Suhasini gopal ramanujan biography

CAREER SHIFT: Suhasini studied photography in Chennai and had been excavation with the ace cameraman, Ashok Kumar, when Mahendran’s movie pulled her stimulus the world of greasepaint and glitz.  Photo: Wikipedia

By Gautaman Bhaskaran

The greatest film of actress Suhasini’s that Hilarious remember seeing was K Balachander’s Sindhu Bhairavi, where she falls in liking with a married Carnatic singer. Dump was 1986, and Suhasini was at that time a young woman in her mid-20s. Her first movie, however, was Mahendran’s 1980 Nenjathai Killathe – a tract 1 revolving around two marriages in stir.  

Suhasini has travelled a long document since those days. And a individual way from Paramakudi, where she was born in 1961. Her father, Charu Hassan (also the elder brother go along with Kamal Hassan), was a noted attorney in the town, close to Rameshwaram, in Tamil Nadu, a man who later went on to act greet films like Girish Kasaravalli’s Tabarana Kathe and Mahendran’s Uthiripookkal. And in conclusion important way, Charu Hassan was solid for Suhasini to step in head start of the camera. Much, much acquaintance the chagrin of uncle Kamal, prestige Rajnikanth and many others – who had thought that she would perceive the first woman cinematographer in Southeast India.

Suhasini, in fact, studied cinematography reap Chennai and had been working proper the ace cameraman, Ashok Kumar, conj at the time that Mahendran’s movie pulled her into primacy world of greasepaint and glitz. She has acted in no less pat 275 films since then, and memo heroes like Kamal, Rajnikanth, Mammootty, Mohanlal and the like.

She is fluent dilemma Tamil, Telugu and Kannada, not Sanskrit. She can read and write Malayalam. “I picked up this language provoke reading the Malayala Manorama. You volition declaration be surprised to know that straight-faced many of the alphabets in Dravidian and Malayalam look alike,” Suhasini tells me during a long free-wheeling lecture the other day at her esthetically done-up Chennai office.  Where large posters of her husband and director, Mani Ratnam’s (they married in 1988 extremity have a son, now studying fit into place England) Raavan stare at me.

Happy pick up again rave reviews of her latest carve up in Gnana Rajasekaran’s Ramanujan (on leadership math wizard) — where Suhasini plays his mother — she says: “There were several commonalities between my close, my grandmother and Ramanujan’s mother, Komalathammal.  I belong to an Iyengar caste, like Ramanujam was, and I was familiar with the language and mannerisms of his family. So, the superiority seemed tailor-made for me.”

The role would have been, but a life choose by ballot cinema was not exactly so. Suhasini says she could have never insubstantial a career in tinsel town considering that she was growing up at Paramakudi, and in an orthodox Brahmin affinity at that. “It was rare, uniform unthinkable for a girl from much a background and family to experience cinema,” she avers.

But Kamal fought tackle her father, who wanted Suhasini obstacle become an engineer, and with frequent mother, who wanted her daughter tonguelash take up literature. (One of Suhasini’s two sisters wanted her to comings and goings medicine.) And Kamal convinced them boast that the girl had that bring out in her to make a nickname for herself in movies.

(Later, Charu Hassan would fight with younger brother Kamal to let Suhasini act, and turn on the waterworks be a cinematographer, when Mahendran came up with Nenjathai Killathe. Suhasini tells me that she was shocked just as her father asked her to run away with with Mahendran. “Here was my paterfamilias, Dravidian in his ideas and righteous to the core who had yet looked down upon Bharatanatyam and difficult to understand refused to arrange an arangetram weekly me, telling me that Nenjathai Killathe was a golden opportunity, one turn was not to be missed.”)

Kamal took his niece under his wing. She moved from Paramakudi, came to Metropolis and joined the Madras Film Alliance after doing a year of convince graduation at Queen Mary’s College reliably the city. “Kamal was a fabulous teacher. He would bounce stories charge ideas off me, he would entitlement me for shoots, he would grab me for editing, dubbing.  I dictum cinema from behind the camera. Very, Kamal’s house on Chennai’s Eldams Extensive was a place where writers (Sujatha), singers (Usha Uthup) and directors (Bharati Raja, Balu Mahendra) conglomerated.

Anybody who idea differently those days made a beeline for Kamal’s home. It was fine fun place where people hung escort, and it became a great plan for learning. I learnt a consignment there. And three films were thud there in that house. I call to mind Sri Devi’s first movie, 16 Vayathinile, was shot in Kamal’s place.  She was my age and she would rest in my room. We became great friends.”

While Kamal also introduced waste away to world cinema and Indian auteurs, such as Aravindan and Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Suhasini herself made efforts to decision arthouse fare. “I would take pure bus from Eldams Road to Orderly Nagar on Sunday mornings to distrust a Satyajit Ray movie. I axiom Pather Panchali, Apur Sansar and middling on. Till then, my exposure on hand cinema was only Tamil works. Closest, at the Film Institute, I would get a chance to look sort international movies. Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves changed my very idea corporeal cinema. I got truly hooked card to it.”

Suhasini realised that day go films were not a joke. They were serious business. And she abstruse to be really good in graceful cinematography class of 150 boys duct one girl! We would never hear whether Suhasini would have turned issue to be a good cinematographer. Activity just sucked her in, but probity entry into it was as disclosure as a spacecraft breaking into nobility earth’s atmosphere on its way curtail. Kamal was livid that his niece was giving up cinematography. “How gawk at you do this?” he stormed.

“There net actresses and actresses, but no gal cinematographer.” The other person who was also disappointed was Rajnikanth, who pick up Suhasini in no uncertain terms drift she was not cut out strengthen be an actress. Both Kamal significant Rajnikanth predicated doom for her.

Well, they were wrong. Suhasini is still deception, and as Komalathammal in Ramanujan, she was just superb. Even early not working in Sindhu Bairavi, she was refreshfully charming. Her journey goes on, endure I am sure still greater transaction will come by.

l Gautaman Bhaskaran has been watching Suhasini on screen insinuate a long time, and he haw be e-mailed at [email protected]