Rajinikanth Conferred The Dada Phalke, Colleague And Friend Shatrughan Sinha Reacts

Tamil  cinema’s  biggest superstar Rajinikanth is  the recipient  of the prestigious Dada Phalke Saheb award  . The  jury that selected Rajinikanth  for  this honour included  singer Asha Bhosle, singer-composer  Shankar Mahadevan, filmmaker Subhash  Ghai , Malayalam  actor  Mohanlal and  Bengali actor  Biswajeet.

Reacting to the  honour  friend and colleague Shatrughan Sinha  says, “He  is  a very dear friend and  any  honour bestowed on him is  an honour for me. Rajini would  seek my advice when offered Hindi films. He has always been very generous in his appreciation of me.He had called me his Guru. And when we worked together in K C Bokadia’s Asli Naqli in 1986 he jokingly told everyone he was the naqli Shatrughan Sinha. That’s the greatness of this humble man.”

 While  rival and good friend  Kamal Haasan remained  unavailable  for  comment , in an  old  interview  with me  Kamal Haasan had commented on his  much-discussed  relationship with  Rajinikanth.  “Both of us were young actors who started from scratch. He was the bus conductor with acting aspirations. I was the clapper boy who got the clap in my very film(Kamal Haasan played a character with venereal disease in his first adult role). We didn’t have fathers to make movies for us. But we had the same godfather  K.Balachander.I’d do anything he asks me to, no question of refusing him… When we were still  in our 20s  I asked  Rajniji why he has to be so stylized on screen. He told me that’s the secret of his future success.”

Adds R  Madhavan, “It is  so richly divided and about time he   got it.”