The good bad man

In this photo taken on March 24, 2019, actor-turned-politician Kamal Haasan, founder of the Makkal Needhi Mayyam party, is cheered by supporters at an election rally in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. On a humid night drummers and dancers heave to Haasan’s blockbuster hits, whipping a huge crowd into ecstasy just as the megastar himself steps onto stage. Pic/Getty Images

If there is a Tamil film that heralded the new phase of ‘liberal India' post Rajiv Gandhi in the most definitive manner, it would be Nayakan (The Hero; 1987). It shook scores of filmmakers and made all the Bollywood bigwigs sit up in awe. What Kamal could not achieve with films like Ek Duuje Ke Liye and Saagar (1985), he did with this film. I remember how most filmmakers and technicians in Bombay unanimously felt that here was a landmark film. Kamal started this movie with a determination of experimenting with film noir in its truest manner, paying tribute to its founders such as Elia Kazan and Francis Ford Coppola, along with actors such as Marlon Brando and Humphrey Bogart. And he did it with the kind of confidence few actors of his era could exude. In the scene where he admonishes his aides on the terrace, one can also see him paying a warm tribute to M.R. Radha, an actor for whom he had very high regard.

This film was truly a ‘glocal' experiment by a group of spirited Chennai- based cineastes like Mani Ratnam, P.C. Sriram, Raja Krishnamoorthy and Bala Kumaran, who joined hands with two superstars, Kamal - who had nayakan and oru kaidhiyin diary 107 done over 125 films by then - and Ilaiyaraaja, who was scoring for his 400th film. Together they decided to reposition the cinema of Madras as the ‘real' national cinema. Sriram's high-contrast imagery, Ilaiyaraaja's period music and Mani Ratnam's amazing control on sequential rhythm along with Kamal's controlled yet nuanced performance would set some of the ground rules for what would be soon called the global ‘Bollywood' style of transnational Indian cinema. The theme song, ‘Thenn pandi seemayilay' (‘On the borders of a southern Tamil landscape'), sung both by Ilaiyaraaja and Kamal, remains a benchmark for all Southern filmmakers when they compose for an idyllic rural throwback.

But how does this film fit inside Kamal's search for a new standpoint from which to enter the discourse of law and order for a nation on the cusp of rapid globalization? Secondly, what does it mean for a melodrama to move out of the classical ‘virtue versus vice' syndrome into a world of culpability without really taking on the grey areas of the psychological zone? What is the larger intention behind positioning the southern/Tamilian gangster narration in the milieu of a Hindi-speaking Bombay metropolis?

Is he a good man or a bad man? This question emerges constantly for Velu Naicker, a self-appointed modern gangster providing safety and security for all those who seek his guardianship. His answer lies in the belief that if some misdeeds can help people overcome distress, then they must be seen as good deeds. In short, the ends justify the means. Velu Naicker's son joins him unflinchingly but his daughter dares to question him about who decides what is good or legal. And what happens when someone's good happens to be someone else's evil? What if the evildoer is a Tamilian in a Hindi-speaking host society?

The narrative does not belong to the ‘angry young man' variety, spun so well by Salim-Javed in various films in the Mahabharata metaphor, of a good guy (Karna) in a bad house (Kauravas) who yearns for his mother and a virtuous family. Nayakan's tragedy is a choice made by the protagonist, knowingly and willingly.

The film explores various shades of such non-judicial justice being delivered by Velu Naicker. At one level, his style of administering justice is all about delivering a safe existence for his immediate community, the Tamil-speaking proletariat in the slums of Mumbai where ownership of land is highly contested and even convoluted. Then he also helps his fellow gangsters in other illegally occupied areas to accomplish their crooked ends. Lastly, he assists a top-ranking cop whose daughter has been molested by beating up the scoundrel responsible. In between he helps out a few others in hospitals and a schoolgirl trapped in a brothel.

Interestingly, the film's meta-text claims that citizens are happy when low-level transgressions are executed, but when it comes to big-scale violations, it should be the responsibility of the super-ego state to provide justice. At no point does the film contest the existence of state institutions such as the court or the police station. Secondly, the film also positions the ethics of defending Tamilians even if they are wrongdoers in an alien and hostile environ like Bombay. And Velu Naicker's character does not seem to know or worry about the difference between the two wrongs.

In fact, when challenged by his own daughter, he wants justice to be done for all the wrongs done unto him. Nayakan marks the start of Kamal choosing films in which he plays the lonely hunter, the protagonist who realises that the only way for social justice is to go out there all alone and deal the dice of justice. In his book The Cinema of Loneliness, Robert Kolker writes, When they do depict action, it is invariably performed by lone heroes in an enormously destructive and anti-social manner, further affirming that actual change, collectively undertaken, is impossible. When they preach harmony, it is through the useless conventions of domestic containment and male redemption. The only way to deal with them [such films], therefore, is by examining the contradictions, keeping them present in the foreground, confronting the films formally and contextually, aware that no nayakan and oru kaidhiyin diary 109 matter how such separation is made for the sake of discussion, form and content are inseparable.

It is the skilful balance between the wounded persona and the dog-eat-dog world out there, the two kinds of iniquities which the script deals with, that makes viewers support a gangster. One kind of iniquity deals with the kind of self-righteousness that Velu Naicker as a Tamilian is comfortable with, and the second deals with how he draws a line on what is a nefarious activity. Most crucially, will it shame him in front of his own children? He is afraid that his children will not respect him for whatever he is doing.

In a way, the kids act as the conscience of the audience. While some will enjoy the way the son embraces his father's ways of ganglord justice, others will side with his daughter who has the courage to question her father's violent ways and even slap Selva, his most trusted aide, for his behaviour.

The transition from a young twelve-year-old Velu on the run after killing a cop to the death of Velu Naicker at the age of sixty, all in about 150 minutes, is not a smooth ride. The time-skips do not have any well-laid-out milestones of a nation coming into its own after a long period of colonial rule to transit from the 1950s to the 1990s. A few old cars and some songs in the background contextualise the historicity of Dharavi in Bombay, the biggest urban slum in the world. Certainly, a great opportunity seems to have been lost and yet there is no doubt that the credibility of the film rests heavily on Kamal's shoulders.

Kamal shows how a loner with no education, no associations and no martial skills decides to take on the might of the Bombay police, only to get beaten and come back to his slum undefeated. His singular strength seems to be his naïve Tamilian spirit - maintained largely by his donning a white veshti and shirt, a host of rings on his fingers and talismans around his neck. The brutal Hindi-speaking cop is unable to comprehend this Tamil spirit. Since the script does not provide any material to establish his connections in high places, Velu Naicker has to be imagined as ‘political prowess' incarnate. He is the sheer body of politics and he is the virtual representation of all that can be powerful.

Excerpted with permission from Kamal Hasaan: A Cinematic Journey by K Hariharan, HarperCollins India