The year was 2003, and Sudha Kongara’s family was readying to leave for a holiday to Shimla. Usually, the group, about 12 or 13 people, would take a train to Chandigarh and then drive to Shimla. That year, they flew to their destination — a man from Bengaluru was offering flight tickets that began at Re 1 and Sudha’s sister-in-law, an internet geek, decided to try her luck. “We managed two one-rupee tickets, and the rest at Rs 500. A middle-class family of 13 flew!” exclaims Sudha, the glee still evident in her voice.
Even then, she remembers asking her father who was this “insane, super-duper rich man” letting them fly at one rupee. She had a lot of questions, including how on earth he would make any money like this.
In 2010, the year she made her debut as director with Drohi (she is credited as Sudha K. Prasad in the movie), she saw a TV programme on business tycoons that featured Capt GR Gopinath (Retd), the same person who helped her family fly to Shimla. His autobiography Simply Fly: A Deccan Odyssey released the same year, and Sudha knew she was on to something.
Ten years later, Suriya-starrer Soorarai Pottru, her fictionalised take on Gopinath’s life, which draws from the book and from the many personal conversations between the entrepreneur and Sudha, has released on Amazon Prime Video to mostly positive reviews.
Like Gopinath’s swift ascent after a long wait for the necessary licences, Sudha’s dizzying success came via the slow, steady route. Drohi did not do well; she concedes it was not “perfect”, but like many other films, it suffered from a poor release. She was crushed and considered taking up an offer to turn executive producer until her daughter Rhea, then in Class 7 in a boarding school, reminded her of what her dream really was. “When you have a family like that, you better be the best at what you’re doing; they give you the leg up.”
In the process, Sudha picked up one important lesson: find a producer who will back you to the hilt. That worked for her with her sophomore film Irudhi Suttru, the story of a girl from a Chennai slum who goes on to achieve boxing glory, mentored by her loner, angry middle-aged coach. S. Sashikanth of Y Not Studios saw potential in it, and the film broke new ground for lead actor R. Madhavan, actress Ritika Singh and Sudha too.
Those who missed Drohi and its pulsating intro shot—a blindfolded man tied to a railway track struggles to escape as a train bears down on him—expressed their surprise that a “woman” director handled action scenes so well.
They, of course, did not know Sudha’s fondness for Ram Gopal Varma’s Shiva and the cycle chain action sequence or her love for The Godfather. Before you can ask her the obvious question, she laughs, “No, I’ve not held a cycle chain, it will cut your hand!” More than gore, Sudha says she always felt drawn to action rooted in emotion.
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Growing up in Chennai’s Adyar, Sudha was not a sports-loving kid and her childhood was spent reading books from Murugan Lending Library and borrowing video cassettes from the local library. “It was the 80s, and while boys and girls played together, I was not the boisterous kind.”
Years later, she found it easy to fit right into Mani Ratnam’s sets, beginning with the subtitling of Kannathil Muthamittal, and then assisting him over many films from the Telugu version of Yuva to Guru. The director, she says, wouldn’t treat men and women differently on his sets, expecting them to do even the difficult jobs.
This trait of hers rubs off on the women in her films too. They may be docile due to their circumstances, but have a fierceness in them that’s hard to disguise. Remember the mother Damayanthi in Irudhi Suttru? Or even Urvashi’s Pechi in Soorarai Pottru? And then, her heroines. Just going by her last two films, Madhi and Sundari aka Bommi are equal to the male lead in every possible way. They have the smarts to let the other know they cannot be taken for granted. Their heart is full of love and admiration, but it’s never bigger than their sense of self-respect. One reason why this equality in the writing shines through is because the women who played them were supremely able to hold their own in front of their talented male counterparts.
“I am never satisfied till I get that deep emotion I am looking for, be it romance and grief or a dance. I am very intrusive and keep pushing till they feel what the character is feeling”
- Sudha
“In Soorarai..., I wanted someone to stand up to this powerhouse of talent called Suriya. He can pull the rug beneath your feet. And, then I have this girl, who is new, but has an inherently strong face [referring to Aparna Balamurali]. They played off each other well. The credit goes to both of them for being real. If you look at it, both are similar people and they appeal to each other’s minds. He’s already achieved a fair bit when they meet for the first time, and she’s starting out. And then, things change, but they are still on an equal plane. Aparna is an extraordinary actress and she worked hard to perfect the dialect and pitch,” says Sudha.
There’s the scene where Maara swallows his words as he asks Bommi to lend some money, and gets a mouthful from her. When the scene was being written, the men in the writers’ room were against Suriya’s Maara borrowing from his wife. But Sudha stood her ground.
“I asked them, ‘What is it that irks you? All of you have done it with your wives. They earned when you are trying your luck in the movies, so why can’t you see another man do that?’”
The only man on set who did not have a problem with the scene was Suriya, she says.
If Suriya is getting credit for breaking out of the mould that he was slotted in, credit must go to the director who tapped into his innate mix of vulnerability and strength. And the film only reaffirms why Suriya is one of the best on-screen criers. “Suriya has had more than two decades of extraordinary success, but I’ve not. And so, when his eyes have to mist over when his dream is realised, I told him to look into my eyes and take the depth of grief or joy there, because I am still able to feel all of those things.”
After the release, some reviews have pointed out that the life story of a dominant caste man has been Bahujanised on screen. He opts for a self-respect marriage, talks socialism… What’s Sudha’s take on that?
“It is evident he belongs to the upper caste. But, he is anti-caste because of the background he comes from, and that line about ‘cost and caste barrier’ is what Capt. Gopinath told me. Who else would have allowed a goat on flight, or calmly handled it when first-time users did not know how to use the WCs? He got on-board staff who knew the local language, so that people would not be intimidated,” she says.
