to abroad for their higher education thanks to Cho who managed his finances and the press they started with Santhanam bringing in the creative input. The movie ends with Santhanam dying in a chair looking at his wife's photo and thinking about the opportunistic behaviour of his siblings and the meaninglessness of life. Cast Rajinikanth as Santhanam Fatafat Jayalaxmi as Lakshmi Cho as Alagappan Sangeeta as Amutha Thengai Srinivasan as Santhanam's father Jaya as Santhanam's sister T. K. Bhagavathi as Santhanam's boss Suruli Rajan as Naidu LIC Narasimhan as Raghu, Santhanam's brother T. K. S. Natarajan as Seshadri Thilak Production The success of Rajinikanth's previous film, Bhuvana Oru Kelvikkuri encouraged the director, S. P. Muthuraman, to cast Rajinikanth in a melodramatic, sacrificial role in Aarilirunthu Arubathu Varai. The film was originally offered to Sivakumar who refused the film. While making the film, Rajinikanth had misgivings whether the audience would accept him in such a melodrama since he had been an entertainer till then. However, Muthuraman convinced him and showed him 5000 feet of edited version, he was highly impressed, and then showed great involvement in its making. Rajinikanth and Muthuraman had differences of opinion every day during the film's shooting, and Panchu Arunachalam used to interfere frequently and tell Rajinikanth to listen to the director. Soundtrack Soundtrack was composed by Ilaiyaraaja Box office The film was screened for 25 weeks in the Midland theatre, Chennai. References External links 1979 films Films directed by S. P. Muthuraman Films scored by Ilaiyaraaja Tamil films remade in other languages 1970s Tamil-language films Indian drama films Films about siblings Films with screenplays by Panchu Arunachalam