At a wedding in Goa just days before his death, K. Bhagyaraj moved through the crowd with the ease of a man who had spent half a century in the public eye. A video clip that later circulated online shows him greeting Telugu star Chiranjeevi with a warm embrace, his familiar spectacles and gentle smile unchanged from the 1980s, when he was redefining what a Tamil film hero could be. On Saturday morning, after returning from his daily walk, he complained of chest pain and was rushed to a Chennai hospital, where he was declared dead at 73. The news, coming only 17 days after the passing of his mentor, the legendary director Bharathiraja, sent a fresh wave of grief through an industry still in mourning.

Bhagyaraj was a one-man studio. He wrote the story, screenplay and dialogues, composed the music, directed the film, and then stepped in front of the camera to play the lead – a bespectacled, skinny, self-deprecating man who triumphed not through machismo but through wit and obstinacy. Born in 1953 in Tamil Nadu’s Erode district, he began as an assistant to Bharathiraja on the landmark 1977 film 16 Vayathinile, where he also appeared as an extra leading a donkey. Two years later, he directed his first feature, Suvarilladha Chiththirangal, and launched a prolific run that produced over 25 films as director and more than 75 acting roles. His 1981 classic Andha 7 Naatkal, a bittersweet love triangle, is still cited by filmmakers as a masterclass in screenwriting; Mani Ratnam once called it one of the finest screenplays ever written in Tamil.

His canvas was the middle-class household, its everyday anxieties and quiet desperations. In films like Mundhanai Mudichu, Indru Poi Naalai Vaa and Chinna Veedu, he wove comedy into crisis, finding humour not alongside the conflict but inside it. His heroes were vulnerable, often poor, and unafraid to be laughed at – a radical departure in an industry then dominated by larger-than-life stars. Women, too, were given agency; his female characters spoke their minds and drove the plot, a fact that drew a loyal female audience to matinee shows. His dialogue, laced with the earthy Kongu dialect and double-edged wit, entered everyday speech. The line “Ek gaon mein ek kisan Raghu thatha” from Indru Poi Naalai Vaa became a pop-cultural shorthand for the absurdities of Hindi imposition.

The tributes that followed his death reflected the breadth of his influence. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay announced state honours for the funeral, describing Bhagyaraj’s work as “timeless memories that entertain while speaking to humanity and social values.” Superstar Rajinikanth, who had worked with him as a young actor, visited his Chennai residence to pay respects, as did Kamal Haasan, who noted that the industry had lost “two Rajas within the same month.” In Malaysia, where Tamil cinema has a devoted following, news outlets led with the story; in the Gulf, the English-language press recalled his Hindi remakes starring Amitabh Bachchan and Anil Kapoor. At his residence, former assistants and protégés like director Parthiban helped manage the stream of mourners, a testament to the loyalty he inspired.

What endures is the image of the man-next-door hero he created and embodied. Decades after his peak, aspiring screenwriters still turn to his films to break writer’s block. His stories, rooted in the rhythms of ordinary life, refused to separate laughter from pain. As his body was taken to the Besant Nagar crematorium for the final rites, the Tamil film world was left to reckon with the loss of a storyteller who proved that the most compelling hero is often the one who looks most like us.