When
the prestigious ABCL banner went scouting through
the roster of southside stars looking for a lead
actor for its debut venture in Tamil, industry
watchers played their guessing games on which icon
the banner would sign up.
Kamal Hassan? Rajnikanth? Chiranjeevi? Nagarjuna?
Arjun?
Would you believe, Ajith
Kumar?(left)
"I happened to be in the
right place at the right time," the hottest new
star on the southern block says, with a shrug and
a smile.
The tall, good-looking young
man is remarkably blase about the fact that, in
the words of the famous quote, "He awoke one
morning and found himself famous". And even a
series of three hits, and a spate of film offers
following in the wake of the publicity his being
signed by ABCL generated, hasn't impacted on his
laidback, take-it-easy persona.
His attitude to his success,
and new-found celebrity status, is reflected
nowhere as vividly as in his own thoughts on a
variety of questions. Thus:
On
Aasai,
the Mani Rathnam production which marked the
directorial debut of award-winning cinematographer
P C Sriram and went on to become a mammoth grosser
at the box office:
"That film worked for two reasons. Prakash
Rai(right) was brilliant as the villain, and every
song was an instant hit, all of them made it to
the top of the charts one after another. Besides,
the storyline was unusual, so the film became a
huge hit. The fact that I was the hero had nothing
to do with it!"
About the
increasingly high profile he has attained, after
following up that first hit with another and being
signed by ABCL for its debut venture:
"I guess this period is my honeymoon with the
marquee. Honeymoons are great, but they don't
last. And I think the same is true with success on
the screen - today I am all over the place,
tomorrow I may be gone, I may have to make room
for someone else. So why make a big song
and dance about it all?"
This attitude, the more one examines it, seems
typical of a new breed of film artist making it
big on a marquee earlier dominated by the
'superstars' of the order of Sivaji Ganesan and
the late M G Ramachandran, Kamal Hassan and
Rajnikanth. This emerging brand of 'hero' is
typically young and fresh-faced, well educated,
from cosmopolitan middle and upper middle class
backgrounds, and inclined to bring to their
celluloid careers a professionalism and
clear-headedness that strips away the hype and
makes of showbiz another career - albeit a
high-paying, and glamorous, one.
Ajith's
bio exemplifies this breed. Born to a Sindhi
mother and Malayalee father as the middle son of
three, he laughingly describes himself as the
dunce in the family. "My two brothers excelled in
academics and are now working abroad, I was the
family dunce, dropped out in Class X from Asan
Memorial High School (in central Madras). I guess
I was more into extra-curricular activities - NCC,
trekking, loved motorbikes.
"I guess it was my dad who
hauled me back to reality, he said it was time I
made something of myself. So since I liked
motorbikes, I first became an apprentice at
Enfield India, then I tried my hand at the textile
business, basing myself in Erode, for a spell."
In this phase, however, his
clean-cut features had already won him some
modelling assignments, for both print and
television. And his spare time was spent racing
motorbikes - his one enduring passion. This
daredevil streak, however, resulted in a broken
vertebra, which he neglected at the time and which
was to erupt in pain later, while doing a risky
stunt for one of his films.
Around this time he wound up his textile
business, and accepted a role in a Telugu film,
Prema Pusthakam. The debut was, in his
own words, a "disaster". And his first film
inTamil, Amaravathi,"did only marginal
business, though the songs were chartbusters and
got me some measure of notice."
Ajith was becoming increasingly familiar to
television viewers partly because of the hit songs
from his Tamil debut, partly because of television
ads shot by the likes of P C Sriram.
One of those ads was for the company headed by
film-star Revathi's husband Suresh Menon and his
appearance in it earned him a small role in
Menon's own productions, Paasamalargal
and Rajaavin Paarvayile.
'It was the rushes of these two films that
persuaded the Mani Rathnam-Sriram combine to sign
him on for the former's home production Aasai(left).
And when Ajith followed it up with Vanmathi,another
mega-grosser, and a standout performance in a
secondary role in Kalluri Vaasal starring
Pooja Bhatt and Prashant in the lead, it was
perhaps inevitable that ABCL's choice would fall
on him as the most promising of the emerging breed
of young actors.
Today Ajith boasts an enviable fan following,
especially among the teenybop, young collegian
crowd - despite not being billed as either a
fighting or a dancing star. "I love doing stunts,
though I have to be careful with my back. As for
dances, somehow I am uncomfortable doing them. I
lack grace," he grins. And when you point out that
in his brief career, he has already had over six
songs that have topped all the charts, the grin
broadens into a laugh and he goes, "Yeah, that's
the funny thing about this industry, the strangest
thing can, and sometimes do, happen."
