Balachander never even directed MGR, who had brought him to the world of films in the first place, and he made just one movie with Sivaji. Rahman, Jayaprada and Ramesh Aravind, not to speak of the countless directors and scriptwriters he inspired.Īnd it’s not like he then hitched his wagon to their stars: He spent a lifetime shunning the big names and making movies with newcomers nobody had heard of. The roll call of the “KB School” reads like a Who’s Who of South Indian cinema: Besides Rajinikanth, his protégés include such icons as Kamal Hassan, Sridevi, Chiranjeevi, A.R. With people, he has been a veritable Midas having discovered more than 100 stars and technicians.

“Hasn’t it happened exactly the way I had predicted?”īalachander has deeply influenced and transformed Tamil cinema over a period of 47 years. “ Naan sonna maadhirye nadandhadha, illaya?” Balachander asks us, the characteristic effervescence in his voice intact.

He will go on to become a phenomenon.”ģ6 years later, we call up to congratulate KB on winning the highest honour in Indian cinema, the Dadasaheb Phalke award. “In my forthcoming movie, I am introducing a young man who has fire in his eyes,” he had written just weeks earlier in the film magazine Pesum Padam. Kailasam Balachander (KB), who would go on to become India’s most prolific filmmaker and direct more than 100 movies, had bet big on Rajinikanth. After all, it was his script that was playing out. One man wasn’t a bit surprised by all this brouhaha. They spoke ceaselessly of his cameo rather than of the marquee names in that movie. Suddenly, they found a certain magnetism in his eyes, an effortless manner in his gait, a sparkle in his voice. Neither could they find any remarkable feature in him but for his melancholic face and exotically accented Tamil.Īs the weeks rolled by, and the movie struck pay-dirt in the box office, the cinema-obsessed Tamil public lost its heart to Shivajirao Gaekwad a.k.a. Ramachandran - couldn’t quite place the new actor. They: The Tamil movie fans of the time - used to the colossal magnificence of Sivaji Ganesan and the charismatic dynamism of M.G. Unhandsome, tentative, he appeared late and only fleetingly in a movie dominated by stars such as Kamal Hassan and Sri Vidya. He: A lanky, dark-skinned actor playing a character twice his real age, the abusive (and later, cancer-stricken) husband of the female protagonist, in the 1975 Tamil film Aboorva Raagangal (Rare Melodies). When he appeared on screen for the first time, they weren’t immediately mesmerised. Balachander launched the careers of many stars but never relied upon them to ply his trade

Balachander serial