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Literary Review
NON-FICTION
Magic workers
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`Roopa Swaminathan's style is journalistic more than literary or academic, the prose, simple, and her curiosity, endless.'
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ROOPA SWAMINATHAN'S deft, enjoyable account of people from the fringes of the Indian film industry is easily the year's most fascinating, revealing book about Indian cinema. Books on our cinema veer between glossy coffee table books on Bollywood and academic takes on popular cinema. But here at last is a book on Indian cinema that profiles extras, fans, dancers, sound recordists, production managers, editors, assistant directors, character actors and vamps. The biographies of these people have always fascinated me more than those of directors and stars, and I have long looked in vain for a book that would give me a glimpse of their lives. In Star Dust: Vignettes from the Fringes of the Film Industry, Roopa Swaminathan, a Chennai-based writer and filmmaker, uses short, vivid sketches to look sympathetically and curiously at those who remain in "the shadows of the arc lights" to those who have emerged from the fringes and made it at the Dream Factory. She has my gratitude (and I'm certain the gratitude of not just movie buffs but the average filmgoer who must be just as curious) for finding them interesting enough and subject enough to write a book on. Her style is journalistic more than literary or academic, the prose, simple, and her curiosity, endless.
Different focus
What also thrills me about Star Dust is that it isn't one more take on Bollywood (though it does figure) but is — refreshingly — instead about the South Indian film industry with a particular focus on the Tamil film industry. "A search for the words `fan-club' typed on the search engine Google on the Internet comes up with over 61,000 hits. And pretty much all of them have the following two words in them: Tamil Nadu," writes Swaminathan in her first chapter on rasigar manrams or fan clubs. She goes on to tell us that Rajinikant fan clubs have been restricted by the actor but even then total more than 20,000. Kamal Haasan has close to 15,000, Ajit and Vijay have approximately 13,000 each, while Vijaykant has "35,000 plus and going strong". And then there are rasigar manrams for comedians — Vivek, Vadivelu, Senthil. She asks why fan clubs are rampant in Chennai but not Mumbai, and provides interesting answers. She notes that everyone in Tamil Nadu makes a clear either-or choice when it comes to heroes: "You either like Sivaji or MGR. Kamal or Rajnikant or Vijaykant. Ajit or Vijay... the fact is everyone in Tamil Nadu is a fan."
Swaminathan evokes the dreams, hopes and agonies of three die-hard fans — Nacchamathu, a Rajni fan and the president of Ammanji Karai's Rasigar Manram of the Desiya Thalaivar, aka, Rajni saar, Thirunavukkarasu, a Vijay fan who has to debate the merits of Vijay with his father who happens to be a fervent Rajni believer, and Parthiban, who starves himself if he fails to remember from which Rajni movie a particular scene on television is from. In writing about a day in their life, Roopa uses the gentle, compassionate comic narrative style we know so well from Narayan. The chapters that follow on extras and dancers is equally fascinating and revealing. The extras range from the Mylapore mamis "who wear their nine-yard saris and speak pure Vadama Iyer Tamil" to `Roja pati', "the old lady who dances with abandonment in "Roja". Roopa Swaminathan is particularly intrigued by Sulekha, a veteran extra from Bollywood who has seen it all and who believes she will be Rekha in her next life.
The invasion of `models'
In a seedy apartment in Kodambakkam, the author walks in on a trio of giggling, buxom, dark, thick-waisted dancers who only moments before had been pleasing each other with dildos and vibrators. Just as we had guessed — theirs turns out to be the hardest life, perennially living on the edge, emotionally and sexually wasted. "Models" — college girls trained in contemporary dance who do it not for the money but for kicks are their biggest threat. The newer choreographers in Bollywood prefer "models" to the traditional dancers. Veteran choreographers in the South — Kala Master and Brinda, however, are fiercely protective of these dancers and "are derisive of the choreographers in Mumbai who dismiss dancers from the south as being dark and fat and unattractive. Both firmly believe that the dancers from Mumbai are no patch on the ones from the south and claim that most of their dancers are trained classical dancers and therefore superior to their counterparts up north."
"Dancers" also looks at the burgeoning soft porn film industry, beginning with Silk Smitha (whose real name we learn was Vijayalaxmi) and her suicide to Mumtaz to Shakeela who charges 35,000 for a day's work and packs the cinema halls. In "Technicians", Swaminathan turns her attention to outsiders who became insiders — key people in the industry whose actual work we know little about: superstar Telegu producer A.M. Ratnam, Dharani, the director of "Dhool" and "Gilli" (a polio victim who made it against great odds, it was Dharani as an assistant director in "Yajamaan" who introduced the familiar Rajni trademark of the swishing angavastram.) sound recordist Anand who uses sync sound, art director Sabu Cyril, production manager Nazeer and dubbing artist Savitha who has dubbed for Jyothika, Sheha, Vasundhara and Meera Jasmine.
Thematic departure
"Assistants" looks at those intrepid hopefuls — assistant and associate directors poised in the shadow of the arc light. The last chapter, "The Vikram Story", is a slight departure, stylistically and thematically, from the book's premise: Roopa switches to the first person, shaping the new superstar, Vikram's words into autobiography. Something is lost in the first person narration — it isn't as gripping and insightful, and the tone falters. I wish his story had been more detailed — why, for instance, is he called Kenny by friends and family? And in all those years that he never found work as an actor, how did he keep himself going? Still, Vikram's extraordinary story of how he became an actor and a star against incredible odds is compelling. It only remains for Roopa Swaminathan to take this fascinating material and turn it into a fabulous non-fiction film.
Star Dust: Vignettes from the Fringes of the Film Industry, Roopa Swaminathan, Penguin, p.232, Rs.275.
PRADEEP SEBASTIAN
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