🎶Sadabahar Geet🎵 Thread # 3 || Members only || - Page 7

Originally posted by: Viswasruti

In this song you can see...feel all the navarasas , because the actors are such highly talented .....

Of course, I am not a fan of Dharmendra.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3AIVIRc4JU

जब हम न होंगे तब हमारी

खाक पे तुम रुकोगे चलते चलते

अश्कों से भीगी चांदनी में

इक सदा सी सुनोगे चलते चलते

वहीं पे कहीं, वहीं पे कहीं हम

तुमसे मिलेंगे, बन के कली बन के सबा बाग़े वफ़ा में ...

Originally posted by: Viswasruti

Above all, he was moved by her voice. He had no idea how a wistful expression could beguile his feelings. However, he had always been attracted to her voice. Love or desire, whatever. It had a finer vibe. He had no strange fantasies. His tuned ear appeared to be recalling voices from another lifetime or era. He struggled to shake the feeling that he had lost a loved one whose life had been lived in a language that only hearts could understand.

What a film; Suchitra Sen is the definition of talent; she exudes elegance, grace, dignity, and nuanced expressions, in addition to youthful energy and arrogance. She is a fantastic actress.😊

Who is the he here? 🙈

Beautiful song and the write-up is 🔥🔥🔥🔥

There seems to be an adoption frenzy going on at this melody mansion!

One Mom with Two Daughters...with sibling rivalry, which was calmed down by a strict glare!

Originally posted by: DelusionsOfNeha

Who is the he here? 🙈

Beautiful song and the write-up is 🔥🔥🔥🔥

Originally posted by: Viswasruti

There seems to be an adoption frenzy going on at this melody mansion!

One Mom with Two Daughters...with sibling rivalry, which was calmed down by a strict glare!

Friends to siblings is the real LOVE 🤗

Today is 120th birth anniversary of P.K. Rosy, the first Malayalam film actress.

P. K. Rosy (Rajamma, Rosamma, Rajammal) was an Indian actress in Malayalam cinema born on 10 February, 1903. She was the heroine of Vigathakumaran (The Lost Child), directed by J. C. Daniel.

Sharing the article https://thebigindianpicture.com/2013/06/the-name-of-the-rose/

When journalist Chellangatt Gopalakrishnan first wrote about Vigathakumaran, Malayalam cinema’s first film, all he knew about its leading lady was that her name was P. K. Rosy. Vigathakumaran, meaning ‘the lost child’, was first screened in 1928 at Thiruvanthapuram, Kerala. Gopalakrishnan’s first article on it is said to have appeared in 1968. In his subsequent investigation of the film, and the fate of its director J. C. Daniel, Gopalakrishnan did not find much else about Rosy save that she was “a poor woman who didn’t know the ABCs of acting,” and that she still “performed with great ease”.

The fact that Rosy, a Dalit woman, had portrayed a Nair—a higher caste—on screen had caused a furore among the pramanikal, the town’s elders, then. She was chased away from Thiruvananthapuram by a mob. With the help of a lorry driver, who later married her, she escaped to Nagercoil. The lorry driver happened to be a Nair. So, ironically, Rosy led the rest of her real life as the Nair woman she had dared to play, right up to her death in 1987.

In the years since she was first written about, in accounts of her life put forward by film historians, filmmakers and her relatives, other names for Rosy have emerged: Rajamma, Rosamma, Rajammal; each indicative of a period in her life.

Yet, despite several retellings of her story, the life of Kerala’s first actress remains shrouded in mystery. The controversies and debates raised by Celluloid, a recent Malayalam feature film directed by Kamal, based on the making of Vigathakumaran, has brought these discrepancies to light.

Continued below is the article, it is an interesting read. 😳

Another journalist, Kunnukuzhi Mani, has been credited with being the first person to try and dig out the truth about Rosy’s life, including, but not restricted to, her involvement in Vigathakumaran. “It was at N. N. Pillai’s theatre seminar in 1968 or 69, I think. Kambisseri Karunakaran (journalist, actor and politician belonging to the Communist Party of India) told me about Rosy, a poor woman, a grass-cutter, who acted in the first film. I started investigating from then. Kambisseri gave me the information. He asked if I would do an investigation on this. I was a reporter then, an editor for the paper Kalapremi.”

