Apparently, my relationship with cinema began with a tactical disaster. In 1997, at the age of four, my parents committed the rookie mistake of taking me to watch Arunachalam at a cinema hall. They walked in with a toddler, and walked out with a public-nuisance alert. I was that kid – the wriggling, whining, popcorn-spilling menace no one wants seated within a five-row radius. My parents, in turn, became the exhausted adults other moviegoers glared at sympathetically.

But two years later, things changed. Padayappa happened.

At six, I didn’t have the attention span of someone who would grow up analysing Test matches for a living. Yet that day, in that theatre, I didn’t swing my legs, didn’t ask for snacks, didn’t even look away. The Rajinikanth starrer held me captive. Perhaps it was

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