| Bharatiraja felicitated in Dubai
 The Indian Association,
Dubai, along with Apollo Studios, organised a grand cultural evening at Dubai on May Day, which also happened to be a local holiday on account of Prophet Mohammed’s birthday, to honour veteran Tamil film director
Bharatiraja on being awarded the ‘Padma Sri’ award by the Indian government this year.
‘Autograph’
Cheran and ‘Kalaimamani’ Chandra Bose were the special guests. Dream girl of yesteryear actress Khusboo. who was supposed to be the chief guest. failed to turn up at the last minute due to some urgent commitments back home causing some sort of disappointment to her ardent fans.
The evening started with the lighting of the kuthuvilakku by K Kumar’s wife - Kumar is the president of the Indian Association in Dubai - and Bharatiraja’s wife.
Lakshmi Venkatesh, a local choreographer and an acclaimed Bharatnatyam dancer, herself presented a solo classic followed by a medley of
Kushboo and Bharatiraja’s songs performed by her students of various age groups. To cap it all, there were the sizzling peacock and snake numbers which came in for special praise from the
ace director later during his acceptance speech.
 No words of praise can be too high for a dancer like Lakshmi who has been spending a lot of time, effort and commitment to promote all forms of dances amongst the budding youngsters of Dubai and in the process, helping them to remember tradition, art and culture and fine-tune their individual talents.
The highlight of the evening was undoubtedly the clippings of some of the best films of the director and drew instant and spontaneous response from the audience as these scenes were a fair representative sample of his classics, starting from ‘16 Vayathinile’ down to the latest ‘Kangalal Kaidhu
Sei’.
Music director Chandra Bose, who has now settled down in the UAE, recollected working the director and how he almost came very close to doing a film with
Bharatiraja 25 years ago which somehow never materialised. Incidentally the veteran composer has already produced an ‘Arabic’ album which has been the talk of the town. He is working on some more projects. “Good Music indeed has no language barriers or geographical boundaries.”
 The speech of the evening was from actor and ‘Autograph’ director
Cheran who spoke from his heart. He mentioned how
Bharatiraja broke the set pattern of Tamil cinema 25 years ago with his unconventional and bold approach and how all the current crop of young directors, including himself, owe their success and gratitude to ‘their’ director for taking Tamil films to the rural masses.
He seems to have become a big hit with ‘Autograph’ and every person who has seen the film even in Dubai has been mentioning that somewhere the film reflects their own past school, college or office days.
‘Padma Sri’ Bharatiraja thanked the organisers for a wonderful evening, especially the clips from his films, which rekindled his memories, and the cultural performances. He said the appreciation he got from the great
‘Chevalier’ Sivaji Ganesan after completing the film ‘Mudhal Mariyadhai’ was the ultimate award for him.
Though this award has taken much longer time to come for a director who redefined and revolutionised
Tamil cinema at least ‘better late than never’, considering the plight of many such actors and directors of Tamil industry who have never got their fair share of awards and national appreciation.
It’s also a mystery as to why the Tamil film community has so far not thought of organising a function to felicitate
Bharatiraja for getting the Padma Sri, as rightly pointed out by
Cheran during the course of his speech
N Ramkumar
Dubai
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