VISITOR COLUMN

There was an article recently in behindwoods titled “Suba power to Shankar, K.V.Anand, Vishnuvardhan” As a longtime fan of their works I jumped into the article to know what it’s about, it was just a short and sweet introductory about their recent works and didn’t explain who they are. I will try to do that as short as possible as it is a great tale of friendship and success. As some of us know Suba is pen name of writers duo SUBA-BALAKRISHNAN , They were among the few commercially succefull novel writers of 80s, who had a dedicated monthly for publishing their novels. The duo met during their college days, falls in friendship with each other (around 1978), shared their love for writing and started writing short stories together. Their first short story got published in Ananda Vikatan and till date they are working together, published above 400 novels and 400 short stories. Their friendship is so popular among the Tamil writers and readers society, the letters they written to each other when they were separated because of their office work got published in a monthly as a series and stands as a great symbol to their friendship.

 

They started with social stories which were critically acclaimed and then moved to detective and crime novels, most of their detective novels features the characters Narendran, Vaijayanthi, Selva, and Murugesan, just these names would bring a smile on a 80s novel society. They are kind of James bond, Sherlock holmes characters in Tamil, and Suba used to bring the action scenes right in front of the readers by brilliant use of words,  and these characters were so popular among readers, still lot of them will love to see them on big screen(given Suba’s current stature in film industry it could even come true).

 

Believe it or not K.V. Anand started his career as the photographer for the Frontpage of the monthly Suba writes for(called “Super Novel”). The photos by K.V. Anand were so beautiful, new and out of the world, that it used to get as much of the fan letters the novel used to get and a Sweet friendship developed among them.  Then Anand moved to cine Industry and Suba too entered film industry as Dialogue writes through the Sunder.C comedy “Naam iruvar, Namkku iruvar” and worked in few more films but didn’t get a breakthrough. At the same time K.V. Anand made it big in cine industry as a cinematographer and when he decided to turn a director the first he turned too was his writer friends Suba and Voila we got “Kana Kandaen” a new attempt in tamil thriller category based on a novel by Suba. It proved to be a successful venture but the major breakthrough came in the form of “Ayan”(in which Balakrishnan did a cameo) then there is no turn back for them. The writers proved to be a valuable addition with their works in films like Velayudam, Ko(again a cameo too), 180, Arrambam etc.

 

But working in “I” was really a big step for them, it’s not easy to fill in the shoes of Sujatha and working with a director like Shankar, which they did successfully and it turned out to be one of the highest grossing Tamil film ever. And their recent Blockbuster  “Anegan” just added another feather to their crown as their screenplay and dialogues are acclaimed by fans and critics altogether. While quite a lot of writers tried their hands at Tamil Cine Industry, only very few turned out to be successful and Suba are now right in top tier among them. I hope they give more new dimensional approach to tamil films like they did with Anegan and ultimately would love to see a characters like Narendran and Selva (think about a tamil Sherlock Holmes, Ethan Hunt) to conquer big screens through them.

 

With Love,

Rajayogan.