If someone asks you who made your life to be happy or miserable, the most common answer would be ‘fate’. Yes. It is true to a great extent. Our fate is decided on the day we were born in this world. We also say that brilliant astrologers in India were/are capable of predicting one’s future if the time, date, month etc., are recorded in a perfect manner.

There is a famous Omar Khayyam’s verse also there which says

‘The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line.
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.’

In such a case, is there no role for an individual to make his/her life a success or failure? There is and there are. But, most of the time we attribute success to the individual’s talents and failure to fate.

All these preamble is for me to write about two very successful personalities of Tamil Nadu who are heavily pampered and scathingly ridiculed by the media and the general public in several ways. Why? Because these two personalities are trying to dabble in politics which is not their forte, but their Distant Dreams.

When MGR became a major success, in fact, it was unbelievable to many political pundits of the country because he was considered just a promoter of the ‘highly principled and parochial regional’ party called Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. His films were used as a medium to promote DMK. Very true. But, after the founder leader Annadurai passed away, Kalaignar Karunanidhi captured the party and brought it under his control with his political acumen. He thought he was shrewd and tried to eliminate MGR, the face of DMK, among the public, in general. That move was an absolute faus paux. He earned a permanent political rival in MGR’s All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), Not to stop with that he made yet another miscalculation on the rise of MGR’s protégé Jayalalithaa also in a way and failed.

When Jayalalithaa turned out to be a great successor to MGR through her intelligence and tireless efforts, other Tamil film actors started nurturing political ambitions. Even during MGR’s time, his opponent and contemporary Shivaji Ganesan entered politics and failed miserably though in acting prowess he was far ahead of MGR.

But, Jayalalithaa’s entry and success were contemptuously commented on and so we saw actors with least personality, power or commonsense like T Rajender, K Bhagyaraj, Ramarajan, Sarath Kumar, Karunas, Karthik and Vijayakant entering politics by floating a party. Among all these, Vijayakant alone turned out to be a little successful with a sobriquet by his fans as ‘Karuppu MGR’ though his public behavior was far from that of MGR and absolutely rude and stupid. Yet, he was powerful enough once to split the votes and in the bargain defeated Jayalalithaa. Jayalalithaa who realized this, struck an alliance with him in the next elections and won but quickly made him a dummy. Now his DMDK (Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam) is as inactive and worthless as he is now.

During Jayalalithaa’s authoritative and extravagant rule (1991-1996), DMK used the popularity of Rajnikant who by that time had been christened as ‘Super Star’ by the Tamil Nadu film crazy public to talk ill of Jayalalithaa in their Sun TV and won the elections. Whether Super Star’s words worked or not, that time Jayalalithaa would have faced defeat even otherwise through her misdemeanors. That little role he played in unseating Jayalalithaa, made Super Star’s subsequent films start carrying political innuendos that he has an eye for entering politics and becoming the CM of TN. Further, his on and off demonstration of his faith in God, piety to Saibaba, Raghavendra, and from subtle to open support from the Tamil Nadu political commentator Cho Ramaswami. He fanned the dreams of not only Super Star Rajnikant but also the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under the leadership of Narendra Modi to start wooing him to join BJP and expected him to promote BJP in Tamil Nadu and its population, a state which will never favor BJP or its principles even today.

Rajnikant who is a shrewd nay cunning guy used this to popularize his films which never saw success in the later periods by giving vague and oblique references to starting a party of his own which will promote his ‘Aanmika Arasiyal’ (Spiritual Politics; what an oxymoron!). Yet, the gullible or equally cunning media and Tamil Nadu population pampered him and expected him during last general elections to come out by announcing his entry into politics openly.

But, the public failed to understand Rajnikant’s opportunistic attitude in every act of his from films to public activities. His first love is ‘cinema’; that too of a particular formula. Just before the elections, he was acting in a movie under production of DMK family Sun Pictures. He had a schedule to go to Hyderabad for its shooting. He announced before going that ‘If I don’t come now to serve you, when will the chance come?’, ‘Even if I have to die, I will die for Tamil Nadu and its population’. Really high sounding claims! Aren’ they? He promised soon after his return, he will announce his decision on entering the political fray. Alas! He returned and admitted he is backing out of politics as his health conditions are not favorable.

