A play that took not just its characters, but those who saw it as well, on a time machine, Y Gee Mahendra's Swadeshi Iyer's 100th performance won the actor appreciation from three of the industry's biggest stalwarts, Rajinikanth, Kamal Haasan and Balu Mahendra, apart from Cho Ramaswamy and N Murali, MD, The Hindu, who were present at the performance.

"There was a time between the late 1970s and early 1980s when we had no other successful comedian apart from Y Gee M. He would be with me and Kamal in almost all our films then and juggle between flicks. Yet, he would clearly state that he had to do theatre practise in the evenings and concentrate on it. Such was his dedication," said the Superstar, while Kamal added that Y Gee Mahendra preserved the theatre tradition his dad had worked so hard to establish. "Slowly, all of them will be getting back to theatre. Our guru K Balachandar has just shown the way," he quipped, referring to K Balachandar's recent play Pournami. Swadeshi Iyer is his UAA Productions 59th play.