Naturally, the fellow was incredulous, and wondered if I was quite myself that morning. I asked him exactly what he meant by ‘watch Baahubali 2’. Couldn’t figure out what he was trying to say. Thus it was that when my driver asked me, casually, if I plan to go and watch Baahubali 2 in the near future, I was brought up short. When commercials play with maddening frequency over each other, one cannot be blamed for mixing up the product categories.
Baahuabali 2 was not a new, improved brand of hormone booster, nor a snazzy new chain of physical fitness centres, and definitely not an acne and dark spot removing cream. It took till a couple of days ago when realisation finally dawned. I usually switch channels when the commercial breaks begin (as do most of you), but bits of the audio and visuals do get retained - subliminally, as the advertising gurus rather neatly put it.
For quite a few days, I didn’t even know what this Baahubali was - the adverts kept flitting in and out of our television screens, and the name was slowly but surely embedding itself into the recesses of my brain, like some insidious, creeping disease. I am ashamed to admit that I was not even aware of the existence of a Baahubali 1. You can, therefore, hardly fault me if the current Baahubali 2 craze is leaving me completely cold. As for Hindi films, barring one mad phase of Rajesh Khanna / Amitabh Bachchan hits during the ‘70s, the genre is a blank page. For the most part, the dominance of the Rajni - Kamal era passed me by, to say nothing of the present lot of Tamil stars whom I will struggle to barely identify. Comedians like Thangavelu, Baliah and Nagesh provided the comedic icing on the cake. The thing is I myself took great inverted pride, for long periods of time in having watched only English films and a handful of Tamil films, mostly Sivaji / Padmini / Gemini / Savitri starrers. I can even identify with his caustic sentiment. While one will have to watch the film again to glean the precise, ironic context in which that line was delivered, I can get the broad sense of what the great Nagesh was driving at. In a sequence from the highly popular Tamil film hit of the '60s, 'Kadhalikka Neramillai' (No time for love), the late, lamented comedian Nagesh, cast as a wannabe film director, mockingly mimics a couple of aspiring heroines in English with a strong Tamil accent, “We don't see Tamil pictures, we only see English pictures”.
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