Actor-director Kamal Haasan describes it as a tribute that’s been “long-overdue”. But the man who has been honoured after 45 years in cinema has no complaints. “It was a great moment for me and I savoured it with pleasure,” says film director and screenwriter Kailasam Balachander.

The self-effacing director — a legend in the South — did not believe that he had been awarded the Dadasaheb Phalke prize when he was told about it confidentially the night before it was announced on April 29. Worried that it was a hoax, he didn’t tell anyone except his wife about the award that’s bestowed by the government on veteran cinema artistes. “I believed it only when I saw the TV scroll,” says Balachander, who has directed over 100 films.

With a prominent slash of vibhuti (ash) on his forehead, Balachander comes across as a simple man. He is seated before me in his Chennai office, eager to narrate the story of his life. The office walls are largely adorned with collages of black and white stills from his films. And there are congratulatory bouquets lying all around him.

People know KB, as he is affectionately called in the film fraternity, differently. Some hail him as the man responsible for introducing superstar Rajinikanth to the world. Others know him as the director of the 1981 Hindi film Ek Duje Ke Liye. And to a small but vocal section of film lovers, he will always be remembered for his film Thaneer Thaneer, released the same year.

At 81, the director has no illusions about his place in the technology and commerce driven world of Indian cinema. “Thank God, I belonged to another era,” he exclaims with feeling. “I have crossed the time factor. I will not be able to make the films of today. To me, cinema is beautiful and it is an art. It is not a pastime which is what it has become today,” he says passionately. And, he adds for good measure, “Can you make a film like Charulata today? Will it be appreciated? People will call it slow.”

His films, he adds, dealt with emotions and stories. “Unreal computer graphics was not the protagonist,” he says. Computer graphics and technique, he fears, have replaced the interplay of emotions in a relationship. “I love techniques like dissolve and transition but I do not accept that films should be technically brilliant and shorn of substance,” he says. Neither can he understand why producers vie with one another to depict the worst in violence. “It is sad,” he rues.

His last few films — including Poi in 2006 — did not stir up the box office. Yet Balachander is still full of life. He keenly follows the films of today and even dashes off an appreciative note to directors or actors. He loved Taare Zameen Par made by Aamir Khan and the Tamil period visual drama Madraspattinam. “I recognise and empathise with the sincerity in these two films. They did not introduce fights or change their subject to suit the heroine or shoot two climaxes to test the waters. They remained focused on their subject,” says the filmmaker.

His own films’ success, he adds, was because of this kind of a conviction. “I stayed focused on my subject. I used to listen to the suggestions of people around me but I would stick to what I wanted,” he reveals.

It was this dogged nature that helped him pursue his passion for cinema. His father, a village munsif, who wanted to educate his son and place him in a secure government job, would threaten him with dire consequences if he sneaked off to watch films as a child.

So Balachander went on to join the Madras Accountant General’s office as a clerk, but dabbled with theatre — which was his passion — after work. He recalls how his wife, Rajam, would complain that he neglected her and the family as he tried to juggle his job and theatre. “I would not return home after work. I was busy staging plays which brought no money. That irritated her,” he recounts with a chuckle.

But the passion that Balachander nurtured refused to die. He continued to pour his energies into plays — which he wrote, directed and acted in — and soon became quite a name in Chennai’s theatre circles in the Sixties. The appreciation and fans that followed transported him to the world of cinema.

It was quite a journey for Balachander, who grew up in a lower middle-class Brahmin household in a nondescript village called Nannilam in Thanjavur, with little exposure to films and the world. As a child, he lapped up “stories with a twist in the end” laced with humour in the lone Tamil magazine that he found in the panchayat-run library. He watched mythological movies such as Krishna Leela and Kannagi. He would land up in cinema projection rooms and pick up stray pieces of negatives from the floor and hoard them.

It was much later — after he’d moved to Chennai on work — that he started watching English films and picked up tips on lighting and shots.

And then one day opportunity knocked at his door. “Passion is of no use if there is no opportunity. The important thing is that good times and breaks should come,” says Balachander, who also is a firm believer in divine intervention. In his case, it came in the form of the charismatic film actor and the late chief minister of Tamil Nadu, M.G. Ramachandran.

MGR was already a major force in the Dravidian movement and a popular action hero when he came to watch one of Balachander’s plays. “It was a play about a typical mama’s boy and MGR loved it,” remembers Balachander. A fan of the “edge-of-the-seat” excitement created by Alfred Hitchcock, he admits that this play might have been inspired by Psycho.

MGR bought the rights of the film but was dissuaded from making it. “You are an action hero and cannot be seen as a mother’s boy, people told him,” he recalls. MGR went on to ensure that Balachander wrote the screenplay for his next film.

“This film was tailor-made for MGR — all the scenes and incidents were created around him. It was not my cup of tea and I felt uncomfortable with it,” he recounts. A similar feeling assailed him years later, after his “discovery” Rajinikanth, who featured in Balachander’s 1976 film Moondru Mudichu, turned into a phenomenon and went on to achieve superstardom. Balachander never directed him again. However, his company Kavithalayaa, which is run by his daughter Pushpa Kandaswamy but where he continues to be the “creative mentor”, produced Rajinikanth’s film Kuselan in 2008.

“People’s expectations of Rajinikanth grew. They wanted fist fights and punchy dialogues and those were not my forte,” he admits. He never compromised on the kind of films he made, irrespective of who starred in it. He directed love stories and socially relevant films but always sought to portray a human angle with a sensitive eye. “I was always observant of people and life around me,” he says.

Balachander was a strict disciplinarian, a trait he’d inherited from his father. His adherence to timing was legendary in the film world. “People knew if I said 9am, I meant I would take the shot exactly at 9,” he says.

Visitors keep dropping in to congratulate him during the course of the interview. Director Mani Ratnam’s former assistant and debutant director Krishnan Seshadri Gomatam walks in to wish him, accompanied by a woman who deals with cinema sub-titles. They want to sub-title his films and send them to retrospective sections for film festivals. Balachander agrees shyly and asks the visitors to speak to his daughter. “Not many people know that my father is extremely shy, especially in the company of women,” reveals Pushpa Kandaswamy.

Balachander’s USP was that he could make a national award-winning film like Thaneer Thaneer, which centred on the sufferings of a woman in a water-starved village, and a commercial success like Ek Duje Ke Liye, which revolved around two star-crossed lovers from the South and the North. He remembers how he stunned critics in Calcutta, who couldn’t imagine how the same man could direct the two films which were so vastly different. “You just have to compartmentalise your mind and do it,” he says with a laugh.

He has no grand delusions about himself as a filmmaker. Balachander says he was passionate about cinema and it helped that he did not have any distractions. “I was focused on my work. You know I have never travelled to the United States. I only go abroad if I have to shoot,” he says.

He is a man who could have been king. He chose to be a commoner instead.