Kamal Haasan - The Hero With A Thousand Faces

In an exclusive interview with the legend, the man himself – Dr. Kamal Haasan – we spoke about a variety of things, from cinema, to writing, to politics and to the fleeting nature of fame and the lasting nature of influence

- Praveena Shivram

The year was 1992. I was 10 years old and at a film director’s house for a birthday party, where I met Kamal Hassan for the first time. He had a beard, the Thevar Magan beard, and he was wearing his shirt tucked into his high-wasted jeans, a black belt firmly holding it all together. He was married to Sarika then, and was there with six-year-old Shruti Haasan, and barely-a-year old Akshara. In true style, Kamal Haasan, who has always remained fiercely rooted to his culture while hurtling into the future with his experimental ideas, the game he organised for all of us to play wasn’t musical chairs or passing the parcel, but kabaddi. We were swiftly divided into two teams – Kamal himself joined one of the teams, my team, his jeans rolled up to his knees – and the game began. Right in the first round, Shruti lost. And, like any six-year-old unable to understand how that even makes a difference to ‘playing’ the game, she begged her father to let her in again. She complained, cried, went looking for help from her mother, but Kamal did not relent. ‘It’s a game,’ he told her. ‘You lost fair and square. You have to wait till we finish this game and begin the next one.’