Kunnukuzhi met Rosy’s relatives and talked to them. He also spoke to J. C. Daniel’s relatives: “I went to Nagercoil. His siblings were there. I asked them about it. That’s how I found his house in Agastheeswaram (Tamil Nadu).”

After his conversation with Daniel, Kunnukuzhi came back and wrote his first article on Rosy in Kalapremi in 1971. Since then he has written about her in several Malayalam magazines such as Chithrabhumi, Chandrika, Tejas, Samakalina Masika.

Celluloid shows Rosy as a Dalit Christian woman named Rosamma. This is based on Gopalakrishnan’s description of her. But, according to Kunnukuzhi, Rosy’s real name was Rajamma. “When she came to work in the film, J. C. Daniel made it Rosy. And then (in Nagercoil) she changed it to Rajammal.”

On the basis of the information he collected, two documentaries on Rosy have been made— The Lost Child and Ithu Rosiyude Katha (This is Rosy’s Story).

Ithu Rosiyude Katha:

https://youtu.be/h5kbIAYwKp0

Early Years

Rosy was born into a Pulaya family in Peyad, Thiruvanathapuram, which was then a part of the princely state of Travancore. Her nephew Kavalur Madhu says her father passed away when she was very young. “When he died there was no one to look after them,” he says. “They were just two small kids and this woman (their mother). So we brought them to our house in Kavalur. This must have been between 1920 and 1925. Ours is a family of farm labourers. So they stayed with us.”

Her relatives remember her affinity towards the arts from when she was very young. In Kiran Ravindran’s documentary The Lost Child, Rosy’s cousin Madhavi recalls how fond she was of acting in plays, and how insistent on going for rehearsals at the kalari, the traditional training school for the performing arts.

“She had studied Kakkarashi (folk) dance drama when she was young,” says Madhu. “So she used to go to perform in these plays.” It was a time when, mostly, men played women’s roles. Acting was considered a profession for licentious women only. “So when she was asked, our grandfather did not allow for it. Those were the circumstances,” Madhu remembers. “But she went anyway, without the permission of our grandfather.”

She joined a drama company in Thycaud, Thiruvananthapuram, and stayed with them. According to Madhu, it is from here that Rosy went on to act in Daniel’s film.

What Happened That Night

In Celluloid, J. C. Daniel, played by Prithviraj, is shown having a difficult time getting an actress for his film. He finds Rosy, played by the young singer Chandni, when Johnson—the actor who plays the villain in Vigathakumaran—takes him to watch a play in which she is acting.

Rosy was cast opposite Daniel, who played the protagonist, in the role of the Nair woman Sarojini. According to an article written by Kavalur Krishnan (another nephew of Rosy’s) in Chithrabhumi (September, 2005), Daniel changed her name to Rosy “because the director felt that he didn’t want the name Rajamma but a (glamorous and anglicized) name like Ms. Lana, from Bombay (who was supposed to play Rosy’s role, but who had made too many demands that couldn’t be met).”

Krishnan adds: “But Rajamma didn’t know (when she was shooting for it) that the film would be shown to the public.” Rosy shot for the film for 10 days and was paid a daily a wage of Rs 5.

On November 7, 1928 Vigathakumaran was screened at Capitol Theatre at Thiruvananthapuram. Madhu says: “The film was released, and the pramanikal came to see it. Now, in south Travancore, it was a time when untouchability was practiced stringently. A person from a lower caste couldn’t even walk on the road at the same time when someone from a higher caste was on it. Those were the times in which she went to act in films.”

Celluloid shows Rosy being invited to see the film. “But Daniel had not invited her to see the film,” says Kunnukuzhi. “He himself said that to me. There would have been problems, because she was a Dalit woman, and so she had not been invited.” According to Madhu, despite not being invited, Rosy went to the screening with a friend. An eminent lawyer of the time, Malloor Govinda Pillai, had come to inaugurate the film. “He said that I will not inaugurate this film until she is removed from here,” says Madhu. “So Daniel asked her to watch the next show of the film instead.”

