“I wanted my son to debut in a Shankar movie”

The Sakarakatti audio launch held at the Sathyam theatres registered a near-full attendance of invitees; and significantly it brought 20 directors of Tamil cinema in one stage. While Vikram and Susi Ganesan took a leave of absence owing to their Kanthaswamy shoot schedules in Mexico, Radhika Sharathkumar made a few heads turn with her entry.

First copy of the CD was released by Rama Narayanan and received together by A R Rahman’s mother and Shanthanu’s mother and yesteryear actor Poornima Bhagyaraj. Two songs were screened and the launch was peppered with emotional speeches by a few directors.

After praising Shanthanu for his aerobics in the songs, Ameer wished him to fly high in his career after the release of the movie. He further expressed his longing to meet A R Rahman. “I have traveled far wide and met personalities; however, I haven’t got an opportunity to visit Rahman at his home in Chennai. It is my wish to visit him very soon,” he noted.

Jeyam Ravi revealed that he was earlier associated as an Assistant Director in many movies produced by Dhanu. He further stated that Shanthanu has tremendous networking skills and knows more people in the industry than him.

It was Bharathiraja who added zing to the event by expressing his longing and desire for Rahman and his music. He said that it is wonderful to witness the third generation in action and that Dhanu is a real crowd puller. After which, he concentrated mostly on pulling pranks at Rahman revealing how difficult it was to get tunes from him. “It is easier to extract milk from a tigress,” Bharathiraja said.

Bharathiraja also declared that he would make Rahman act in one of his movies. “His eyes are like Mono Lisa’s, beautiful and expressive. It would be such a waste if I didn’t employ them in one of my movies. He is acting in one of my movies,” Bharathiraja declared assertively.

A R Rahman, in his speech, mentioned that he was apprehensive to take up Sakarakatti since he had no free time for another year at that time. “However, director Prabhu already had five of my Hindi songs in mind and asked my consent to use the tunes. We only selected two of them and the rest four are fresh tunes,” Rahman said.

Bhagyaraj let a peek of fatherly anxiety by saying that he wanted his son to debut either with Shankar or Maniratnam. “I was amazed at Prabhu’s talent of story telling and didn’t have to think twice before sending Shantunu to the sets of Sakarakatti,” he reminisced. “I was quite lucky in terms of my career, maybe because my mother named me after luck. I wish the luck to continue in the case of my son too,” Bhagyaraj said. He also requested Shanthanu to consider new directors in his career unlike other established actors who think twice before signing in for debutant directors’ ventures.

The two songs, Chinamma Chilakamma and Marudaani Vizhiyil, which were screened, included extensive visual effects done by Soundarya Rajnikanth’s Ochar Studios.

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