Any logical thinking public would have understood what would have happened and why the Super Star made a Super Somersault! But, TN people’s cinema craze is something exceptional. So a group of ‘politically innocent’ public and media are still nurturing the hope of Super Star entering politics and going to Fort Saint George as the Chief Minister.

What they still fail to understand is there can never be a turncoat like Rajnikant be it films or politics!  

Kamal Hassan who is really an actor of excellence and the filmi rival of Rajnikant was completely cheesed off by the importance given to the Super Star in the media and political circles. They kindled his jealousy and suddenly he wanted to jump into politics because he wants to do ‘good’ for Tamil Nadu ‘public’ by becoming, what else, CM!

Nevertheless, Kamal Hassan is someone who is more intelligent with less commonsense, more action oriented and less lethargic unlike his celluloid opponent.

Someone who once said that his duty to politics is to just go and vote on the election day, announced his party called ‘Makkal Neethi Mayyam’ (Public Center for Justice, if one translates it loosely) and turned active. Nevertheless, Kamal Hassan had several drawbacks. Though he is definitely an intelligent person among the film folk, in general, his views and expressions are terribly obscure, baffling and positively stupid. Most of the time, his utterings made him butt of ridicule because of its absurdity and absolute unadulterated nonsense.

However, he is a man of action and also a rationalist though hails from the Brahmin Iyengar family. He always utters he follows two diametrically opposite personalities; Mahatma Gandhi and EV Ramasami Naicker. He went and met the leaders of opposition parties as his principal rival being BJP and Narendra Modi. The reason is simple. They went behind his arch professional rival Rajnikant to support them whereas he wasn’t even called for an interview. Now one can understand KH’s anathema to BJP and its leadership.

Giving the Devil its due, he contested the last elections for Assembly and faced defeat in all the seats his party contested and he himself was defeated in Coimbatore against the BJP candidate. Well, still Kamal Hassan is bonhomie with the ruling DMK and supports their principles and activities through acts and talks. I personally feel that his film career is almost closed but the film industry and the media claims his last movie ‘Vikram’ (supposedly a multi starrer with Vijay Sethupathi and Fawd Fazil who are no comparison to KH in acting or stardom!) is a super hit. However, Kamal Hassan still wants to continue his film career also in parallel, so he continues acting and hobnobbing with the film industry people.

Though Kamal Hassan is an exceptional actor of merit, his personal life is a mess. He lived with three women (Vani Ganapathy, Sarika and Gowthami) and except Vani all others have no patronizing words to say about him even after spending nearly a decade with him as live-in partners. His two daughters are said to be in films and music but without success and their lives as of today look rudderless.

In my opinion, his last film worth mentioning was ‘Papanasam’, the remake of ‘Drishyam’ the popular Malayalam movie. Nevertheless, Rajnikant keeps acting in films which seem to be a continuous string of flops. He hasn't had a single hit movie since 2005. His last one ‘Annaththe’ also bombed at the box office.

Further, there can be no comparison between these persons with either MGR or Jayalalithaa. MGR was someone who grew with the DMK party since its inception. He was sent out by Kalaignar in 1972 and started AIADMK and entered politics full time leaving cinema behind. From 1977 to 1987 till his death, he was the CM of Tamil Nadu for three tenures. Jayalalithaa entered politics in 1982 at the age of 34 and her film connection was over two years before. She came to power 1991 and served six terms till her death in 2016. She fought for her position bitterly and won. MGR passed away at the age of 70 during which he had achieved his political ambitions and Jayalalithaa died at the age of 68 and she also made her mark in Tamil Nadu political history.

Rajnikant is 72 years old and Kamal Hassan is 68. Both seem to have multiple health issues also. In addition, both actors are now absolutely under the mercy and control of the ruling DMK party. Now, one can understand who calls the shots and what their future would be in Tamil Nadu politics.

I am not sure whether one should appreciate their acts and antics or laugh at them for their absolute arrogance or idiocy to enter politics and rule Tamil Nadu State at the fag-end of their film and public lives.

Anyway, dreams never die. A leading actor in Tamil who is in his forties seems to have an eye on TN politics, read the Chief Minister post.

Whoever in Tamil films today aspires to achieve something in Tamil Nadu politics, it would be impossible as none have the background, diligence, won bitter fights or possess charisma of either MGR or Jayalalithaa.