Which, I think, must be about the first time I
ever heard a star view his own enormous popularity
as an example of showbiz "quirks". And Ajith
promptly shatters another of my illusions - that
every star, asked why he is in cinema, will use
the query as a cue to spout sanctimonious stuff
about "artistic aspirations... a deep love for
acting... the passion to create..." and suchlike -
by saying, "I am in movies basically for the money
and, frankly, I have a hard time believing those
who say that act for the love of acting!"
Having said that, Ajith - like any other
committed professional in any other field - has a
desire to be, if not the best, at least
to be good enough to be rated among the
front-runners. "Acting is a learning process," he
says serioulsy. "And what you are doing in your
early films is essentially picking up the nuances,
the tricks of your trade. And somewhere along the
line, you become analytical, and learn to enjoy
what you are doing. Essentially, though, I see
myself as a director's medium - he needs something
from me, I deliver it."
When
talk veers to his fan following - love letters
from girls, inscribed on their hankies in their
own blood, are a common offering in his mailbox -
Ajith sighs. "I wish people wouldn't equate screen
heroes with demigods," he says, adding that such
extreme adulation both frightens, and saddens, him.
"I do respond, in all sincerity, to the letters I
get - but there is some discomfort. And I try not
to let the adulation go to my head, because for
one thing it is not exactly encouraging - imagine
the enormous pressure it puts on you to know how
much people expect from you! And for another, it
is so very ephemeral - today I am everyone's
darling, tomorrow that same Everyone has moved on
to a newer, fresher star....
"For my part, I think it would help to restore
a sense of balance if the screen hero were to be
true to life, to have flaws and plus points and
stand tall on feet of clay. It's like my role in
Aasai(left) - not at all the
all-conquering 'hero' of the marquee. My character
was romantic, but he was human, he was as insecure
as only a man in love can be, an angry, mixed up
youngster, idealistic to an extreme and yet
helpless to realise his ideals. I loved that
character."
Asked to describe himself, Ajith avoids the
subject of his looks - 'clean cut' being the most
obvious description I can come up with here - and
prefers to concentrate on his personality. "I am a
restless sort of chap, full of a frenetic, sort of
directionless, energy," he smiles. "And yes, I am
very religious." Proof of this latter being in the
way he, soon after recovering from surgery for his
broken vertebra, walked the many hundreds of miles
from his home in Madras to the famed Balaji shrine
in Tirupathi, in Andhra Pradesh, in fulfillment of
a vow. "Losing every sensation in my legs was
frightening," he says, when asked why he took so
arduous a vow.
Ajith is busy shooting for Ullaasam,
the ABCL debut venture to be directed by the
upcoming pair of JD & Jerry, with music by
Ilayaraja's son Karthik, which pairs him opposite
no less than Sridevi's cousin, Maheshwari. "I was
very surprised - pleasantly surprised - to get
that offer," he adds with a smile. "And even more
so by the money they offered me," he laughs, while
refusing to divulge the exact number of zeroes on
his paycheck.
"I can't talk about that
movie right now, we aren't supposed to discuss it
yet," smiles the young star. Ask him about his
previous heroine, the Bollywood star Pooja Bhatt,
and Ajith is back to his down to earth, candid
self. "See, North Indian girls tend to be very
fair... considerably fairer than the girls in the
south. And that is one reason why our Tamil and
Telugu producers are increasingly starring them in
their films - Manisha Koirala, Urmila Matondkar,
Pooja Bhatt, now Sushmita Sen... It's all part of
this star fixation," Ajith muses. "The
frontbenchers here, they go to the theatre and see
these north girls and they go, 'Hey, look at her,
so fair and nice...'
"Having said that, I must
add that Pooja was great fun to work with. A shade
aloof at first, but later on we became good
friends. She doesn't have any starry airs, nor
does she put on hauteur about being the daughter
of the famous Mahesh Bhatt. Very down to earth and
friendly and fun..."
Ask him about his own
favourite stars, and Ajith reverts for a moment to
your typical young man as he talks of his
admiration for Aamir Khan, for Madhuri Dixit and
Kajol. "At some stage," he adds, "I would like to
do a Hindi film - after all, I'm half north
Indian, my mother is a Sindhi and the Hindi
language is not alien to me, so I'd like to give
it a shot."
For the time being, though,
he is busy shooting almost round the clock for
Ullaasam, the schedules for which received a
set back when the technicians of the Tamil film
industry struck work for almost a month. And in
whatever time remains to him, living the life of a
typical young lad next door and successful
professional.
"Hey, I love to go out," he
grins. "Getting mobbed is a bit of a problem, but
then I try and be very normal when I am out, no
dark glasses and starry ways. Love riding my bike,
and I guess the fact that I act so normally has
resulted in the public giving me the space I want.
Getting recognised is a nice feeling, but I am
very particular about my space, I think I'm a
pretty private sort of guy!"
Yeah, right - a private, down
to earth guy who, just by a quirk of fate, happens
to have his face, blown up several dozen times,
plastered across the skyline of the film-crazy
state of Tamil Nadu...
Rajitha
|