I have worked with ‘Apparasindus’ before my cinema stint: Vadivelu

It has been 18 years since Vijay’s Friends directed by Siddique released. The film is best known for its comedy in which Vadivelu plays a painting contractor called Neasamani accompanied by Vijay (Aravindan), Suriya (Chandru), Ramesh Kanna (Krishnamoorthy aka Kichunamoorthy) and Charle (Gopal aka Govaalu). In a scene, Ramesh Kanna while trying to fix a doorway drops the hammer on Neasamani’s head, who dramatically passes out. Tamil audience, over the years have had a good laugh watching this comedy on television. However, this went on to become a rage on the internet as it all began with a memes page in Pakistan on Wednesday on Facebook. In a page called Civil Engineering Learners, a user posted a picture of a hammer with thequestion “what is the name of this tool in your country?”.

A Tamil movie buff promptly comment that it was called ‘suthiyal’ that broke “contractor Neasamani’s head.” Since then people who know the fictional character Neasamani and even those who are unaware of it, have been praying for his speedy recovery, which in turn has made the hashtag #PrayForNeasamani as the top trending national topic on Twitter and second globally.

Talking to DTNext, Vadivelu had a hearty laugh and said, “I have no clue about where it all started and why the entire world is talking about contractor Neasamani now. But I am happy that people have brought the character back to life.” The ace comedian also told us that the character is director Siddique’s brainchild, “The entire credit goes to Siddique for penning a character that has become a part of the audience’s favourite scene. Moreover, this character is a part of my real-life persona,” he added. Vijay and Suriya, who work as Vadivelu’s apprentices in the film are called as ‘apprasindungala’ by him. He also revealed to us where it came from. “Before my stint in cinema, I was a contractor for glass-cutting jobs in my village. I used to handle ‘apparasindus’ like how I handled Vijay and Suriya in Friends. That helped to go about my character with ease in the film.” Apart from netizens, Ahmedabad Police and private airline careers too cashed in on the trend and came up with their versions of memes. The producer of Vijay 63 Archana Kalpathi tweeted saying that the film’s update has been put on hold and #PrayForNeasamani.

On Thursday, netizens, who caught up with the scenes took to Twitter and said that it was Charle’s character of Govaalu that suffered a memory loss after getting beaten up by ‘apparasindus’. The hashtag of #JusticeForGovaalu and #PrayForGovaalu too started trending on social media. A veteran of over 600 films in the last 37 years, he said, “I am honoured by the fact that the audience hasn’t forgotten Govaalu. Friends is a remake of a Malayalam film with the same name. In the original, the character of Govaalu didn’t exist. Siddique had specially written this character for Tamil version. I have been flooded with calls from my friends and fans about the hashtag. Social media is aboon that it reignites such timeless classics through memes.”