We scanned the town to lay our hands on the audio cassette of Nayagan film soundtrack to get the lines right.
Having fixed the flow, we got down to writing the lines paraphrasing the original film lines so that people could relate to it easily. Campus politics, tyranny of the mess food, unfriendly and strict professors all found their way into the script.
He helped all students but at the end could not prevent a “CUP” (which was the slang for “arrears” in our times) for his own son. Students knocked at his doorsteps to get their college related problems “sorted” out. Velu Nayakkar in our play was a local don in the campus. We didn’t realise that we had stumbled upon the now famous Lollu Sabha format then.
Since we had decided to base the play on the movie, we just had to plug in local issues within the movie template rather than re-invent the wheel. The next few days in the evenings extending to night we sat to write the script. “What if a Nayagan like character lived amidst us in the college?” was the starting point. So, for our engineering college cultural festival, when we were thinking of a theme for our Tamil skit, we hit upon a novel idea. Months after Nayagan’s release, even as it ran for silver jubilee in theatres, the film kept coming back in our lives. Nayagan sowed the seeds for “The Mani Ratnam film” as we see it now.
Starting from Kamal’s acting, his get-up, Mani Ratnam’s staging of scenes, PC Sreeram’s epic camera work (for which he got his first National Award), Ilaiyaraaja’s magical score, Balakumaran’s earthly writing, Thotta Tharani’s art direction, the acting by the supporting cast like Saranya, Janakaraj, Delhi Ganesh, Karthika, Naasar and others, and finally Mani Ratnam’s style of filming – it was a case of all the elements coming together impeccably with precision. Tamil cinema, in that sense, can be divided into “Before Nayagan” and “After Nayagan” era in terms of filmmaking. I have often seen many Tamil filmmakers in the past three decades saying that Nayagan was one of the most influencing films in their lives and career. Once back in college after Deepavali holidays, we would watch it many times over and keep talking about different aspects of the film endlessly. This was when we watched Nayagan the first time. Within a few minutes we could realise that we were not watching another regular film. Just the opening shot of a boy running with the sound of his huffing and puffing in the background blew us away. One the one side, if the character had such an impact on many of us, on the other side, the way the film was made had a huge impact on Tamil film aficionados. The story of a slum dweller taking on the system and becoming a towering and benevolent don, that too in an alien land, which is what Nayagan was all about, clearly touched a raw nerve with Tamil cinema goers. I heard similar episodes from others too. The above is a factual narration and not an imaginary story. Clearly, the film had awakened the sleeping Velu Nayakkar in us! We got into the auto and told him “Vandiya police stationukku ottuyya’! Innikku oru vazhi paakaama vidarathu illa!” (Drive the auto to the police station. Meterukku mela pottu kudutha varum, illa varaathu” (You can say whatever you want, if you don’t pay extra, the auto won’t come) said the auto driver. Why should we pay above the meter? It’s because of you that the name of Madras is spoilt) “Nee enna vena sollikka. Ethukuyya meterukku mela pottu kudukkanum? Ungalaala Madras pere kettu poyiduchu!’ (Everything should be stopped. Writer Balakumaran style dialogues flowed from the three of us in turns. We were not in a mood to succumb to the auto driver’s fleecing tactics. Just this time, there was a sense of belligerence in us.
As was wont those days, the usual argument with the auto driver about “meterukku mela pottu kudunga” ensued. We got to the gate and hailed an auto to get back home. There was an adrenaline rush inside among us with chests all pumped up. The usual quick post-mortem of a film after watching it was missing and the mood was sombre and reflective. Three of us friends watched the film at Anand Theatre in Madras and after watching, we walked down the stairs.