Acknowledged as an ace wordsmith and famed for his intuitive comic timing, K. Bhagyaraj, interestingly, believed that out of crisis comes comedy. The comic track in his films does not run as a parallel track alone, but inside the main plot; it runs alongside the conflict vein, mixing drama and crisis with comedy, elevating the resolution and making it Bhagyaraj’s own.

This is particularly prominent in films where he donned hero roles. The fact that he brought down the hero from a pedestal – a bespectacled, skinny youngster not afraid of being vulnerable, poor, or self-deprecatory, and willing to be laughed at – lent itself to the humour track. While in his later films he came to be known for infusing his comedy dialogues with a tinge of the bawdy and risqué, his signature was his craft of wedging situational humour into melodramatic situations.

As a result, the tension created feels human, not unresolvably heavy. There are relatable flaws, miscommunication, and a quiet desperation that drives the plot. Take his classic Antha Yezhu Naatkal, for instance. The comedy in the movie initially derives from the reduced circumstances of a musician, Palakkad Madhavan; it soon gets intense as his lover Vasanthi (essayed by Ambika) is forced into a marriage with a stranger, played by Rajesh.

As the young woman finds her heart locked with her lover and her fortunes tied with her husband, Bhagyaraj, the master scriptwriter, introduces a climax that hinges on the value of the thali, a symbol of marriage and a sentiment many Tamil movies have exploited. The climax becomes bittersweet and predictable for the times he lived in, as Bhagyaraj leaves, respecting the woman’s newfound love for her husband and the thali that he has tied. Even when the situation looks tense, he finds a way to make the audience notice vanity, awkwardness, or emotional self-deception and the disrobing of all of these.

Humour in everyday conflicts

If you believe life’s toughest situations are also life’s funniest, Bhagyaraj was your man. While Bhagyaraj may or may not have engineered punchlines deliberately, because his characters are “ordinary”, their troubles rooted in the everyday and relatable, the audience laughs at the scenes unfolding in front of them. For some of them, it might have also been cathartic to see situations from their real life unfolding on screen

He would place his characters in morally or emotionally tricky situations, sometimes even contrived, drawing drama from their responses to the situation. His genius was to find comedy not out of conflict but inside it. The worlds he inhabits are full of high-pressure situations, but invariably they envelop wit.

In Indru Poi Naalai Vaa, the plot of the film that Bhagyaraj claimed to have written overnight revolves around three men who vie for the attention of one girl. The humour sits on social and romantic confusion, slipping into a comedy of errors at the end. A legendary scene from this film is the comic track involving a Hindi master and the now-famous “Ek Gaon mein Ek kisan Raghu thatha,” a dig against Hindi imposition. While Bhagyaraj, as the hero Pazhanisamy, eventually wins the girl, played by Radhika, the film is another strong illustration of the director’s ability to squeeze comedy from real-life situations and pressures.

In another of his much-loved films, Mundhanai Mudichu, the tension is already present – a girl falls in love with a widower who works as a teacher in the village and marries him by falsely accusing him of having had sex with her. But does she have his love yet? The central relationship is already charged with emotional and social conflict, but Bhagyaraj’s touch allows the pressure to be moulded into playful, awkward comedy.

In Darling, Darling, Darling, again tensions between the hero and the heroine form the scaffolding for the movie. In a series of miscommunication and missed cues, emerges pathos but also situations where the audience is laughing and crying at the same time. Finally, technically as a hero, he manages to get the girl, but has to sweat for it. The later Rasukutty, where Bhagyaraj plays a spoilt landlord, also presents an endearing, clown-like hero who has to undergo a trial by fire in order to surface. The comic sequences in them are again intertwined with pathos, but he finds a way to smile inside it.

Few directors or actors could yoke together situational comedy and pathos so well. With the departure of Bhagyaraj, his movies remain as sterling examples of how to take a complex situation and effortlessly squeeze comedy out of it.