Review: Watching Kabali is an experience
Watching a Rajnikanth film in Mumbai's Aurora Theatre can only be compared to watching
a Salman Khan film in Bandra’s Gaiety-Galaxy, but multiplied 100 times
over, feels Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
population. Not because of its cheap tickets or the cheaper canteen fare (for the
price of one ticket at PVR a small family can catch a film here and maybe eat
something, too), but because it is the only cinema in the city that runs full shows
of Tamil films.
For the rest of the city’s population, too, Aurora is special.
"That is the one where Tamils go crazy over Rajnikanth films, right?" asked a friend
who was visiting from Chennai, and he was right.
The theatre’s fame has indeed spread far and wide, thanks to one, and only one, man.
Rajinikanth. Each release of his sees greater frenzy among his fans.
Watching a Rajnikanth -- or Thalaiva, as his fans call him -- film in Aurora can only
be compared to watching a Salman Khan film in Bandra’s Gaiety-Galaxy, but
multiplied 100 times over.
This Friday saw me tick another item off my bucket list of things to do before I die
-- which was to watch a Rajni film in Aurora on the day of its release, for
the ‘experience’.
My Uber driver who dropped me off at the theatre asked me innocently: ‘Kya ho raha hai
yahaan, sablog kyu nach rahe hain (what’s going on here, why are people
dancing on the roads)?’
It’s a Rajni film, I told him.
Nothing else I tell him will explain the Superstar phenomenon to him -- or to millions
of Indians like him who are puzzling over why a man pushing 70, who
looks so ordinary off screen, and who to them only means funny mannerisms and
staccato dialogue delivery -- can evoke such frenzy, such adulation, such craze
across age groups, but among typically boy-men in their late teens to mid-30s.
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