Dipak Nambiar remembers the year 2015 like it was yesterday. It was the year he hit rock bottom.
When he was riding to work in the US one morning, he met with an accident in which he lost a leg. When he was still in the ICU, his wife deserted him, leaving behind their daughter and a mildly-autistic son. “I knew I couldn’t go any lower in life,” he rues, “That was one of the reasons for me to complete the draft of the book I was working on. I figured that if I passed away, I should leave something of worth. People in Tamil Nadu loved appa , and I had to do something about it.”
By appa , he’s referring to his grandfather M N Nambiar, the legendary villain of Tamil cinema. “My mother and I moved in with him when I was 12. I was his first grandchild, and he thought of me as his own son. The memories that I have of him are different from what my mother has. When she was growing up, he was very busy with films without a lot of time in his hands.” But when Dipak was growing up in the Nambiar household in the 70s, Nambiar was more of a hands-on father. “I got to see a lot of him at home, unlike my mother.”
Dipak Nambiar
Back then, Nambiar, a menacing villain who took on the superstars of Tamil cinema on the big screen, was an avid sportsman and often did weights. “He even used to wrestle with me. To keep in touch with gusthi , he’d lift me and throw me on the ground... like in WWF. Mind you, I was a teenager then and he was 70. We often played tennis. He was a vegetarian but left me to make my own culinary choices, and never imposed his way of life on me.”
- Nambiar first went to Sabarimala when he was 16, long before the Pampa project was completed. Since then, he went to the temple over 300 times, over a period of 70 years. He has taken along many celebrities, from Sivaji Ganesan to Amitabh Bachchan. He is called Nambiar swami or Maha Guruswami, for pioneering the movement of taking pilgrims to the temple.
- Nambiar and MGR were trained fighters and did not use dupes for action sequences. For an action scene in a film, MGR was supposed to step back and Nambiar had to parry. But both of them accidentally parried at the same time, and Nambiar’s knife hit MGR’s eye. Blood spilled, and the entire unit was shocked. On another occasion, MGR ran his knife through Nambiar’s palm and that severed his nerves.
- For a film titled Karpukarasi , Gemini Ganesan was the hero and was supposed to hurl a knife at the villain (Nambiar) during a shot. Meanwhile, two good-looking women walked in to the sets, and Gemini, in a bid to impress them, threw the knife at Nambiar, who was still getting his make-up done. This caused a scar near his eyes, something he had for life.
Dipak has a wealth of memories associated with his grandfather, and all that came in handy in 2004, when he passed out with an MBA at Boston and didn’t have a job. “I thought then, why not write something about appa ?” he recalls. He did and during a trip to Chennai, he read it out to his grandfather. “Appa had a great sense of humour. He found fun in the most mundane things in life. He’d talk about his childhood, parents and how he struggled to make it in theatre, but they’d be filled with funny and interesting anecdotes.”
Whenever Dipak was in India, he revisited some of them with his grandfather with the intention of putting them down in a book. Then, in 2008, Nambiar passed away and Dipak didn’t know how to proceed. “I spoke to a few of his celebrity friends and fleshed out the subject. Jayalalithaa aunty wrote the foreword, and Kalaignar Karunanidhi narrated a few interesting incidents. Rajinikanth had a lot of memories to share, especially from their Sabarimala trips. Sathyaraj and Bhagyaraj also contributed. I knew I was on to something big.”
So, he quit his cushy IT job and got back to Chennai, and subsequently took the draft of the book to Harper Collins. They, in turn, sent it to a committee comprising an Assamese, Bengali and Gujarati. “The three of them had no idea who Nambiar was. The test was to see if the book would stand on its own merit. Thankfully, they gave me a go ahead.”
With Nambiar Swami: The Good, the Bad and the Holy , Dipak hopes to throw light on his grandfather’s approach to life and his sense of humour. He will also explore Nambiar’s spiritual connection with Sabarimala. “Appa was genuinely nice and funny. Every good thing that you have heard about this man is probably true.”
Published by HarperCollins, Nambiar Swami: The Good, the Bad and the Holy costs ₹400 and is available at all leading bookstores.
