Arts: தலைவர், Thalaivar, ‘Leader’

A local firm gave its Tamil workers a paid holiday, plus a S$30 F&B allowance, to watch the first day, first show of “Coolie”. Another, a mini-mart operator, suspended morning operations. WhatsApp groups buzzed ahead of ticket sales. Cineplex chain Cathay has opened up more than 50 shows for Saturday, August 16th, hoping perhaps that “Coolie” will revive its wilting fortunes. To embrace the task of describing the hero’s fandom is to embrace hyperbole itself.

So, here goes: producers sign on with him without so much as glancing at the script. Directors fall over themselves to thank him for the privilege. Distributors and theatres know, with the same certitude as the sun rising, that a single one of his films will put asses in millions of seats. Rumour has it that he commanded S$30m for “Coolie”. Co-actors say the honour of sharing the screen with him is honorarium enough. The mere thought of being at the receiving end of one of his reality-bending punches sends frissons through extras fortunate enough to appear in a scene with him. 

His fans. From California to Australia, Germany to Japan; Tamil migrants fresh off the boat and those long-settled in foreign lands; white-collar and blue-collar; man, woman, everyone in between and beyond. In restaurants and pubs; living rooms and hotel lobbies; on park benches and grass patches they exchange trivia, belt out his songs, and trade punchlines from one of the 170-odd films he has graced in a 50-year career. 

In homes, his photograph sits beside religious idols; outdoors, 10-storey cardboard cutouts of his likeness are bathed in milk, an honour reserved for the divine. Online, videos of fans erupting in theatres when he makes his first on-screen appearance garner hundreds of thousands of views, as do clips of those trying to imitate inimitability itself—a cigarette flicked into the air, somersaulting before perching perfectly between the lips; pens in either hand furiously signing documents, in unison. He has inspired a meme industry that puts Chuck Norris to shame. He killed the Dead Sea. He uses hot sauce for eye drops. He can divide by zero.

Academics publish papers on the aura of his finger-pointing gestures, sprinkling their titles with terms like “self-reflexivity” and “paratext”. For outsiders, he is a curiosity; for insiders, a demigod, an ideal human and the phenomenon of the past half-century. He is Shivaji Rao Gaekwad; screen name, Rajinikanth. His fans call him Thalaivar. Leader, in Tamil, but really, a term that folds awe, love, respect, and devotion into one. No words can quite hold the cultural weight he carries. The only way is to witness it, not just with the eyes but with every one of the senses.