Meeting YouTuberturned- actor and director Vijay Varadharaj is a unique experience each time. The first time when I interviewed him for his yet-to-be-released Pallu Padama Paathuka (PPP), it was with him being surrounded by his whole team. This time, when I dropped by his new office to talk about his latest web series Kuthukku Pathu (K10), a new set of team members surrounded him, those who have worked on the series that’s now streaming on Aha Tamil.
“Thanks to what happened with PPP, I felt rather drained after the preview show of K10. Be it the positive response or people telling me how I could have done something better, they all felt the same. I have found more clarity on a few aspects now. Ippovum varaatti eppo dhaan varumnu oru mode ku vanthuten,” shares Vijay, who wrote the story of K10 a long time ago. “The story is based on a real incident involving a friend whose brother called him to attack an enemy gang. The boys met them at a ground without realising that they all were cops.
My friend threw a brick at someone on the other side, and it ended with the whole crew landing at the police station. Only in the end did we realise that our friend’s brother was the one who caused a ruckus by drinking beer and spraying it on cops.” The series is based on the concept of the Butterfly Effect, made famous by films like Run Lola Run and Happenstance. “It’s a decentralised story where everyone is on focus, and we don’t have to establish every character.
We gave importance to characters based on the shots we used. The initial draft had character introductions and we realised that it wouldn’t have worked out,” shares Vijay, who has named the episodes of the film based on popular film titles. “It’s a homage to my favourite directors. We are a group who came up looking at their films. Someone seeing our Reservoir Dogs gang will probably search for Tarantino and check out his filmography. The Illuminati troll was also a reference to Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. As it’s a funny series, we didn’t have to worry about the logic.” Vijay and co haven’t shied away from trolling controversial and sensitive topics and K10 is no different. “The best way to show a locality and its people is to show it the way it is.
Fakir’s bomb joke was a risky one, but many Muslim friends said they enjoyed it. That’s the power of comedy,” says the director who hopes to break stereotypes. “The Marwari sequence was influenced by my visit to Ritchie Street. I saw this guy speaking in Hindi one minute, and then switching to local Tamil the next. I realised that he too was as normal as we are.” Interestingly, while almost all the episodes are comedies, one of them in between, starring his close friend and actor Shah Ra, is a serious one involving a murder. “As murder is an integral part of the story, we decided to take the serious route with that. There’s a myth that people who do comedy can’t do serious scenes.
We wanted to break it. As I follow the Monty Python style, the tonal shifts don’t really bother me,” says Vijay who has also used the Borat-like Rangabashyam Charukesi character, made famous by his YouTube videos, in the series. “The character was initially written for this series. We all know someone as annoying as him. He is someone who cannot change his ways. I got a comment where the person said he wanted to slap that character. That’s a win for me.” Vijay has often been vocal about how his mother and wife have been his support system, but strangely, his videos or K10 have so far not featured strong women. “K10 is a story about men who don’t care about women. For them, pride matters most.
I tried to incorporate as many women as I can. For the toxic relationship couple, I intentionally showed both of them in a bad light. In Season 2, we have plans of bringing a group of women characters in,” says Vijay who veers the topic towards the limitations he had to face. “We didn’t know how the serious episode would be perceived, especially the stabbing sequence. We could have used a gun in it, but we didn’t have the budget for one. We didn’t even have multiple shirts to show a bloodied person. We stuck to close-ups of Shah Ra dragging the dead body instead.
Ostrich prechanai dhaan ennakum (laughs).” Temple Monkeys and obscene language go hand in hand, and they have continued the same with K10 as well. “Cuss words are problematised only in India. Ironically, our culture also uses them a lot. When Tarantino uses it, it feels cool, but when we use it, we get categorised as people from a certain caste or a certain area. The only way to break this is by speaking it out loud. When someone comes at us, we don’t yell, “Naaye, peye!” concludes Vijay, who can’t wait to start work on the second season of K10 that will apparently be set in Madurai. We say, bring it on!