Exclusive From 'Rajiniland': Fan Girl Goes Kabali Krazzy!

I have a crazy set of friends. Crazy about Rajini. And they live in Chennai. On our college WhatsApp group, they started this high voltage campaign to get us all to come to Chennai to see the first day show of Kabali. I went and promptly got Rajinified. Before you could say ‘Thalaiva’, I was wearing two Rajni t-shirts, sunglasses, a bright yellow headband that said ‘Neruppa da’ and dancing with Chennai’s best to raucous dhols while crackers burst in the background and milk got poured onto hoardings of the superstar. 

There is something very comforting about being part of a mass hysteria event like this. Everyone in that crowd is a believer, from the old slightly drunk uncle in a ‘veshti’ to the ad agency guy with a bandana who has bunked work to the techie with the American drawl to the maami with her two grand-daughters. There is no place here for cynicism, sarcasm or clever witticisms. There is no time for smart put-downs or sardonic smiles. The agenda is clear- you come to worship, you come to offer your love, you come to sigh, scream, cry and become one for a brief moment with your God. If you leave your rational self behind, like chappals at the temple door, you are welcomed in with open arms and then can lose yourself joyously in that collective consciousness or craziness, whichever way you look at it. 

I arrived in Chennai early on Friday morning. At the airport I slapped on a bindi, put on some kajal, (my idea of blending in) took out my Rajni sunglasses and hit the road on a tour of the city’s single screen theatres. 

Vetri, our first stop was like a small temple with flower torans strung up at the entrance. I could almost hear the music that plays at weddings and expected someone to give me a cold drink. In the compound there was a large crowd. Almost everyone there was wearing the yellow headbands that were selling outside for ten bucks.  The crowd was excited and happy. Some people had bunked work, others were there with their boss. Kids had clearly been made to miss school by their parents. 

We visited two more theaters after that and at each place the atmosphere was the same- festive, ecstatic, breathlessly alive. All the people we spoke to had either already seen the movie in the 4 am or 7 am show or had tickets booked for multiple shows over the week. As one family that was running late explained to me “It doesn’t matter if you miss the first half hour on the first day. You can’t hear anything. We are here for the atmosphere today. We will actually see the movie in another show later.” 

Every time I turned around there was something interesting for me to see. Some sign of the respect and adoration that Rajni commanded. In some theatres there were large blank canvases put up by a Fan association where you could write your messages for Rajni. In others, there were cars with Rajni decals. Tickets were being sold in black reminding me of old times at Mumbai theatres. At Udhayam theatre there was a large barricade and people stood behind it for the last minute ten rupee tickets. It looked like a jail line and all these were happy prisoners. 

 At each stop we could hear the crowd inside the theatre screaming and yelling. I was getting a quick lesson on adulation and true fandom. I hadn’t even seen the movie but was getting shiny-eyed and posing easily for photographs with strangers, Tamil words tripping off my tongue and Rajni’s signature hand gesture from the movie becoming my personal style.  I was succumbing and enjoying every minute of it. 

But all this was just a sneak peek into the real thing that hit me when we arrived at Albert theatre where we were watching the movie. Here, things were in full swing. All the stuff you read about in the paper- the milk ‘abhishek’, the crackers, the dhols, the fan clubs dressed in identical t shirts, it was all there. Reading about it made you wonder, experiencing it made you mad. Inside, it was as the man had told me in the morning. You couldn’t hear a thing with all the noise generated by hundreds of excited people. A man behind me kept screaming “Thalaiva!” in a voice that could only have belonged to someone in a trance of religious ecstasy. The man next to him snored. Possibly tired out from all the action or maybe seeing the 4 am show. I yelled and clapped, ate my 30 rupees’ chilly popcorn, and came out happy and content. It didn’t matter that I saw it in Tamil and don’t know the language. We made up our own story and knew when some killer dialogues were spoken by the shouting and the shower of flowers on the screen. 

After the movie, the crowd surged out to meet the crowd surging in. Standing on the tall steps they gave a thumbs-up sign to the devotees waiting to go into the sanctum sanctotum. They It was a rocking movie! I don't know how many really enjoyed the movie, or actually even saw it. But the verdict had to be unanimous. As long as you were within the Lakshman Rekha of the theatre the movie was superb and Rajni was the greatest. 

In a perfect finish to the day, we went and sank our tired limbs in a bar across the hotel. It was large and dimly lit in blue. It was full of men staring silently at the TV screen and drinking seriously. There was no conversation, just soothing Tamil music. I took off my two t-shirts and my bandana and took a swig of my cold beer. Soon, we would analyze and laugh and say mean and clever things. We would look at it as a cultural phenomenon and study its sociological impact. But at that moment we let the stardust blind us for a bit more before we walked out into the city lights and became mere mortals again.