Inside the Mind of Singeetham Srinivasa Rao: A Master Class in Storytelling

Kamal Haasan once told me that every storyteller has one story and they just find different ways to tell it. “One man in another’s shoes,” he winked, referring to his oldest living associate, Singeetham Srinivas Rao.

It seemed like the perfect icebreaker for an interview with the 95-year-old legendary storyteller.

Many of his films begin with the disruption of one’s identity or place in the world – Shekhar and Ranga in Sommokadidhi Sokokadidhi, Kamal in Pushpak, Apoorva Sagodharargal and Michael Madana Kama Rajan. What inspires the story of putting a character in a situation he doesn’t belong in, I ask the legend Wednesday morning via Zoom call.

“Yes, although there are a lot of these common elements, the starting point is always an idea. Let me give you a few examples: Sing Geetham was an idea I got many years ago from a conversation with Balamurali Krishna, when he said that music is in everyday life. And I wanted to explore how to capture that music from life.”

He demonstrates this with an example from Sing Geetham where two notes blend in a random spoken line. Pushpak, he says, was born out of a desire to pay homage to the silent film era and Chaplin.

And Aditya 369 was a film that was inspired not only by HG Wells and Back to the Future but also by Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

Twain’s book, one of his early influences, might offer a clue as to where Rao became involved with the concept of one man in another man’s world.

Entrance to the cave

There were simply no screenwriting books or textbooks at the time he was starting out in film. One of the first lessons his mentor KV Reddy taught him was that every detail on paper is sacred.

“If you write caves, the production department and the cameras don’t automatically recognize that it has to be dark. You have to write a dark cave.” And so Rao learned on set how the young screenwriters discovered the meaning of the INT./EXT scene headers. LOCATION – DAY/NIGHT.

Rao is a writer with instinct – when he starts writing a story, he never tries to guess whether it will work or not. “You have to follow your convictions. No one will know if it works or not until people watch it and tell you,” he laughs. So it’s a bit of a shooting in the dark, sticking to a belief, and so it helps that he’s always thinking about the little details to flesh out the scene.

Music and sparkle in the details

I push him with a Pushpak – the way the sound of the finance minister’s radio speech about the need to respect retired officers contrasts sharply with the behavior of the old man checking out the maid, or even the scatological humor scene without resorting to toilet humor sounds. “Yes, contrast is always the best way to find comedy in a scene. What if the place where he tied up the drunken man is next to the dance school?” And that’s how the background sound of a classical dance instructor provides the score for a scene that could potentially earn an audience. But with contrast, they laugh with him instead.

As an instinctive writer, Rao understands that not everything needs to be told through dialogue, a skill he has excelled in since his early days as a writer, from Sommokadidhi Sokokadidhi, where we get a glimpse into the mind of a con man Rango as he watches Shekhar at work. In it, he uses a lot of Chaplinesian silent film devices, which he carried over to Pushpak, where one suspects that his love of finding music in life led him to think of two ideas – a silent film and a musical film where everyone sings their lines.

It took decades for him to get from the former to the latter, but he continued to use musical narration to achieve a great economy of narrative.

You may remember the narrator singing Michael Madan’s fable Kam Rajan. By the time the opening credits roll, we know how they were separated at birth.

Resolving conflict using laughter

I wonder how Rao negotiates writer-star conflicts during the writing process, especially since he has collaborated most with Kamal Haasan, who is often featured on the scripts of his films. “There is no negotiation. Only collaboration. Because there is no film without a star,” he laughs.

How did he learn the art of comedy? Larry David, for example, found his voice by subverting social interactions. Garry Shandling struggled with self-doubt and decided that if he was funny in real life, he didn’t need to learn to be funny on stage.

Rao says he is not aware of any of this theory. “I think I’ve always had a sense of humor. That’s probably the secret to my health. I’m healthy and hearty because I laugh a lot.”

He tells the story of a time many decades ago when he and his friend Anantha had to travel by train from Madras to Mumbai, pretending to be siblings to match the identities on the ticket. They wore dark glasses and pretended to have conjunctivitis. “But I couldn’t stop laughing during the trip. I couldn’t keep a straight face.”

This anecdote offers a glimpse into how Rao discovered the comedy of the average Joe in an otherworldly situation.

Finally, I ask him for a writing exercise that could help young filmmakers discover their own voice. “Take any proverb you like. Any old proverb. And turn it into a modern story,” he suggests.

Traditional wisdom and universal truths examined through an everyday lens can help a young writer or two discover who they are as writers.

Rao also never stopped watching movies. From the days he and Balu Mahendra toured films at international film festivals to discussing Patheru Panchali with Satyajit Ray and deconstructing Manmohan Desai’s lost and found tropes.

“In one scene, three guys are giving each other blood. People didn’t care that it wasn’t realistic,” he recalls of Amar Akbar Anthony’s iconic scene.

He even recently reached out to this writer after watching his film Culture Vulture on YouTube and tried to reach out to Ravish Kumar to share his words of appreciation for “While You Were Watching.”

It was a year ago that this writer approached Rao for an interview about his writing process. Meanwhile, Rao already has a highly acclaimed release in Sing Geetham, is serving as a story consultant on Kalki 2898 AD, and is he smart enough to work on another – a historical spy thriller currently in the early stages of writing – and another twist on one man’s adventure in another man’s world?

The incredible true story of a young man who couldn’t stop laughing and found himself in many adventures with Kamal Haasan is far from over at the age of 95. He keeps finding new worlds to put his men in—and new ways to make us laugh.

Published – 04 Sep 2026 08:00 IST