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A lesser-known talent of Srividya

Srividya's first ever full-fledged music concert was in Kozhikode.

Srividya was so beautiful a woman and so talented an actress that it was easy to forget that she was a fine singer too.

Not many people knew that the daughter of the great Carnatic vocalist M.L. Vasanthakumari had deep knowledge of music. Lyricist and music director Kaithapram Damodaran Namboodiri was one of them, until he got an opportunity to know more of her during a train journey from Chennai, way back in 2000.

"We were in the same coupe of the Chennai Mail and when we started talking about music, I was stunned by her knowledge and the way she sang," recalls Kaithapram. "I was a great fan of her mother, MLV, whose concerts at Thiruvananthapuram are still fresh in my memory."

Before the journey was over, he was convinced that Srividya had the ability to do a full-fledged concert. But it wasn't easy to convince her, though.

"I had to persuade her a lot, but she eventually agreed to sing at Swathi Thirunal Kala Kendram in Kozhikode," Kaithapram reminisces.

"She did a very good job too, as she sang krithis in Kalyani, which was the main raga of the concert, Sankarabharanam and Hamsadhwani. She had also sung some nice bhajans, especially in Pahadi. I am glad that I played an important role in what was her first full-fledged concert," he says.

He has some other sweet memories about Malayali's favourite actress, who died last Thursday in Thiruvananthapuram.

"I had acted with her in the film Swathi Thirunal and she had lip-synced the first ever song I wrote for a film — Devadunubhi sandra layam... (Ennennun Kannettante)," he says. "But at that time I had no idea that she had so much talent in music."

P.K. AJITH KUMAR

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