Cho's pungent scripts satirised society, politics

By Vamanan

When the legendary thespian `Avvai' T K Shanmugham came to preside over one of

Cho Ramaswamy

's early plays in the fifties, he advised the amateur playwright and actor not to give English titles to his Tamil plays. Cho, who had till then come up with `Why not?', `Wait and see' and `What for?', soon responded with `Quo Vadis' which is Latin for `Where are you going?' and `Sambhavaami Yuge Yuge' which is, of course, a Sanskrit phrase from the

Bhagavad Gita

! Irrepressible, unpredictable and with a mind of his own, Cho would, later in life, narrate with glee that K Balachander threw up his hands n despair at having to direct him on stage! It was not given even to the most reputed stage director of his time to be able to tame Cho, the enfant terrible of the amateur Tamil stage. Cho would later go on not only to portray the controversial and enigmatic emperor of Delhi Muhammad Bin Tughluq on stage and cinema, but also make the `Pagla Sultan' his mascot and the name of his influential magazine on political affairs.

There was something of this quixotic gambit in the way he forced himself on dramatist Koothabiran as an aspiring actor, threatening to walk into every scene of the latter's `Thaenmozhiyaal' if a meaningful role was not written for him. Koothabiran decided discretion was the better of val our, but did not know how to name the character, an interloper into his script! Cho was generously willing to share his name, with the result being that he was rather well noticed by audiences.

Viveka Fine Arts, the drama group whose most famous writer and actor Cho became, was formed by his brother and three of his friends. The thrill of performing on stage as well as the joy of meeting friends was what brought together the gang. Cho was not only a prolific playwright but its stormy petrel who would fearlessly cock a snook at the powers that be. One of Cho's lifelong regrets in this regard would be his petulant public reaction to Kamaraj's impatience at his derisive attacks on the Congress government of the time. As for any fireworks against his plays by the

Kazhagam

malcontents, or any move for a ban, Cho welcomed them as publicity! He would lament that he had written only four or five political plays but they overshadowed his other plays. His `Saathiram Sonnadhillai' dealt with caste prejudice trenchantly . `Is God Dead' focused on the dearth of values and ethics in society . `Yaarukkum Vetkamillai' exposed the hypocrisy of society on prostitution. Cho directed his plays like `Unmaiye Un Vilai Yenna' and `Yaarukkum Vetkamillai' on celluloid but confessed that he had not been able to make the transition from stage to cinema smoothly.

After the success of Thuglak on stage and screen, and the launch of Thuglak as a fortnightly (1970), Cho's dialogues in films began to centre on politics. There were a few films that made it seem that Cho would take portrayal of characters seriously, but he was more into playing himself again and again as a cynical critic of the political system.

Cho took himself seriously, at least in the later part of his life, as an interpreter of Hinduism both through the printed word and television serials. He could take conservative viewpoints on epics and puranas but he himself was disruptive in his individualistic plays. In his scripts, Hindu gods lose out in the face of contemporary society's crassness. While even god's avatars cannot rid us of corruption, the heavens turn topsy-turvy on the introduction of our `democratic' practices and even Saraswathi, the goddess of learning, is confounded by the values of our writers.

(The writer is a historian of Tamil cinema and an author of many works on the subject)