Cinema, Kamal’s fulcrum

“When classical singers or dancers look at cinema with derision, I have half a heart to tell them that they’re wrong. They’re losing a platform.”

Kamal Haasan in Sagara Sangamam.

Part 1: >His classical odyssey

Part 2: >'You can feel the fear in this song'

Part 3: >'He taught me to sing with abandon'

Part 4: >And more on the Ilaiyaraaja connection

Part 5: >Kamal and the art of screenplay writing

Part 6: >Kamal discovers Kuchipudi

Part 7: >Three teachers, one student!

The same year, 1978, Kamal Haasan was seen in a more famous dance sequence in the ‘Ennadi Meenatchi’ number in ‘Ilamai Oonjaladugiradhu’. Looking like a scrawny Elvis in an all-white outfit bisected by a belt buckle the size of an infant’s head, he was a wiry stage presence, flailing his arms and kicking the air. That was after he picked up a bit of karate under a teacher named Kuppuswamy.

Kamal said, “When I was 16, I felt I might be left with some effeminacy because of all the dancing. I was so full of classical dance that I wanted to get away and do something else.” His friend Shekhar was a karate champ, working with Kuppuswamy. Just like Kamal was learning dance in his house, Shekhar was learning karate in his – on the terrace. “We’d practise karate for six-seven hours every day, and that changed my dancing style too. The stance of karate came into my dance. If you watch ‘Ennadi Meenatchi’, you can make out that I have leant karate as well as dance.” Meanwhile, Anglo-Indian friends in Egmore taught him the fox trot.

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This is why Kamal Haasan likes to say, despite what viewers of ‘Sagara Sangamam’/’Salangai Oli’ may think, that he is not trained in the traditional classical format. He said, “I’m like a vaudeville artist rather than a Kalakshetra or a Trinity College kind of person. At first, I was diffident about the kind of groups I interacted with, because it was not the way my sister trained. It was not ‘pure.’ But my experience was very rich and later on, I found that what I did was not something to be ashamed of.”

I asked him what drove him to all these different forms of dance. He said he was looking for something, a more versatile medium, and he found it in cinema. “I had all this creativity, but I was looking for a way to express it, and cinema became the fulcrum with which I could lift all this weight. When classical singers or dancers look at cinema with derision, I have half a heart to tell them that they’re wrong. They’re losing a platform.”

He spoke some more about ‘Sagara Sangamam’. He recalled the response of dance teachers who told him that this film had done to dance what they had done through their lives. “It was very touching,” he said. “But that has more to do with the medium. You should also give credit to Vyjayanthimala and Kumari Kamala. In their time, dance was seen as a feminine domain. I brought it to the masculine domain. Unfortunately, I was the only ambassador at the time.” I asked him why films have stopped showcasing the classical arts. He said, “I think it’s simply an attitude, because it has to be sponsored. The sponsors – be it a king or a producer or the Britannia biscuit company – are either not interested or ill-informed. They all focus on their product. They have no social or aesthetic commitment.”

He spoke a lot about Thangappan Master. “I’ve never seen someone so large-hearted. Even when he was choreographing, he’d give the camera to (RC) Sakthi and me and say, ‘We’re running out of time, we’re waiting for artists, I have to be here, you guys take the camera, go shoot the rest of the song and bring it back.’ It was all very touching and very exhilarating for us.”

I asked him if he remembered the first song he choreographed. He spoke about choreographing a song for Akinneani Nageswara Rao in ‘Sreemanthudu’, which was released in 1971. “I met him on his 90th birthday. He remembered me as his dance assistant. We were both rationalists. He saw me not bowing to the arati. He asked me, ‘Are you a Muslim?’ I said no. He said, ‘Then why are you not praying?’ I said I don’t believe in it. I’m an atheist. He said, ‘Well, you’ve got a friend in me’.”

Kamal Haasan also spoke about the comedian Raj Babu, whom he called the counterpart of Nagesh in Telugu. “He was very fond of me. He said you’re wasting time here. You’re going to become an actor. I have composed songs for him too. But I don’t really remember the first song.”

(To be continued)