The songs in these films were massive chartbusters and most part of Yuvan Shankar Raja’s career was solidly founded upon these films. Even if some films deviated from this template, the overarching theme was adolescent love and its impact, and this was being explored or celebrated by the likes of Selvaraghavan and even Shankar. The next two years belonged to films of the same genre - adolescents and early adults falling prey to their lascivious instincts during the first half of the movie, finding themselves in a soup during the interval, trying to reform and make a name for themselves in the second half before reaching unforeseen heights. Only a few weeks after the film’s release did I get to know the story of Thulluvadho Ilamai, and most of my friends made full use of their contacts in local CD shops to procure a copy of the film to be watched in secret, when the parents were not around. I was preparing for my Class 10 Board Exams and I remember most of my classmates discreetly humming the tunes of ‘Oore Koothadikuthu Vaa da’ and ‘Vayadhuku vandha penne’ while taking notes and completing assignments. So, let me build my case.Ģ002 was the year when Dhanush’s debut film Thulluvadho Ilamai made it to the screens. It is natural for readers to dismiss my theory outright, for lack of sufficient evidence. My theory is that mainstream Tamil cinema existed for the sole purpose of meeting the requirements of my generation - the famed 90s kids - and reinvented itself from time to time to meet the rapidly-changing preferences and needs of our growing generation. Our role models were not the dupatta-tailing heroes played by the younger lot, but the incurably-angry, hopelessly patriotic honest men. Whenever I chose to postpone my homework for watching a Vijayakanth film on television, my dad found no reason to disturb me in my noble pursuit of becoming a socially-conscious, responsible Indian citizen.Īnd so, our characters were moulded by little children and Vijayakanth and Arjun. These were mostly ‘clean’ films for children of my age, and the best part about them for pre-teens like me was how perennially patriotic and single-minded these heroes were in their mission to serve the nation, even to the extent of ignoring attractive women who had no special goals in life other than to serve their heroes either as passive relief-providers or abiding housewives, or sometimes both. And many Vijayakanth films that were blockbusters, featured powerful sequences of the Captain lecturing the ignorant masses about their nonchalant attitude towards society, how that emboldened corrupt politicians and criminals and how the system grew from bad to worse in the delivery of welfare and justice to commoners like them.
In their own unique, crowd-pleasing way, these films were effective in exposing the fallacies of the establishment, and showcasing the ways in which gangsters, politicians and the police worked hand-in-glove to exploit harmless, hard-working masses for their own benefit. It would not be an exaggeration to say that my political consciousness of early adolescence, however rudimentary and immature it was, owed a great deal to films starring Vijayakanth, Sarathkumar and Arjun. These films were mostly centered on heroes pursuing not attractive women or docile college-going girls, but cold-blooded terrorists and unscrupulous gangsters plotting to take over the country. It was not the films of Kamal Haasan or Rajinikanth but those of Arjun and Vijayakanth I was fast becoming a fan of.
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