Dharshan Dharmaraj in a new movie and in Asoka Handagama-directed Iniavan in 2014 which won him a best actor award
By Somasiri Munasinghe
Actor Dharshan Dharmaraj, who passed away at forty-one, was at the peak of his career before his death, but ironically, only after his demise on October 2 did people notice his massive contribution to Sri Lankan cinema.
Handsome, rugged village lad from Rakwana started his life in Colombo as a porter carrying heavy loads to earn a living, sleeping rough on streets in pursuit of his acting dream.
“I learnt to cope with the burden of life in the dusty streets of Colombo for two and half years trying to keep my dream of a movie career alive,” Dharshan said in a TV interview. “I was a Tamil, and there was a war going on. I did not know Sinhala very well; it was difficult to get a job because of my ethnicity and as I did not have the government documents that employers wanted,” he added.
He went for several failed auditions but persisted with his search, realizing that acting was the only hope he had to succeed in life. Finally, things began to look bright for him after he was selected to play a role as an LTTE activist in ‘A9’ teledrama made by Sidney Chandrasekera.
London-based filmmaker Puthiyavan Rasiah says in an email that he met Dharshan in 2005 for the first time in Colombo and offered a prominent role in his debut film, Mann, as a schoolteacher.
“I also approached him to do the major role in my second film, Ottrai Panai Maram, but he was busy with another project. Therefore, I decided to play the lead character of a man looking for his wife’s grave after the 30-year war ended,” he added.
Several critics alleged that Dharshan’s films failed to appeal to Jaffna Tamil film fans. However, Puthiyavan rejects that speculation describing it as baseless, adding that there were not enough opportunities, was the actual fact.
“I met him a few other times while visiting Sri Lanka. He was a very down-to-earth and friendly person. Self-improvising is something I admired during the Mann film shooting. It amazed Indian technical crews to see his performance and told him he would have been a big star if he were to try acting in South Indian films,” added Puthiyavan.
Athula Sulthanagoda, the line producer of London-based Suba Sivakumaran’s House of My Fathers, says that Dharshan played a leading role as an LTTE man in that film.
“He is very flexible with exceptional qualities, and once he came for a shoot in Polonnaruwa from Colombo in a bus,” says Sulthanagoda adding that Dharshan was to play a role in a Malayalam film starting in December to be shot both in Jaffna and Kerala.
“Malayalam director Sanu, impressed by Dharshan’s character in House of My Fathers, offered him the role. The filmmaker had already chosen the locations in Jaffna. It is a true story of some refugees fleeing in a boat from Kerala to Italy, and Dharshan was to play the character of a human smuggler,” said Sulthanagoda.
He added that Dharshan’s popularity rose with the powerful character he played in the Sinhala teledrama Ralla Weralata Aadare.
The director of this teledrama plans to offer Dharshan’s role to his younger brother. Sulthanagoda says it is a wise choice as his brother has a close resemblance to the late actor.
A critic says that in the early part of Dharshan’s career, he faced the danger of becoming stereotyped as he was cast as an LTTE activist in his early movies.
In his debut teledrama, A9, Prabhakaran and Asoka Handagama’s award-winning Ini Avan his roles drew inspiration from rebel characters.
In the controversial biopic Prabhakaran, made by a Sinhala filmmaker, Dharshan played the character of the late LTTE supremo, which drew open hostility from some members of the Tamil community both in Sri Lanka and India.
The film negatives were taken into custody in India in a mob attack when the director Thushara Peiris went to make the Tamil copy at Gemini laboratory in Chennai in 2008. He had to rush to Germany with an extra copy to make fresh negatives to meet the deadline for the Sri Lankan release.
A senior Sri Lanka Central Bank executive living in Toronto, Canada, who was also born like Dharshan in Rakwana on the border of Sinharaja Rain Forest, says he knew the artist as a child.
“He came with his uncle to watch us play soccer. His maternal grandfather had a grocery in Rakwana town, and Dharshan, too, launched a business selling pooja items near the Rakwana kovil. His wife used to work there,” he said.
Dharshan’s illustrious career includes box office favourites and indie films such as Machan, Ini Avan, Spandana, Komaali Kings, Davena Vihangun, Praana, Bandura, Adventures of Ricky Dean and Tsunami among many others.
Sri Lankan journalist Vipulananda Sivakumaran who works at Arab News in Saudi Arabia, says, “It is unfortunate that Dharshan’s demise came at a time when he was expecting a key turning point in his career. There is a feeling that the Tamils did not recognize his talent properly. The community could have showered more praise on him and celebrated his skills while he was alive.”
Commenting on the indigenous Tamil movie industry, Sivakumaran says it needs more support from Sri Lankan diaspora investors to compete with South Indian films.
“Dharshan did his best to develop the Lankan Tamil film industry by encouraging many artists and working with them. Only the Sinhala cinema industry provided desirable recognition in his lifetime and a platform to shine for an artist hungry for cinema. It has been pointed out that many Tamil film producers prefer to make only Sinhala films rejecting Tamil stories. This situation needs to change,” Sivakumaran adds.
Dharshan, who won the best actor award twice, played varied roles in his brief career, making us wonder how this young man who only acted in two college dramas before coming to Colombo could develop into such a perfect, versatile actor.
A large number of fans, politicians, and tearful members of the Sri Lankan film fraternity gathering to pay their last respects to the ‘fallen hero’, spoke volumes about his service to our small film industry.
His funeral was held in his native Rakwana last week, attended by a large crowd. ©newstrails.com
