Duopoly is intrinsic to Tamil Nadu’s popular culture or politics. This ‘either-or’ pattern that equally forms one unit is a syndrome that is evident when talk veers towards Rajinikanth-Kamal Haasan, Ilaiyaraaja-A.R. Rahman or DMK-AIADMK. You need the other as a mirror for validation, even if the reflection may be different. But even within this duopoly-spectrum, Kollywood, as the Tamil film industry became known, threw up a string of other duopolys. Beyond the Rajini-Kamal axis, in the 1980s and a certain part of the 1990s, there was Vijayakant-Sathyaraj, Prabhu-Karthik and Arjun-R. Sarath Kumar. If you extend this a bit further, there was Mohan-Murali too just as the Vijay-Ajith duo was breaking in.
Come Pongal or Deepavali, if you didn’t get tickets for the latest Rajini or Kamal flick, the option was to lean on one among the rest. Vijayakant was very much there even if there was this patronising reference to him as the poor man’s Rajini. The usual stereotypes were about his being this warm elder brother, village chief or action hero, bent on doing his own stunts.
But dig deep and if you are an Ilaiyaraaja fan, prone to hearing his 1980s numbers on loop, there is no way you would miss ‘Rasathi unna kanadha nenju kathadi pol aduthu’. The number from Vaidehi Kathirundhal tugged hearts with its pathos, especially with Vijayakant playing the anguished hero. It is one memory that endures about a man, who later became larger-than-life and also dabbled in politics.
