Ee sala cup namdu. This year, the cup is ours.

The Kannada victory cry of the RCB plummeted from celebration to sorrow as mismanagement led to 11 deaths and unaccounted injuries.

It drew parallels with the tragic death of an Allu Arjun fan whose 9-year-old son too was declared brain dead, after a stampede at a screening of Pushpa 2: The Rule in Hyderabad. The triumph at the box office was washed away by the tragedy and by the arrest of Allu Arjun whose only “crime” was that his presence caused an unmanageable craze.

The reactions to the victories-turned-tragedies underlined once again the close link between cricketers and actors. They’re celebrated and berated in equal measure.

Notwithstanding the loss of lives and the accountability that will follow, there is another sports and stars angle that played out in Karnataka all week. While language chauvinists were in ecstasy that Delhi/Punjabi/North Indian boy Virat Kohli chanted the victory slogan in Kannada, there was also despair that actor and habitual offender Kamal Haasan stirred a hornet’s nest with the statement “Kannada was born out of Tamil”. In a state where linguistic fascism has become a daily debate, a remote hint that Kannada was being inferiorised irked even the high court when Kamal knocked on its doors seeking legal assistance and security for the safe release of his new film Thug Life. On the 5th, while Thug Life was released in different languages in other parts of India, Karnataka kept it out of their theatres. If the weary Hindi version is anything to go by, skipping it isn’t Karnataka’s loss. But the reasons for not screening it will remain debatable.

However, in Kamal’s case, it was not only about a loose statement that bristled the Kannadigas. “All they asked for was an apology,” observed the judge. And Kamal’s ego wouldn’t allow him to utter a simple “sorry”.

But that has always been Kamal’s problem. A tendency to believe that stardom lets him tread outside his area of knowledge and to compound it with righteous stubbornness.

Kamal is one of the two legendary icons of Tamizh cinema. He and Rajinikanth were both discovered and groomed by filmmaker K. Balachander, both rose to superstardom with strong, loyal fan bases, and have two daughters each. But, as people, they are as dissimilar as atheists and devotees.

On screen, Kamal will have kissing scenes and extra-marital forays while Rajini is antiseptically staid with his heroines.

In real life, Kamal revels in being the rebel, the non-believer. The man who dates, weds, divorces has kids out of marriage and declares, “I’m not cut out for marriage.”

Rajini may have been a rule-breaker with wild stories of dating four women simultaneously in his bus conductor days. But he has been more conservative as a family man with a strong, 44-year marriage. He gets much pleasure from being grandpa to four robust kids. With unwavering devotion to his guru Raghavendra Swamy, Rajini would also take off to the Himalayas to meditate and live incognito.

The 70-year-old Kamal clings to youth. He camouflages natural balding with spray to sport a head of black hair in photographs and wears curiously designed suits (check out what he wore to the trailer launch of Thug Life in Mumbai) to look trendy. Contrast it with 74-year-old Rajini’s kurta-veshti attire, uninhibitedly flaunting grey hair, receding hairline, bald patch et al in public.

While the differences may be put down to individual choices, there is a stark difference in their personalities too. Rajini can be resolute in his convictions but will be quick to accommodate another viewpoint and apologise if he’s hurt anybody. Kamal, on the other hand, is so convinced he’s right that he’s far from placatory. As the judge said, “All he had to do was to say ‘sorry’.”