Devoted to music
SHYAMA RAJAGOPAL
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Thankam Vasudevan Nair was a leading light of the stage in the late Forties.
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Photo: H. Vibhu
Stage veteran: Thankam Vasudevan Nair.
Her routine during the last couple of years was monotonous. Not showing much interest in what people were talking about…, but mention music and her eyes would light up and she definitely had something to say.
A music student, who had inadvertently kept a harmonium in front of her, was pleasantly surprised when Thankam played the raga Shanmukapriya without a hitch.
It also surprised Thankam’s daughter Laila Ravindran. She had never seen her mother play the harmonium for the last 20 to 25 years or so. In fact, Laila Ravindran who had accompanied her during many concerts, had not, in recent memory, heard her mother play the harmonium.
Musical environment
And it was perhaps the musical environment that pervaded her living space that kept Thankam Vasudevan Nair going. With the demise of Thankam Vasudevan Nair, Kerala has lost a prominent stage artiste of yesteryear. Thankam, along with her elder sister Aranmula Ponnamma, used to known as the Aranmula sisters.
Thankam had defied society in taking to the stage alongside her husband and musician, the late Vaikom Vasudevan Nair.
It was music that brought them together. “But I have no regrets for doing what I liked the most – sing and act for more than 12 years,” she had said. The couple had reached the zenith with plays such as ‘Yatchaki’ and ‘Sasidharan B.A.’
They called it quits in 1952, when Vasudenvan Nair’s tryst with the celluloid – a feature film ‘Kerala Kesari,’– failed at the box office. The duo had acted and sung the songs in the 1951 film.
The couple turned to music for solace. Her eyes used to fill and her voice used to choke when she talked about her life during their heyday on the stage. Not just in Kerala, they had fans in Mumbai, Chennai and Coimbatore too. “There were about 75 Malayali families in Mumbai who made our show a grand success. In Tamil Nadu too, my husband had many fans. His singing (without any amplification) used to reverberate in a big hall. Our play used to be staged after his singing session.”
When Vaikom Vasudevan Nair died in 1985, Thankam continued his practice of a musical offering at the Vaikom Mahadeva Temple on the Vaikom ashtami day till a few years ago.
Four days before she passed away, she had celebrated her 87th birthday.
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