On his 75th birthday, it is impossible not to reflect on the extraordinary arc of Rajinikanth’s life. Long before he became the face of Tamil cinema, Shivaji Rao Gaikwad’s world was defined by hard labour, desperate choices and an unshakeable belief in something larger than himself.

Rajinikanth has frequently spoken about the series of odd jobs that shaped his early years. Born into a family that struggled to make ends meet, he worked wherever he found an opportunity. Even before he became a conductor, he worked as an office boy, then as a coolie, and later as a carpenter. Only after these stints did he secure the job that would eventually set the stage for his cinematic destiny: a bus conductor with the Bangalore Transport Service. He has said many times that his understanding of poverty did not come from observation but from lived experience.

At a musical event in Singapore in 1992, organised by his wife, Latha Rajinikanth, the actor recalled how, even as a conductor, he was fiercely determined to change his circumstances. But that ambition was not without moments of fracture. Rajinikanth revealed that during a particularly dark phase of his youth, he briefly contemplated ending his life. The moment passed only because he encountered a painting of a saintly figure, surrounded by devotees, performing a puja, an image that stayed with him long after he walked away and ended up defining his spiritual path.

That night, he dreamt of the same figure. In the dream, the godman, an elderly saint with a white beard, sat on the far bank of a river, calling him across. Rajinikanth remembered running over the water to reach him, not swimming. When he asked about the figure the next day, he was told it was Sri Raghavendra. The dream, he later said, shifted something deep within him.

Moved by what he believed was a sign, he visited the Raghavendra Mutt, began fasting on Thursdays, and prayed for a better life: not fame, but the stability his family never had. What followed is now a well-known chapter in Tamil cinema history: admission to the film institute, a life-changing discovery by K Balachander, and the meteoric rise of a conductor who would soon be worshipped as a superstar.

Years later, in 1978, Rajinikanth visited Mantralayam, where Sri Raghavendra lived. Seeing the river and the landscape that matched his dream from years earlier, he said, left him covered in goosebumps. For him, it was a reminder that his journey, from poverty to superstardom, had always been guided as much by destiny as by determination.

It is this personal reverence that later led him to portray Sri Raghavendra in the 1984 film Sri Raghavendrar, his 100th screen appearance. The film may not have performed well commercially, but Rajinikanth has repeatedly described it as one of the works closest to his heart.