Krishna: Food, dance and no school – that was my incentive to do Mani Ratnam sir's Anjali

One of the most popular children’s films, which went on to bag multiple National Awards and Tamil Nadu State Film Awards, is Anjali. The 1990 film, directed by Mani Ratnam, stars

Shamli

in the titular role, along with several child artistes – Tarun, Shruti, Krishna, Vishnuvardhan, Richard, among others – who have gone on to become actors now.

As the film completed 30 years recently, we ask Krishna what he remembers from the shooting days. The actor, who is presently busy with Gautham Menon’s Joshua, Sathyashiva’s Bell Bottom and Sunil Kariattukara’s Malayalam film Picasso, among others, says, “I think it was 1989. Balu uncle (Venus Balu, director of May Madham) had come to our school to pick some good dancers for the film. From our school, five of us went; among them were me and my brother (director Vishnuvardhan). We used to work from 6am to 7pm, and we didn’t have school for six months. We had a blast.”

Krishna continues, “The minute we reached the set, they would ask each one of us what we wanted for breakfast. At my home, kalai la idli na, idhli dhan, lunch-ku sambar na sambar dhan. But on set, they used to ask us individually what we wanted – Krishna-ku enna venum, Richard-ku enna venum, Sruthi-ku enna venum. At that age, food was important, right? We used to shoot between eating, not eat between shooting.”

Ask Krishna if he was intimidated by the camera, and he says, “We never knew what shooting was. Technically, we are first-generation film industry people. During Anjali, my dad (producer Pattiyal Sekar) was a businessman. We had no idea what shooting is, what camera is. So, we actually didn’t know what we did. For us, it was an excursion. We didn’t go to shooting, thinking we would become stars or something like that. Today, kids have a lot of exposure, but back then, we were more naïve, I would say. Food, dance and no school – that was our incentive.”

The actor admits he had a lot of fun watching the film on the big screen. “But padatha paathuttu naan sandosha pattadhavida, school-la oru bandha panninen paarunga! Even when somebody looked at me, I would think, ‘Oh, maybe he has seen me in the film’. That was fun,” he signs off.