Madhan Karky

Biography:

Karky is the oldest child of lyricist Vairamuthu, who has won seven National Awards, and Ponmani, a Tamil expert and retired professor at Meenakshi College for Women. His younger brother Kabilan is a writer of novels as well as dialogue and lyric scripts for Tamil movies.

Film Career:
Karky started his career in the Tamil film business with the science-fiction movie Enthiran (2010), the filmmaker Shankar’s magnum opus, when he was working as a professor at Anna University. Karky approached the director in 2008 with a few of his songs, and the director hired him to assist with the dialogue of the movie, particularly with technical terms. He said that three sets of dialogues—one each by Shankar, Karky, and the late Sujatha, a frequent collaborator with the director who passed away in the early phases of the movie’s pre-production—were written for practically every scene of the movie. Sujatha passed away before the movie even started production. After reviewing all three draughts, Shankar would use the most appropriate one.
The only part that wasn’t written by numerous authors was the climax, which was written by Karky alone.

Along with the dialogue, Karky also composed two songs for the movie: “Boom Boom Robo Da” and “Irumbile oru Irudhaiyam,” the first song of his career that A.R. Rahman sang in part. However, his debut album was Kanden Kadhalai (2009), for which he wrote the song “Ododi Poren” (composed by Vidyasagar). Karky won the 2011 Vijay Award for Best Find of the Year for his work on Enthiran.
With numerous collaborations with A.R. Rahman, Harris Jayaraj, G. V. Prakash Kumar, D. Imman, M.M. Keeravani, Yuvan Shankar Raja, S. Thaman, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Anirudh Ravichander, and Sam CS, Karky rose to prominence as one of the most sought-after lyricists in the Tamil film industry after his work on Enthiran. He is renowned for writing songs in languages other than his native Tamil; examples include “Asku Laska” from Nanban, which contains 16 distinct languages, “The Rise of Damo” from 7aum Arivu, which was written in Mandarin, and “Continua” from Nootrenbadhu, which was written in Portuguese. His lyrics frequently incorporate rare Tamil terms that aren’t commonly used in regular speech, such as “Panikoozh” from me and “Kuviyamillaa Kaatchi Paezhai” from Ko.

Dialogue Writer:
Following the success of Enthiran, Karky once more worked with director Shankar on Nanban as a dialogue writer. He added a twang to the dialogue in this remake of the popular Hindi film 3 Idiots to portray college life in a unique light. He also worked with Shankar on 2.0 (the follow-up to Enthiran) as a technical advisor.

Additionally, Karky is well-known for his productive partnership with Telugu director S.S. Rajamouli on the two-part epic Baahubali, the second of which became the most successful South Indian movie of all time and I. His other famous works as a dialogue writer are Idharkuthane Aasaipattai Balakumara by Gokul, Massu Engira Masilamani by Venkat Prabhu, and Mahanati by Nag Ashwin, which is a biopic of the renowned South Indian actress Savitri.

Linguist:
Karky devised a language called “Kiliki” for the Baahubali series, which was used by the Kalakeya tribe in the movie. The language’s foundation was formed during his stay in Australia, where he also worked part-time as a babysitter and invented the “Click” language with children to build a new language. He proposed to develop his language when filmmaker Rajamouli asked for a language that sounded threatening. He built a language called “Kiliki” using “Click” as a foundation and added roughly 750 words and 40 grammar rules.
Tense and plural markers are used in the language through the use of verbal clicks like ‘tch’ and ‘tsk’. Additionally, contrary terms were frequently pronounced differently (‘min’ for ‘I,’ ‘nim’ for ‘you’). As the characters who speak it in the movie don’t exhibit sorrow, the language lacks terms that can be used to represent it.