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To understand the visual language of Sudha’s films, one must look at where she began from. She’s a student of Mani Ratnam, yes, but Revathi’s all-woman project Mitr, My Friend was Sudha’s first gig as screenplay writer.
“Mitr was my starting point. I did not even know how to give clap. Asha [Revathi’s real name is Asha Kelunni], taught me multi-tasking. I was also teaching dialogues, writing, calling artistes… we were a tiny crew and I think it prepared me for shooting indie films. Today, if I shoot any film as an indie project, that’s because of that experience. I also learnt from Asha how to extract performances from actors. So, when I was doing auditions and screen tests for Mani Sir, I had a way of getting actors to perform.”
Sudha is also very exacting. “I am never satisfied till I get that deep emotion I am looking for, be it romance and grief or a dance. I am very intrusive and keep pushing till they feel what the character is feeling,” she says.
She’s as exacting about her favourite tic-tac hair clips, which keep her hair out of her eyes. She loved shopping for them in the erstwhile pavement markets of Pondy Bazaar in Chennai. “You don’t get them everywhere, you know. And so, I buy sheets wherever i find them... airports, malls.”
Sudha’s understanding of women comes from her lived experiences and her righteous anger as a viewer. “As a woman, you belong to a suppressed class, and I cannot handle it when they are reduced to cackling, giggling idiots. This is the fantasy of some male filmmakers and is so unreal. It’s not even manic-pixie behaviour, it’s plain condescending. I write women the way I see them. If you look at Damayanthi [Irudhi Suttru], she’s married to a no-gooder, but has an inner strength. She’s soldiering on. That’s an ode to all women.”
Ritika of Irudhi... was equally fierce as Madhi. “She was on point, being an MMA fighter herself, and she just had to draw from within. The only scene she struggled with was when she had to tell Maddy she loved him. She’s fiercely competitive and I told her that Maddy is performing better, eating you up in this scene. She went, drew an emotion from within, and gave a great shot. Aparna is like that too, she cannot bear for her scene to be anything less than perfect.”
In her last two movies, Sudha has worked with heroes she first met on Mani Ratnam’s sets. She shares a close bond with both Madhavan and Suriya, and feels that’s an advantage because when you know people, you also sense their state of mind, even when they don’t tell you a thing. For instance, if Suriya’s shot began at 7 am, Sudha was there at 5, ensuring things were perfect, because she knew he was a stickler for order. “His concentration is fierce and I have to free him up to focus on just his performance. When you’re close, you also know them as individuals, and you know which button to press to get what emotion.”
But neither this interview nor Irudhi Suttru would have happened if it hadn’t been for another Mani Ratnam connection —director Bejoy Nambiar [Shaitan, Taish], who was also one of the ADs on sets with her.
“I was still picking up after Drohi and I considered getting into organic farming or starting a restaurant [there was a time when Sudha would relax after shooting by cooking a three-course meal]. That’s when I read something in the paper about girls in North Madras training in boxing, because there was money in it, with an investment of just Rs 250 for gloves. That struck a chord and I was formulating a story. Bejoy came to Chennai to edit Shaitan, and I told him I did not want to do cinema. I’d called the script Zara then, and he kept pushing me to do it, he said he’d produce it. And then, to let me know what I was missing, he told me to help out with the second unit of Shaitan. I went there and realised everything was in order and that he’d called me to drag me back into cinema. Maddy lived in the next street in Goregaon and he told me to tell him the story. He told me to write it and that he’d do if he liked it. He was not doing me a favour, and there is no pity project here. Both my actors came on board convinced by the script.”
Sudha loves her work, and the lockdown saw her busy with Soorarai, the post-production of her segment in the Netflix anthology Paava Kathaigal and the Amazon anthology Putham Pudhu Kaalai. “I was working and very fortunate to do so. I grabbed every opportunity.”
“Suriya has had more than two decades of extraordinary success, but I’ve not. And so, when his eyes have to mist over when his dream is realised, I told him to look into my eyes and take the depth of grief or joy there, because I am still able to feel all of those things.”
- Sudha
Did she ever consider making Soorarai in Kannada, the language that Gopinath speaks? “Not really. Language is very important when making a movie and you need to be familiar with a culture to set a film there. I am comfortable in Tamil, Telugu and Hindi.”
One word her stars use for her is “democratic”. Suriya recalls how she would always ask for opinions from everyone, and how everything was sincerely considered on merit. “I want my film to be understood by all. My focus groups include people from all demographics. I have auto drivers, doctors, chartered accountants, little kids, my domestic help. I pay heed to feedback for the betterment of the film.”
Sudha usually switches off from a film after the first show. “I probably read some YouTube comments after some days, since I am not on social media. I dwell on the criticism, because that helps me grow,” she says.
The director has not rewatched Irudhi Suttru and Soorarai Pottru after they were released. She tried to watch Drohi once in between, but could not finish it. “I am very hard on myself, it’s borderline masochism. I’m trying to change myself,” she laughs.
But, after all this success, Sudha’s heart still beats for Drohi, her firstborn film that did not get its due. Ironically, Gaddar, its dubbed Hindi version on YouTube, has more than 15 lakh views on YouTube, and the comments section often features the word ‘mast’.
“Once, after Irudhi Suttru, someone came up to me and said he liked the film, and I was happy. Then he said his brother is a huge fan of Drohi and has watched it 100 times and he feels so much for the characters. I was beaming, it was like a validation, a triumph. It is a flawed film, but it needed a chance.”