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Making a mega impact

Satyapriya's portrayal as a mother in "Kolangal" has endeared her to viewers

A popular face Satyapriya.

The role of the mother on TV and in cinema seems to be undergoing a sea change. The all-sacrificing, forever praying mothers such as Pandiribai, S.Varalakshmi and K. R. Vijaya are passe.

Today they can be found only in Tamil serials, as a breed of new-age mothers has taken over the big screen.

The glam girl of the 1970s and 1980s, Satyapriya has emerged as the most popular television mother in her role as Karpagam in "Kolangal" (Sun TV Monday-Friday 9 p.m.). Recently, she got the Kalaimamani award for 2005 from the Tamil Nadu Government.

From 1975 to 1985, Satyapriya scorched the silver screen doing more than 200 films in all South Indian languages. A classical dancer, who has more than 1,000 stage performances to her credit, Satyapriya is a Telugu by birth who later made it big in Tamil cinema. She has played heroine to Sivaji Ganesan in Deepam and Pilot Premnath and later mother to superstar Rajnikanth in Baasha, which got her a lot of accolades, and Ramya Krishnan in Padayappa. She continues to don the role to a new generation of actors such as Narain in Chithirem Pesuthadi. But today she is better known as Karpagam of "Kolangal" who single-handedly brings up her children after her husband deserts her for another woman.

Says Satyapriya: "Today I am popularly known as Abhi's Amma. I have won a lot of sympathy from the viewers. Television has given me an awesome reach especially among the middle class family audiences. I am surprised when people come up to me and ask, how I brought up three daughters without any support from my husband (in "Kolangal")."

Satyapriya feels today's on-screen mothers appear artificial with no "traditional values". Traditional mothers have been eased out of commercial cinema by our larger-than-life heroes and young actors.

She says: "The mother sentiment was an important factor in Indian cinema from its inception to the late 1980s. After the advent of satellite television, it looks like the mother sentiment shifted from cinema to television as most of the mega serials in the South revolve around joint families and their problems." She feels those who watch serials relate to them more than ever before.

Satyapriya, who is also doing the remake of the popular serial "Malargal" in Telugu titled "Maa Amma Mata" (Gemini TV), says it was cinema and the glamour associated with it that made her popular on TV. As for the future, she looks forward to doing good roles both on the small and the big screen.

SREEDHAR PILLAI

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