Rajinikanth in ‘Apoorva Raagangal’ and the residence in Adyar where his opening sequences were shot.
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement, S. Shivaraj
The best stories in journalism are not necessarily the ones that begin with a strong pitch, or take hours of research and painstaking reporting; sometimes, they are the ones that a reporter simply discovers along the way.Recently, I challenged myself to find the place where actor Rajinikanth had shot his first film, Apoorva Raagangal, in 1975. Tamil cinema fans will remember the iconic shot of the newcomer pushing open a gate and striding into a house — almost as if announcing his arrival in filmdom.I was determined to find this gate and the house.Armed with a few clues from old-timers, I managed to find it at a dead-end street in a quiet Adyar neighbourhood. The gate had changed, but the house was spectacularly intact, almost exactly as it had appeared in the old Tamil film starring Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan. We spoke to the owners and shot a video in which I mimicked the way Rajinikanth strode in, standing at the exact same place.
Rajinikanth's 'Apoorva Raagangal’ house
50 years of Rajinikanth: Inside the Adyar house where the Superstar’s debut, ‘Apoorva Raagangal’, was shot
