In dialogue delivery lies the soul of acting. It is a major criteria in measuring an actor's worth. The actor who does it better and in as many ways as possible is called the best and the most versatile. Unlike the last article, this time, I am not anywhere away from India to give an example of who is best at it. By all means and by all logical reasoning, it is Kamal Haasan - the polyglot. Kamal in his 50 year long career has mastered as many as 20 Indian dialects and has reproduced them on screen with bang on brilliance. Here is an account of the incredibly long list of lingo's that kamal haasan has mesmerised us with.

It all started off with Ek Duje Ke Liye, where in a scene when kamal returns from the one year separation, he is expected to show off the Hindi he has learnt during his stay outside. Kamal bursts into his prospective in laws' place and stuns everyone with one liner's in as many as 8 different accents of Hindi and marathi. The performance, voice modulation and the accent is incredibly flawless.

But Ek Duje Ke Liye was a minuscule version of what was coming. In the late eighties a comedy movie was made. It told the story of a set of quadruplets. The actor who played the four roles topped the madras bashai, bulldozed over the iyengar slang and clobbered the NRI accent. And it was only the language that differentiated the four characters as each of them looked the same. He would later go on to individually master each of these above mentioned slangs and even more in many films of his. The name of the film is Michael Madana Kama Rajan and the actor is the inimitable Kamal Haasan.

Then, later in his career, he spoke the local madras dialect like no other actor ever has in Maharaasan, Kadala Kadala and Pammal K sambandham. The last being a masterpiece as far as dialogue delivery is concerned. A breakthrough of sorts, given no other film has had the lead speaking so fluently in the language of the Chennai rickshawallahs.

The Nri accent returned in Dasavatharam where Govind, the main protagonist presented some very shrewd one liners. In the same very movie, he claimed the throne to the most versatile speech maker with his performance as the tamil talking telugu cop - Balram Naidu - A role which tickled ever rib and made every jaw drop. The Nellai lingo which had eluded Haasan for quite some time was perfected in Dasavatharam again with the highly acclaimed role of Vincent Poovaraghavan. In Dasavatharam, Kamal also spoke proper American English, Indian Urdu, Punjabi and what not.

Another such effort that won huge accolades is the Srilankan Tamil that Kamal used in Thenali. The Indian version of What about Bob which doesn't remind us of the original thanks to the brilliant use of this very different dialect of Tamil. In Thenali, Kamal sounded like how any other Srilankan Tamil would. Perfection personified once again.

However, the jewel in Kamal's dialogue delivery crown is not any of the roles mentioned above. The peach resides in Coimbatore. Its called Sathi Leelavathi where Kamal as Dr.Sakthivel literally OWNS the Coimbatore slang. This, among the greatest of laugh riots is definitely the most satisfying of all triumphs over any spoken language. Kamal, pulls of with elan, a stupendous performance as the innocent, yet funny doctor from Coimbatore. Along with Kovai Sarala who belongs to the city, Kamal produced one of the most remembered cameos of all time. Sathi Leelavathi is the best of the best - the true peak of linguaphilia.