Gender sensitivity doesn’t have to be brandished with lingerie-burning fervour.
Khushboo, the DMK-turned-Congress-turned-BJP member, is a feisty woman, famous for her ballsy views. But meeting her in Chennai introduced me to a little-acknowledged practitioner of gender equality.
When Khushboo and I had shared a stage a few months ago in Mumbai, she’d told me that she and her actor-filmmaker husband Sundar C. had their own film production company. Serendipitously, during a flying visit to Chennai to attend the traditional mahurat of Mookuthi Amman 2 (Nose-ring Goddess), a new Nayanthara film, I met the man behind Khushboo.
Despite the effort to blur regional lines for cinema to stand united as one Indian film industry, few outside Tamil Nadu know that before Stree became the byword for a blockbuster horror-comedy franchise, Khushboo’s husband Sundar had set records for making four instalments of his horror-comedy Aranmanai (2014).
The fourth, released last year, was the first Tamizh film to make ₹100 crore
in the genre.
Sundar’s flair for bringing humour into different genres had nudged producer Ishari Ganesh of Mookuthi… towards him for the second instalment of this fantasy-comedy. R.J. Balaji had written and directed the original.
It was, however, a discussion on Nayanthara that brought out the gender-balancing filmmaker in Sundar. Outside TN, especially in the Hindi belt, Nayanthara may be known as SRK’s heroine from Jawan but she is such a mighty star in her own right in Tamizh cinema that she recently had to request fans to stop calling her “Lady Superstar”.
With an eye on the wider Hindi market, the Nose-ring Goddess will be marketed as Maha Shakthi for its north Indian audience; it’s the ongoing mission of every big filmmaker to unify the country through cinema. But the part that’s not been played up is that Sundar had shown three fingers to his producer to signify that the budget for MA 2 would be a hefty three-figure amount, that too for a lavishly scaled film that rested not on the swag of a hero but on the shoulders of its lead actress Nayanthara. In other words, a big-budget film centring on a female, a goddess no less. Can he pull it off commercially?
Once again, without resorting to chest-beating feminism, Sundar pointed out that his successful horror-comedy had featured Hansika Motwane, Trisha, Rashii Khanna and Tamannaah Bhatia, firming his belief that it is a well-told story that sells, not a male hero alone.
But then, he is a man used to strong ladies at home and in the studios. When I said to him, “Apologies, I’ve known you only as Khushboo’s husband,” he happily accepted that even in TN, irrespective of how many hit films he has made, he’s still famous as Khushboo’s husband. At home too, he’s outnumbered. Khushboo and Sundar have two tall, strapping young daughters. The 24-year-old Avantika, who has learnt baking and patisserie at Le Cordon Bleu and acting at MetFilm School in London, is the next celebrity kid to turn actress. Anandita, 22 years and 6’1”, went to Raindance Film School, London, and assisted Mani Ratnam before turning into a full-fledged producer.
When both girls trooped into Sundar’s van, mother and daughters turned out in gorgeous saris, Sundar affectionately told Avantika and Anandita that he wished they’d been around for the mahurat. It transpired that the girls had decided to drive themselves down but had gone around in circles before finding the studio. By then, Sundar had flagged off his new Nayanthara film, carrying forward the Mookuthi… franchise.
With the daughters having chosen their paths, it’s interesting that no one’s following Khushboo into politics.
“One politician in the family is enough,” Sundar smiled and spoke for himself, before turning his attention to his shoot with Nayanthara.
The Bachchan parivar too is known to have expressed similar sentiments.