The Many Faces Of T Rajendar: An Interview

T Rajendar is different in real life. He’s soft-spoken, almost hesitant – quite unlike the actor who hums and rhymes and calls that music.

That personality, he says, is reserved for the screen.

“I realised the audience wanted a few things from me…”

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In the trailer for Anbanavan Asaradhavan Adangadhavan, STR declares:

“Ponnungala kooda thodaama nadippare, andha TR nu nenaichiya da? Thottu udhatta kadichi izhukkira STR da!”

It’s supposed to be a mass moment. The kind in which the son steps away from the spotlight trained on his actor father. “I’m not the gentleman my dad is,” STR emphasizes in every other film of his.

A meeting with TR is probably enough to reinforce the opinion that STR, perhaps, could learn a thing or two from the dad he’s so quick to dissociate himself from.

A few days after the release of Kavan, T Rajendar is enjoying the positive reviews his performance has been getting. As the conscientious editor of a Tamil television channel, TR is at his element in the film that takes on biased media. “It was a huge risk,” TR tells me. His voice is soft, hesitant almost. A far cry from the loud, rap-style performances he usually employs for television interviews. “Kavan was a huge risk for me because it shows the real me. I felt raw and vulnerable while shooting for the film, but KV Anand was most insistent. He said that he wanted to give me a makeover. I was wary because, a rejection of my role in the film is essentially a rejection of me as I am in real life.”

He found relief only after he came upon reviews of his role on social media. “Kuralarasan, my youngest son, showed them to me, and only then, I was relieved. There comes a time in an actor’s career when he capitalises on the things the audience love about him/her. I did that. I found that they wanted certain things from me. They expected me to say outrageous stuff onscreen. And I did all that because to an artiste, audience appreciation is the best kind of high there is.”

But then, years later, he realised that by giving the audience what they wanted, he’d distanced himself from reality. “I’d allowed myself to become a stereotype. They pigeonholed me into roles that I did not find any comfort in. As an artiste, I did not find any satisfaction. I realised that by allowing audience tastes to determine the way I acted, I’d become a people-pleaser. By catering to their tastes, I’d lost my individuality.”

That way, his children are different, he says. “I raised them to be strong, individualistic people. They are the kind of people who know who they are, what they want, and what they don’t want. They’re quite confident about that, and don’t really cave in to the demands from others.”

TR is very proud of this fact, just as he is proud of the fact that his son, Silambarasan, is making an attempt to step out of his shadow. “There’s nothing offensive in this, I think. He established a career on his own, with no help from me. True, he did act in a lot of my films in the beginning as a child star. But, anything he has done since Alai, has been the result of his own hard work and ambition. Nothing to do with me.”

Early in his career, T Rajendar made beautiful music and movies. He debuted as story-writer and music composer with Oru Thalai Ragam, a campus tale that romanticised ‘one-side love’. The film had a hugely popular soundtrack, and was a milestone film for the people of that generation. It established T Rajendar in the Tamil film industry, and gave him a platform to direct films such as Uyirullavarai Usha, En Thangai Kalyani and many others.

In the ’80s, TR kept busy with a steady stream of films. Steady, repetitive films. “I have a style of filmmaking that is distinctive. I like to do things a certain way. I think every filmmaker has things and themes they revisit time and again. For me, it is the sister sentiment and fast-paced dialogues that rhyme. But, the repetition that they appreciate in directors like Mani Ratnam, Shankar, they don’t appreciate in me. It’s bias probably, but I have never let it get to me.”

Over time though, the actor gained a reputation for being bizarre. In an industry that celebrates soft-spoken artistes who are humble to a fault, TR is a refreshing contrast. “I talk what I think. I write what I feel. Everything I do comes straight from the heart, there’s no block anywhere. Maybe that’s why some onaaigal don’t like me. When you say things the establishment doesn’t want to hear, they make you a fool. But at least, I’m a learned fool. Do you know how many degrees I have?”

And it’s only at the end that Rajendar succumbs to his movie persona. His voice rises and the rhetoric returns. A rhyme involving bun and ‘kannu‘ later, he’s called away by his assistant.

He’s making a movie next, the assistant tells me. A movie in which he will star, and do pretty much everything else, too.

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The T Rajendar interview is a Silverscreen exclusive.