Memories of a Boyfriend

Remembering Raghuvaran


"Is it your Raghu?" a friend texted as I sat in a theatre in Chennai listening to technical blah-blah on digital cinema. My heart sank. Raghu was a man I had met 19 years ago in Hyderabad, in the March of 1989, on the sets of Ram Gopal Varma's debut film Shiva.

I remember clearly. He had looked at a group of journalists and said, "I am Raghuvaran." He was playing Bhavani, the villain who will always be remembered with a shudder by a generation. That day, in jeans and shirt, and standing 6'2" tall with a cigarette in his mouth, he looked far from menacing. "But don't let his looks fool you," said Varma. "He is the new face of villainy."

"Acting is a lousy way to earn a living," said Raghu, two hours into our meeting. He had begun his film career seven years earlier in Hariharan's National Award winning film Ezhavathi Manithan (1982). Then, somewhere down the line, he turned commercial. "Name, fame, money, an actor has it all. But every time they make me play a clichéd role, I feel like a woman who is being gang raped."

As a young girl then, I was somehow always drawn towards trouble. So, while the other nine journalists were glowing in the company of Shiva's well-mannered hero, Nagarjuna, I was beginning to get attracted to the villain. He asked me to stay back. I appeared baffled, of course. "No," I said. After I returned to Bombay, we spoke on the phone several times.

In September that year I landed at his home in Chennai without warning. If he was surprised to see me, he didn't show it. He played the perfect host that summer afternoon, discussing everything from cinema to Sri Lanka, sipping Glucon-D. "I've just returned from a gruelling shooting in Kerala and this Glucon-D will help," he said.

What I didn't know then was that his drink was spiked with Vodka. And that one of the finest actors in the country, who was undeservedly unknown to north Indians, was on his way to becoming an alcoholic.

Despite his addiction, in the four ensuing years, Raghu and I forged a very deep friendship. In that period he acted in over 50 films in all the four South Indian languages, and his popularity was on the rise. His spine-chilling role as Bhavani in Ramu's Shiva was followed by a sensitive caring father in Mani Ratnam's Anjali. He matched histrionics with Dilip Kumar in Izzatdaar. Raghu would tell me later that the only gift he ever valued was the compliment from the thespian. "An actor thrives on praise," he said laughing. At that point in his career he didn't have too many awards to show. But everybody who saw him on screen knew that he was a very special talent. Part of Tamil cinema lore is how, in Puriyada Pudir, he repeated, 'I know' in a dozen ways, each time with a distinct emotion.

Raghu was to the camera born. I'd see him transform from set to set. Sometimes I felt I did not know when he was acting and when he was being himself. There were days when he slipped a knife under his bed before sleeping, and woke up staring at the cold steel blade because it gave him the feeling of being invincible.

He confessed to me often that in alcohol he found his refuge. The spirit dulled his sense and it made it easier, he said, to exist in a world that thrives on mediocrity. In 1993, excessive drinking landed him in the ICU. He was diagnosed with a hepatic failure. He was in the hospital for a week fighting hallucinations. The nurses attending to him ran away scared. He'd call out to Marc Anthony and Julius Caesar in his semi-conscious state. The only thing that made sense to everyone was his frequent plea—"Doctor save me, I don't want to die."

That was the last time I saw Raghuvaran. We split and I became just another curious bystander. I followed his life through the impersonality of news. Common friends like Tabu with whom he acted in Rajeev Menon's Kandukondain Kandukondain (2000) and Manisha Koirala in Lal Badshah (1999) would keep me posted on conversations with him.

The world saw Raghu as a weak man, as an alcoholic. I don't think of him that way. In 1993, doctors had given up on him. But he fought back. In the decade that followed he resurrected his career, his life. He won back many friends. He married and divorced actress Rohini, and had a son, Sai Rishi (whom he adored). And turned to religion in a major way. He also remained Rajnikant's favourite co-star. But suddenly, on the afternoon of March 19, I had to say, 'Yes, it is my Raghu.' Forty nine is no age to go.