Mani Ratnam may be accustomed to getting bomb threats whenever one of his keenly anticipated movies releases. Even so, it can be a scary experience as fringe groups try and see something objectionable in the films of any big director and threaten to retaliate with violence. In fact, the director had once suffered when a bomb had gone off in his residence two decades ago.
In the wake of the release of his latest offering, Chekka Chivantha Vaanam, a bomb threatwasrung in to Mani Ratnam's office at Raja Annamalaipuram. The ace film maker is said to have received the call in which he was asked to remove certain objectionable dialogues that are allegedly against a particular place. The caller said they would hurl a bomb at his office if the scenes depicting the Union Territory of Puducherry in poor light were not deleted. The Kollywood A-lister director has sought the help of the police.
This is not the first time Mani is dealing with such threats. One may recall that in 1995 — when his movie Bombay was released — a parcel bomb exploded at his residence and the noted filmmaker had a lucky escape with minor injuries. The event shook the entire film industry then while also changing the equation in Tamil Nadu politics of the day.
Bombay had depicted the love story of a Muslim girl and a Hindu boy and their outlook to communal violence that broke out in Mumbai in the wake of the Babri Masjid demolition. It evoked strong protests from Muslim fundamentalists who had demanded that the movie be banned even before it was released and ran successfully all over India.
Soon after the incident, Rajinikanth, in his public speech, had touched upon the “rising bomb culture in Tamil Nadu”. This was at the event to celebrate the success of his gangster film Baasha and the comment had reportedly elicited a negative reaction from the then J.Jayalalithaa headed government.
Chekka Chivantha Vaanam is also a gangster saga. The multi-starrer, featuring Arvind Swamy, Vijay Sethupati, Simbu, Arun Vijay, Jyothika and Aditi Rao Hydari, has become a huge hit, collecting more than Rs 30 Crore at the Tamil Nadu box office in its first three days to Monday and is expected to gross a lot more in the coming days.
Sources close to the director revealed that the bone of contention is a dialogue which depicts Pondicherry in poor light as a 'whorehouse'. The members of a fringe group are objecting to it and demanding that the line denouncing the Union Territory be removed from the film.
The police have launched a hunt to nab the culprit. The irony is at a time when India is celebrating Gandhi Jayanthi, the birthday of Mahatma who believed in Ahimsa, the bomb threat to Mani has come as a shocker.
