Kamal Haasan was the chief guest at the Tamil website launch of the South India Cinematographer Association recently.

The actor was nostalgic and recalled his associations with veteran cinematographers like Vincent, Marcus Bartley who did Chemmeen, BS Lokanath, and Babubhai Mistry, among others, and how he learnt something from each one of them.

Retorting sharply to BJP leader Subramanian Swamy’s reference to Tamils as porukkis (rogues), on his Twitter posts, the Vishwaroopam star commented, “Someone calls Tamils porukkis. I am also a Tamil porukki, but I know where to do it. Unlike someone who does it in Delhi.”

He quickly added, “Don’t be puzzled about why Kamal has started speaking politics all of a sudden. This is not politics. The words came out of ‘self-respect’.” Perhaps Swamy’s other post — “Cinema stars comments are not worth notice since they are mostly uneducated and live in the world of make belief” — also didn’t go down well with the actor.

Ulaganayagan also revealed that since childhood, he had wanted to become a technician, more than an actor.

Reminiscing on how Bharathiraja came to him, narrating his debut film, 16 Vayadhinile, Kamal said, “Years ago, a man sporting a soiled dhoti and shirt came to my office to narrate a script. Had I turned the offer down on the basis of his dirty clothes, I wouldn’t have been here talking to you. After listening to the script, I realised that he was such a genius and the movie was the cult classic 16 Vayadhinile, and he was none other than ace Bharathiraja sir,” he smiled.