Renu Desai returns to Tamil cinema with Dhanush's OM

Renu Desai is in OM. The actor confirmed her part in Rajkumar Periasamy’s film on Instagram with a short caption, “See you in theaters on Nov 20”, settling speculation that began in May, when she posted pictures with Mammootty and wrote about her admiration for him.

It is her first Tamil film since James Pandu in 2000, the same year she made her Telugu debut opposite Pawan Kalyan in Badri. Most of the career since has been in Telugu: Johnny in 2003, then a long gap before she returned in Ravi Teja’s Tiger Nageswara Rao, and most recently Kashi Majili, which went straight to ETV Win. OM puts her back in a theatrical release, in a cast led by Dhanush, Mammootty, Sai Pallavi and Sreeleela, with Naseeruddin Shah and Indrans; the film held its audio launch last week. Who she plays, and how much of the film she is in, has not been revealed.

The OM post was not the only one from her account that got noticed on Monday. At 11 pm, the night after Diwali, she lost patience with the crackers still going off around her. “It’s 11pm and people are still bursting such loud fire crackers! If I said anything yesterday people would call me anti Hindu so I kept quiet. But which festival is there tonight at 11pm for people to burst such loud crackers?” she wrote.

Her complaint was about the old, the newborn and the sick, not pollution. Cars and industry pollute all year, she argued, so one day of crackers would not change much, but celebrations could end by 10 pm. “Humans have just become selfish and stupid and blind to the suffering of the old people, tiny babies, sick people in general,” she wrote, adding that friends had heard crackers until 3 am.

A third post landed in more delicate territory. It came as Pawan Kalyan and Anna Konidela announced their separation after 13 years of marriage, and it asked people not to pile on someone already in difficulty. “Please don’t throw stones at other peoples houses when we ourselves live in imperfect glass houses!” she wrote, before heading off the obvious reading herself: the words were not to be taken as a comment on anyone in particular, and she was not paid to post them. She named nobody. Renu and Pawan Kalyan married in 2009 and divorced in 2012, and have two children, Akira Nandan and Aadya.

OM: Chapter 1, Udhiram: The Blood Wood reaches theatres on November 20.