Celluloid Valium

‘‘If he did, he’d have a shaven head, and a beard so long it would reach down and tickle his navel. He would look like a mullah,’’ says the actor at Raj Kamal Studios in Chennai.

An interview with Kamal Haasan doesn’t happen overnight. You have to fight your way through scores of fans on August 15, wedge yourself into a vantage point between the courtyard and the door of the office, wait patiently till all 10,000 of them finish taking photographs with their hero, then accidentally cross his path as he heads inside and request an interview. If you want to catch his eye, you wear a really bright outfit so you stand out in a sea of white. After that, you wait by the phone until his assistant calls saying Sunday afternoon is fine. Kamal Haasan works six days a week, rests on the seventh.

After that, come the rules.

No questions about the past, present or future loves in his life. Though sex is not an issue. ‘‘Sex is not just for procreation. People are silly if they think that. The drive is imprinted in your DNA. But we have found beauty in it, additional benefits from this primordial feeling, it has thrown up poetry, romance, coined the word ‘love’ complicating the issue. It used to be a simple three letters which we muddled into a four-letter word.’’

No photographer either. Movie stills will be provided, since he is in every one. He plays himself most of the time, it’s easier. ‘‘Everybody has multiple personalities, only they are too scared they will scratch themselves in the right place in public.”

The room we are seated in is bare, except for two snaps, one a movie still, and the other, a shot of Haasan in a graduation robe. ‘‘I mentioned to my friend, the dean of a university, that I always wanted to get a college degree , so he called me over to hand it out.’’

He’s never been to college, he was a high school drop-out. ‘‘But if I do study again, it would be film school. Or maybe literature.’’

Haasan is not a committed scholar though he writes poetry in his spare time. His library stocks ‘‘the usual, what any man with an appetite for reading would’’—Edward Gibbon, Sophocles, screenwriter John Truby.

And none are lent. Haasan learnt that from his guru Anathu who never let anyone borrow his books. ‘‘He used to show off his collection. I once told him, ‘when you die, I don’t want your damn money but I want your books.’’’

And finally, no interviews at home. To slide into home base, you have to be family or part of his inner circle. A circle that includes about 10 people. And Spartacus, his Doberman. ‘‘I owe poor Spartacus a bath in the sea, it’s overdue by two years,’’ he smiles.

Spartacus can blame the face for that. ‘‘If I want to walk on the road, I have to fly to the Czech Republic. Sometimes I feel like ripping this face off and becoming a common man. I miss strangers. The stranger they are, the more they fascinate me.’’

Years ago, a not so famous Haasan, who was then doing his first Hindi film Ek Duje Ke Liye, was travelling on a train with a friend. The two started singing and were joined by a beautiful female voice. When he introduced himself, all she said was, ‘Kamal Haasan, what kind of a name is that?’ ‘‘I was grateful for her ignorance. We had a wonderful conversation about music after that.’’

He’s had other humbling moments. ‘‘Sometimes I conceive of a shot and then a person who isn’t trained for direction or acting, suggests very simply and humbly, an absolutely alternate shot, which is good. Genius can fumble. Even Marlon Brando can look stupid given a bad script.”

Even Kamal Haasan. ‘‘Fifty per cent of the work I’ve done is with a bad script. But why talk about it? Somebody thinks he has produced a beautiful child out of his fiscal semen. I can’t belittle his retarded child.’’

He’s a hard man to please. There are very few films that have moved him to tears. Sagara Sangamam maybe. Nayakan was genuine, but what really gets him down is Mahanathi. ‘‘I can never get over the scene in which prostitutes tell my character they are willing to pay for the release of his daughter. As for the other movies, I look around, see people crying and know I’ve tweaked them at the right points.’’

But why does every movie insist on tweaking? ‘‘Everybody needs a good howl. Just think of me as celluloid valium,’’ he says.

The coffee arrives. Haasan drinks it black with a dollop of honey stirred in. He stopped drinking milk when he was 21 because a Siddha practitioner told him it was the root cause of his ulcers.

No dairy products in the diet, a nightly gym session for exercise. No other stay-young formula. ‘‘I’m not keen on playing a young man anymore, so the wrinkles can stay.’’

His last dance around the trees was with Manisha Koirala in Indian and he hated it. ‘‘That boy prancing around was a nuisance, subterfuge for entertainment. Whatever carried the movie was my dual role as an old man.’’

Which is why as Haasan ages, expect his characters to age. ‘‘I have already changed my role. In my last film, Anbe Sivam, I play a character my age. Sivam was crafted by me. I’m not a hired hand anymore. I create my films,’’ he says.