ears ago, while shooting an ad film with Rajiv Menon, he took me across to the next floor, where a big Tamil blockbuster was being shot. He said the director wanted to chat with me.

I was intrigued and flattered - this was Singeetham Srinivas Rao, the brilliant director who once gave us Pushpak (the silent movie starring Kamal Hassan). And this completely disarming and unassuming man told me over lunch, "I marvel at you advertising people. How do you manage to say a story with songs, dialogues, action in 30 seconds? We get almost three hours!"... more