When Rieux Met Nallasivam ❤️

Meet the Cultural Mavericks – Camus and Kamal! 😊

#onhisbirthdaytoday

7th November

Well, first thing this morning, I rang up two people who mean the world to me – my Mom who is celebrating her birthday today, and my bosom buddy Santharaj, who is also celebrating his birthday today.

Amma has been a great inspiration on me! She calls me her ‘masterpiece’, and I call her a ‘maverick’!

Yes! She taught me how to look beyond the mundane and the ordinary! Amma always wanted me to take the untrodden paths! She wanted me to take to Music, do my college studies in Journalism and then join Discovery or National Geographic Channels! 😊Cos she is an ardent nature-lover! 😊

But then, Appa seasoned reason into it, and hey presto! I’m here blogging! 😊

So then… I’ve always had this curious question –

Is it a truth universally acknowledged, that all such cultural mavericks are born on 7th November? 😉

God knows! 😉

So now let’s look up two of such great cultural mavericks who were born on this lovely day – 7th November!

But before that, let’s define the term, ‘Cultural Maverick’.

A cultural maverick isn’t just someone who thinks differently; they are the bold independent artists, thinkers, and intellectuals who deliberately disrupt and defy the established norms and orthodoxies of their time. Instead of “meekly” and “cheekily” succumbing to dominant aesthetic or societal standards, they carve entirely new paths of their own, and lay the roads, for future society to happily walk on them!

Yes! Academia might guard the gates, but the maverick builds the roads, you see!

They are people who dare to disrupt the status quo! And because they do not seek permission or validation from traditional gatekeepers, they often speak directly to the public, democratising knowledge for the lay.

Today happens to be the birthday of two such cultural mavericks - Albert Camus and Kamal Haasan - legends who dared to defy the establishment and push the very boundaries of human expression!

Take Kamal Haasan, for instance. I admire him not only as a powerhouse-performer of sorts, but also as an avid reader and a relentless writer. Those close to him testify that he reads and writes almost daily, which explains how he has personally authored or co-authored the screenplays for approximately 40 of his 230-plus films.

Much akin to Kamal, Camus refused to be tied down to a single domain of activity. He wasn’t a desk-bound, arm-chair philosopher! Rather, he was a deeply committed theatre man who stepped actively into writing, directing, producing, and even acting on stage.

Just as Kamal adapted complex thrillers like Unnaipol Oruvan, Camus spent years adapting famed literary works like Dostoevsky’s The Possessed and Faulkner’s Requiem for a Nun for the theatre.

Both Camus and Kamal are known for taking massive creative risks, boldly introducing radical themes and technological innovations that were far ahead of their time.

Both are voracious readers and obsessive writers who have always championed societal issues through their art. Kamal pioneered method acting in Tamil cinema, pushing actors to psychologically and emotionally inhabit their characters to unearth raw truths.

Neither Kamal nor Camus has ever stayed in their comfort zones. Kamal has frequently risked his financial security by backing radical, taboo themes that carried no guarantee of commercial success, facing protests, bans, and political backlash across Tamil Nadu and beyond.

Quite interestingly, Camus made the exact same choice in the intellectual realm. By publishing The Rebel, he knowingly alienated the powerful Parisian intellectual elite and also damaged his long-time close friendship with Jean-Paul Sartre. 

Both Camus and Kamal are trendsetters who firmly believed that –

To tell radically new truths, you have to invent radically new tools!

I would like to end this post with a comparative take on Kamal’s Anbe Sivam (for which he penned the story and screenplay) and Camus’s The Plague, simply for their stunning resemblances! 😊

In Camus’s masterpiece titled, The Plague, Dr. Bernard Rieux refuses to philosophise about the disease or look for divine meaning in the suffering. For him, fighting the plague is not about heroism; it is a necessity, an obligation and common decency.

Strikingly similar is the character of Nallasivam, who locates divinity entirely within the act of loving, helping and healing others - literally, Anbe Sivam (Love is God).

In The Plague, Dr. Rieux is an atheist who works tirelessly to heal the sick, driven not by the promise of heaven or the fear of hell, but by sheer human solidarity. Hence he refuses to philosophise about the disease or look for divine meaning in the suffering around him. For him, fighting the plague isn’t about heroism; it is a necessity, an obligation, and a matter of common decency.

In his most direct confrontation with Father Paneloux, after watching a young boy die in agony, Rieux rejects a universe that demands the suffering of innocents –

“No, Father. I’ve a very different idea of love. And until my dying day I shall refuse to love a scheme of things in which children are put to torture.”

He adds, “There’s no question of heroism in all this. It’s a matter of common decency... What interests me is being a man.”

In Anbe Sivam, during the harrowing train accident sequence, as people are bleeding and crying for help, the atheist Nallasivam delivers an epic line (that perfectly mirrors Dr. Rieux’s philosophy): “The one who sheds tears for another’s pain is God.”

Both Dr. Rieux and (Dr) Nallasivam are physically broken and exhausted by their journeys, yet they relentlessly strive to alleviate the pain of their fellow human beings simply because the person in front of them is suffering.

Wait! That’s not all.

Quite interestingly, the parallels extend brilliantly to their foil-characters as well!

Rambert in The Plague and Anbarasu in Anbe Sivam.

Both are self-centered, privileged men who are desperate to escape the collective suffering in order to pursue their personal happiness! Yet both are ultimately transformed by the grounded heroism of the protagonists.

Raymond Rambert, a journalist stuck in Oran, spends the first half of the novel trying to illegally escape quarantine to reach his lover in Paris. But after witnessing Rieux’s tireless work, he chooses to stay and fight, realising that “it may be shameful to be happy by oneself.”

Similarly, Anbarasu is an arrogant, capitalist ad-maker frantic to reach Chennai for his wedding, viewing the floods, strikes, and train accident as mere personal inconveniences. Yet, Nallasivam’s selfless actions systematically dismantle his ego. When Anbarasu witnesses Nallasivam donating his own blood - and finally recognises the profound sacrifices of Nallasivam’s past - he sheds his vanity and his inflated sense of individualism.

Both texts offer almost exactly the same conclusion, that – “grand narratival” rhetoric alone cannot heal a bleeding child. When systems fail, the ultimate antidote is radical, interpersonal compassion and empathy!

Through their protagonists Dr. Rieux and (Dr.) Nallasivam - both texts argue that true grace is found not in the unseen heavens up there, but in the exhausting and tireless work of lifting another human being up!

So, even as we celebrate Camus and Kamal on their birthdays today, let’s not forget the main takeaways –

To disrupt is to push the boundaries of human expression.

And… true revolution lies in choosing radical empathy over the “grand narratives” that dictate our lives for us.

As eminent critic Scupin Richards rightly points out –

Human empathy is the highest form of humanism... and the ultimate form of divinity!

How true!