Why I wont watch Kabali.
As an avid cricket fan, one of the most
tormenting seasons for me was India’s tour to Australia in 2011-12.
Here we were, a team filled with aging
legends, whose bodies creaked as they ran, fielded and batted, trying to play a
young man’s game against the toughest team in the world.
A team filled with talent that had
weathered many a storm but the talent that had caved in to the relentless
pressure of time.
Of course, the most heart wrenching
performance was that of Rahul Dravid.
In a career spanning 16 years, he had
carefully, assiduously made himself a legend. He answered his fans and his
critics alike, with the bat.
Never an extra word did he utter, never a
gesture that was anything but gentlemanly.
A few month’s before the Australian series,
Dravid had stood tall when all around him were falling down.
While we were drubbed 0-4 by England, the
legend of the wall became stronger, with three centuries embellishing its
already full trophy cupboard.
But, the tour of Australia seemed to have
suddenly taken the magic out of his batting. The seemingly impregnable defence
suddenly became weak. Ordinary balls
that would have collided with a wall that was his bat were finding its edges.
In the last test series that Dravid played,
he played like a mere mortal.
It was really agonizing watching the famed
wall being torn down, dismembered, brick by brick. The slowing body in the
slowing mind could not make him perform at his best anymore.
When Dravid declared he was quitting the
world of international cricket a few month’s later, there was a sigh of relief
from his fans – no more watching your hero looking like a loser.
Rajini is in many ways the Dravid of the
Indian film industry. A performer in his chosen field, off the field he is
almost invisible.
(Interestingly, both are Maharashtrians
from Bangalore).
Despite spending decades in the film
industry, he has remained untouched by controversy or gossip.
For a man who did not boast of the best
looks, the best steps or the best physique, he carved out a niche that was the
envy of most actors by the sheer dint of his hard work and his earnestness.
The effortless ease with which he could
deliver the special Rajini tricks made them adorable, believable and eminently
imitable.
But, time started taking its toll. The last
few films of Rajini have been like Dravid’s last few tests in the Australian
series.
The slight slowing down of the body, the reduction
in the reflexes were all too discernible.
The magic of the old was fading.
The effortless ease missing. Suddenly, the
famed Rajini tricks looked contrived, so out of place in this era of virtual
reality.
As one saw the few shared videos of Kabali ,
one could not but feel let down. The man who was doing the push ups was not
Rajini. The fights were just pictured on him, they did not look real. The
famous one liners (don’t think even Amitabh has as many famous one liners as
Rajini does) started looking tacky and made up.
The swagger was put up, the electrifying
gravitas was gone.
The charisma was fading.
Here was a man who was fighting with time a
battle that the audience wanted him to fight, but which his body could not
wage.
I do not want to watch Kabali because, I do
not want the carefully constructed image of the Superstar crumble in front of
my eyes.
Rajini sir, for your fans, it is almost
sacrilegious to even think that their God was after all mortal.
Please do your fans a favour. Please hang up your boots. Let your fans live
in the glory of your past.
