The man, who is no more and who is now “Dear departed”, he played a forest officer pursuing a bandit in the film. The founder of Desiya Murpukku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK) MGR was his idol. And Vijaykanth nursed chief ministerial ambitions like the man he looked upto.

Vijaykanth, who was 71, when he passed away, was forever the Captain, but the man who once used to the Kingmaker never could be King. The irony and the hard facts. Vijaykanth had all the makings of a leader. Success had not come seeking him, he strived and survived a string of flops that followed his 1979 debut ‘Inikkum Ilamai’. The film did not do well in urban centres. But the ‘Chinna Gounder’ ran for a year in rural theatres.

Tables turned in his favour thereafter. Enjoying the adulation of his fans, Vijaykanth founded DMDK. Political highs and lows were in store for him. Not being a politician who faces success and failure at the elections stoically, Vijaykanth found to his dismay that adulation of his fans did not make a reliable vote bank.

Something more than a brawny persona and incandescent eyes, the features which endeared Vijaykanth to filmgoers is needed for a political leader for a long stay in the sun. In plainspeak, they were not good enough draws for the voters. The popularity of Vijaykanth's films in the 1980s and the decade thereafter guaranteed the economic well-being of his family members, but not at all in the rough and tumble world of politics.

Vijaykanth witnessed DMDK floundering and was reduced to a bit player within a decade of its founding. Reverting to the profession which catapulted Vijaykanth to a new high, he had to start from the bottom of the ladder. Born Narayan Vijayraj Algarswamy, Vijaykanth did not belong to any of the traditionally influential Tamil castes.

The roles he enacted helped him rise above these constraints, but Vijaykanth faced more trouble in the state known for its complex duo-poly of anti-caste than many who strayed into politics and business. He successfully leveraged his fan following, what he thought to be a loyal vote bank.

Vijaykanth essayed the role of a police officer in many films. The plots of the film revolve around themes of honesty and crusade against corruption together with keeping promises which shot up his support base. His target audience was a section of the economically and socially marginalised. This was the launch pad of his transition from Captain Vijaykanth to "Karuppu MGR" (Black MGR).

He was also known as ‘Puratchi Kalaigar’ which translates to ‘Revolutionary Artist’.

In the 2006 Assembly elections, Vijaykanth's on screen image as a fighter against terrorists, feudal landlords fetched the DMDK 8 percent votes and helped DMDK become the second largest party in 2011. But it failed to be an alternative to DMK and AIDMK. Vijaykanth had married Premlatha from a non-filmi background who wielded an iron hand in his film and political career.

Premlatha, a compelling orator, was made DMDK general secretary when the wheelchair-bound Vijaykanth was on the podium witnessing his wife's "coronation".

It sounds like a rerun of the MGR-Jayalalithaa story. But Vijaykanth was no MGR; Premlatha can never be Jayalalithaa and may even find her husband's shoes outsized when she tries to slip into them. (IPA Service)