So, says Madhu, Rosy waited outside the theatre. “A Dalit woman acting as a Nair angered the pramanikal.” But what really sent the already disgruntled audience into an uproar was a scene that showed Daniel kissing the flower on Rosy’s hair. In outrage, they demolished the screen. “She was chased away (from the area),” Madhu says. She fled to Thycaud, and took refuge in the building of the drama company there, where she used to work. “The mob came to Thycaud to set fire to the building,” says Madhu. “And she had to run from there too.”

But Kunnukuzhi contradicts this version of the events. “There was a ruckus and they (the audience) destroyed the screen. A mob came to her house and began throwing stones at it. Then two policemen, whom Daniel had requested the Royal Court of Travancore to send, arrived on the scene. Eventually the mob dispersed. On the third night, after the film had opened, her house was set on fire. They had a house in Thycaud poremboke bhoomi (poremboke bhoomi means ‘unregistered wasteland’). When the house was set on fire all of them—the family members—managed to get out of the house and ran away from the area, to save themselves from the mob.”

Many years after the incident, when Kunnukuzhi spoke to Daniel, “all he knew was that she had escaped. He didn’t say much else.”

Whichever of these versions is true, Rosy had, after either sequence of events, run towards Karamana. “Near the Karamana bridge, it was quite late at night, she saw a lorry come by,” says Kunnukuzhi. “It was from the Paiyyar Company (a transport company from Nagercoil, now in Tamil Nadu, then also part of the princely state of Travancore). Kesava Pillai was the driver. She stood in the middle of the road, raised her arms and cried for help. So Pillai took her onto the lorry and they went back to Nagercoil (where the lorry had come from). That night she was presented before the Nagercoil Police Station and the incident was reported. Then he took her home.”

Keshava Pillai and Rosy got married. This, no one doubts. Accounts vary on whether or not Rosy was Pillai’s first wife. According to Kunnukuzhi, Pillai was not married when he met Rosy: “He was from a Nair household. He was kicked out because he married her.” Madhu, on the other hand, says that Rosy was Pillai’s second wife: “He had a wife and family in Neyyattinkara (now in Kerala), but he abandoned them.”

The couple moved to Otapura Theruvu in Vadasery, Nagercoil. Rosy adopted the name Rajammal. Ammal is a suffix that denotes respect, often attached to the names of women belonging to higher castes in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. The couple lived as Nairs.

The Debates

“There are a lot of mistakes in the film (Celluloid), even though it did get awards,” Kunnukuzhi says. “In those days, in Capitol theatre, there were no chairs. He (Kamal) shot it with chairs. I wrote about this in Mathrubhumi. In those days there were only ‘floor tickets’ (for seating on the floor). There was Bharathiamma, a native of Kuzhithura (in Kerala). She passed away recently. She has talked about this fact in Kiran Ravindran’s The Lost Child. She was 12 when she came with her father to Capitol theatre to watch the film. They watched it sitting on the floor.”

But the film’s portrayal of Rosy raises the question of whether or not she was ever called Rosamma. This fuels pre-existing speculations about her life— Was Rosy a Christian? Did she have a Christian stepfather?

Krishnan, another nephew of Rosy, claims to be the only one alive, besides her two surviving children, to have met Rosy in person and spoken to her. He vehemently denies that Rosy had ever converted to Christianity. “Her mother’s name was Kunji, father’s name— Naanan, older sister’s name— Chellamma, younger sister’s name— Sarojini. Her name was Rajamma and her brother’s name was Govindan. When you look at all that, how can you say she was Christian? Who said she was a Christian? We don’t know who said these things. My grandfather’s family has traditionally been Hindu, belonging to the Ayyankali Sabha (the Ayyankali Sabha had several Dalit communities. Rosy’s family was of the Pulaya community).”

Kunnukuzhi had long discussions on this with Kamal. He insists Rosy was never converted to Christianity. According to him, it was her father who was Christian. “To send Rosy to study, he converted to Christianity at the LMS Church. That was the basis on which children were given education in those days. No one else had converted. Her mother lived as a Hindu.”

Ravindran, who made The Lost Child, is not sure. “When her father converted to Christianity, his name became Paulose,” he says. “He may have changed her name to Rosamma. I don’t know about that well enough.”

Madhu on the other hand says that Rosy’s father had passed away when she was young and that it was Rosy’s stepfather who was Christian. “He was a cook for the Church priests. He is her stepfather, not the real one. That is how ