Writer-filmmaker Deepak Venkatesha has a ticket for the first-day first-show of Kabali at the SPI Cinemas Sathyam, Chennai. Much to his dismay, a sudden meeting will be keeping him away from the planned pilgrimage. However, the first-day-first-show (FDFS, to the uninitiated) in Mumbai — Friday, 6 a.m. at Aurora Talkies in King’s Circle — is likely to more than make up for it. It’s the reason, says Venkatesha, why Naman Ramachandran, writer, columnist and author of Rajinikanth: The Definitive Biography , is flying all the way from London for it.
N. Sethumadhavan, an independent media and entertainment professional who runs the movie portal madaboutmoviez.com, is not just catching the early morning fan show at Aurora, but will see three of them, on the same day, at the same place.
Rajini mania may not be as widespread in Mumbai as it is in Chennai, but there are small pockets around the city where it has been just as potent, release after release. In and around Aurora, for instance.
“I still remember the huge Enthiran (2010’s Robot ) cut-out at the theatre which remained intact for more than a year,” says Sethumadhavan, who moved to Mumbai the same year. He spent most of his childhood growing up on Rajini films in Chennai and Coimbatore.
He watched Enthiran twice on the first day, first at Cinemax Vashi and later at IMAX Wadala. But by the time Lingaa released in 2014, Sethumadhavan was right there at Aurora to witness the celebrations. “It’s where all the action is,” he says. If one is not fortunate enough to get tickets at Aurora, he says, the other places to go to would be PVR-Sion and to a lesser extent PVR-Goregaon and PVR-Mulund.
According to Venkatesha who grew up watching Rajini in Bangalore (the city where the megastar with Marathi roots was born and brought up), there are many such enclaves the world over, places with a significant Tamil population that get taken over by Rajini mania. “You can take a Tamilian out of Tamil Nadu but can’t take Tamil Nadu out of him,” Venkatesha says. He himself recollects watching Thalapathi (1991) at Pallavi in Bangalore, amidst stones being pelted at him and others, at the height of the anti-Tamil agitation in Karnataka.
Writer-director Vasan Bala does see a vital Chennai-Mumbai difference. As a Tamil Brahmin growing up in Mumbai, it was the ‘good, intellectual’ cinema of Kamal Hassan that he and others got exposed to. It was only on holidays back in Chennai with cousins that the big question crept up: Are you a Kamal or a Rajini fan? “I grew up on Kamal but discovered Rajini,” he says. “It was a transition to negotiate for most of us Tamil boys in Mumbai.” As a kid, Bala didn’t quite understand the Rajini phenomenon. It was all about following the diktats of your elder cousins. The teens were spent in debates on Rajini’s Baashha (1995) versus Kamal’s Thevar Magan (1992), about what was perceived as better cinema.
But the experience in a theatre made all the comparisons go away. Nothing could equal the vibe and the magic of Rajini. For Bala, seeing the first Rajini film would be a bit like attending your first rock concert" “You don’t know what to do; and so just do some head banging before you grow to appreciate it.”
Bala also recalls seeing Aurora evolve into the centre of the universe for all of Mumbai’s Rajini fans. “Not just Rajini, it’s so for Vijay [Ilaya Thalapathy], Ajith (Kumar) and Kamal fans as well.” And the experience is not about watching the film alone. Taking a leaf out of the festivities in Chennai, much the same revelry happens here as well: the customary elephant procession, paal abhishekam (pouring milk on an idol), puja and the auspicious breaking of the coconut by the elephant. “Be it the huge cut-outs, the banners, the FlexBoards or any other promotional material, Rajini fans ensure that you witness a huge spectacle,” says Sethumadhavan.
However, this wasn’t always so. Much of the larger-than-life elements and extravaganza began to happen post- Padayappa (1999) Bala recalls. “Now the first week is predominantly for his fans in Dharavi, then the families from Chembur, Ghatkopar and Matunga start coming in.”
To mark the Kabali release, a procession will be taken out from Ram Mandir, near King’s Circle garden, to the theatre, at 7.30 a.m. on Friday. A free eye camp is being organised inside the theatre by Aditya Jyot Eye hospital, Wadala, and there will also be a blood donation drive by the Rajini fans.
The Rajini audience in Mumbai, like elsewhere, cuts across class and caste. “Rajinikanth manages to bring everyone under the same roof, for the same reason,” says Sethumadhavan. However, the early morning fans’ show may not be the best for catching the nuances of the film. The cheering, singing, dancing, shouting is likely to drown out everything. “You can’t hear the lines at all. I go for the film another day, watch it the second time to catch the dialogues,” says Venkatesha. But it’s precisely this that also makes the FDFS worth it. He remembers watching Enthiran at PVR Juhu. “It was as polite as watching a cricket match at Lords,” he says disapprovingly.
Venkatesha calls the FDFS at Aurora the Kumbh Mela, where celebrations roll on the whole day, before and after the film. It’s about eating and drinking at the Idli House and Cafe Madras in Matunga and discussing the film, and the megastar, threadbare. As Venkatesha puts it, it’s the sum of many parts: his name appearing on the credits, the style, the dialogues, the punchline, the action, the larger-than-life narrative, the grandstanding, the swashbuckler trope, the fantasy and escapism. It’s a phenomenon that north Indians can never comprehend, especially when they make comparisons with Salman Khan, he says.
As we near the end of the conversation Venkatesha says that watching a film at Chennai’s Sathyam still remains on his bucket list. He also dangles a tempting bait: an extra ticket to the FDFS at Aurora. Now it’s for me to figure out if I should wake up at 5 a.m. to flow along in this Rajini hype or enjoy my sleep assuming that it is just another film, after all.
