Ellaam Inba Mayam

 It was 1981 and on a Sat­ur­day, my father took me to Ellaam inba mayam in Pala­niappa the­atre, located at NM road, Choolaimedu.That was the first full-fledged com­edy movie I have seen. I have some tastes con­tin­u­ing in my genes. My father is an ardent fan of Sivaji, Sujatha and Kamal.

 I still remem­ber telling this Ellam inba mayam story to my school friends describ­ing each role played by Kamal. [ First andha danceraa, apram Maariyaa .. apram  :) ]

 Velu — Coim­bat­ore dialect, Velu — the hero, Disco dancer, Rick­shaw Maari, Bar­rett law Duraisamy, Basavappa, Cey­lon Rakkap­pan, Ghost.

 The story, dia­logues and songs were penned by Panju Arunacha­lam — I admire his work greatly as a writer and poet [for­mer assis­tant to Kan­nadasan ]. He is one of the famous duo of Krishnan-Panju fame [Remem­ber Rathak kaneer ]. He has as much as 140+ films in his credit. He owns the PA art pro­duc­tions [ MMKR, Annakili, Kalya­nara­man, Server Sun­daram are few sam­ples ]. The great­est con­tri­bu­tion of PA is that he intro­duced IR to the film. What a great way to do some­thing for cinema!

The films were very sim­ple and straight for­ward.. may be an upgraded ver­sion of stage drama. How­ever, the enter­tain­ment his prod­ucts gave was con­vinc­ing even now. The direc­tor GNRan­gara­jan was a for­mer assis­tant to SPMuthu­ra­man and a good friend of Kamal since his AVM days. The notable fac­tor is the bud­get of the film; mostly hap­pen­ing in sets and the max­i­mum out­door was Marina beach / some gar­dens. Those were the glo­ri­ous days where stu­dios and pro­duc­ers played the upper hand. There were no open­ing songs for the hero, for­eign locales, CG gim­micks, com­edy track and unnec­es­sary fights. To close the film con­ven­tion­ally, they set a fight sequence.

 The songs were sim­ple and much aligned with the sub­ject in a lighter man­ner. The best song is “Maa­man voodu” song. The good thing about IR is he just gace what this film exactly needed. In fact, it is for his first producer.

 Like Sujatha’s writ­ing, I admire Kamal in any form and 8 roles in a sin­gle film was a feast. The dif­fer­ence between Kamal and other great heros of Tamil [ till then ] was Kamal has the good sense of humor. The roles I enjoyed the most are Maari, Basavappa and Cey­lon Rakkap­pan. He used the Cey­lon dialect in 1981. He never set­tles down with his roles and getups. Unlike these days, he didn’t have the pres­sure of for­eign make-ups, uni­ver­sal hero bur­den, his belief sys­tems, busi­ness of the movie  and the com­pe­ti­tion with Rajini [ Dasa­vatharam was announced for ‘Sivaji’ ]. I remem­ber the 1987 Deep­avali releases Naya­gan and Manid­han ran for 175 days in Tamil. Noth­ing wrong but he tries hard to keep the range in box office. [ Marma Yogi for Endhiran ]

 The dia­logues, the tim­ing sense of the writer and actors are applaud­able. Espe­cially, the char­ac­ter Maari and Cey­lon Rakka­pan had the best vari­a­tions in the role.

 As a repay­ment [ a small one of course ! ], I took my father to Dasa­vatharam in 2008 [ after 26 years ! ] in PVR cin­e­mas, Ban­ga­lore. The only fac­tor which we both liked was Bal­ram Naidu. I’m not com­par­ing these 2 films but just rec­ol­lect­ing these 2 films at a dif­fer­ent period. How­ever enter­tain­ing 2 gen­er­a­tions is a great thing.

 A per­fect light movie.

–Toto

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