but a golden period for South Indian cinema. Looking forward to see another set of directors who can take the great Indian traditional art and its artistes as backdrop and characters for the new digital age. Till then let me dream of dancing in Kodaikanal and ooty hills like Balakrishna sastri(alias Kamalhassan)….
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
VPJ,
Take a bow! A very good writeup on two of the telugu film’s most beautifully etched characters. The beauty lies in the sketching of these characters. Both of them have negative traits in them which could alienate them/or let the audience sympathise with them, which would have been a deterrent to the original objective. But, the way KV makes both of them endearing is rarely seen in films from south.
KV’s character sketches have always been a study for me. Be it Sambayya from Swayamkrushi, be it Chadram from Swarnakamalam, his heroes had a unique confidence in them and conviction. Most of his characters were well rounded and seem to be pretty much similar to the real life characters.
Now that you mention, you have not seen any of KV’s other works, let me take the liberty of suggesting a few, which I consider are KV’s best. Please try to get your hands on “Swayamkrushi”, “Swarnakamalam”, “Swatikiranam – For a stellar performance by Radhika and Mammoty”, “Subhalekha – A then contemporary take on the dowry system”, “Subhasankalpam – For KV and Kamal”.
Wow! What a post about two of the greatest movies of Tegulu cinema! I don’t know to whom the credit should go – the writer of this post or the movies, whose greatness seaped into this one.
Perhaps I’m overwhelmed seeing a post on my favourite movie – Shankarabharanam. An amazing work of art which made carnatic classical popular again in the south. Yes the entire south. Because, being from Kerala, I was this movie umpteen number times in Malayalam (though songs were in TELUGU). The only paralled in Hindi cinema are Vijay Bhatt’s Baiju Bawra and V.Shantaram’s Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baje, which popularised classical music and dance among the masses in the North.
Hey … then you should watch the following of KV:
Vamsavruksham – Critics ( 5* ), BO ( 3* )
SwatiKiranam – Critics ( 4* ), BO ( 3* ).
Swarnakamalam – Critics ( 3* ), BO ( 4* ).