Different artists, different tributes
Playwright and scriptwriter Mohan Rangachari, also known as ‘Crazy’ Mohan, died of cardiac arrest at 67 on June 10. The same day, Girish Karnad, a great playwright and Jnanpith award winner, died at 81. While one tickled the Tamilian’s funny bone, the other activated the intellectual’s ‘metaphysical’ wire. Karnad’s death made a splash nationwide in the media. He was the Kannadiga aficionado’s pride. He crossed the literary boundaries of the state and charmed the Indian art circuit with his rebellious intellect and courageous activism. Mohan, in contrast, never left Chennai’s Mylapore area. He was a Madras addict (he preferred Madras to Chennai), wrote Tamil plays and film scripts and had said he would miss the mosquitoes of Mylapore during his trips to Massachusetts for his theatre tours.
Mohan had touched the chord of the Tamilian mass as he effortlessly transcended every social layer with his witty one-liners and skilful wordplay. His immortal lines in many films of Kamal Haasan are great class-levellers, triggering maddening laughter among people across the spectrum. Mohan scripted his immortality, but the media coverage of his death and contribution to fine arts has been confined to a few pages, and air space in Tamil Nadu that lasted two days. At best, Tamil film buffs across the country and the world made his videos leap across social media platforms. Though tempting, this is not meant to be a class versus mass argument, or even a language diatribe. But barring a few stray columns of tributes by the film fraternity, Mohan failed to make it to the national mainstream, and was certainly not endorsed by intellectuals.
This is not a comparison between the two stalwarts. It is just an observation that while one continues to get rich tributes inked by intellectuals, academics and theatre stalwarts, the other is remembered only by videos played and replayed by his fans. This is, therefore, a tribute to the man who made every Tamilian laugh.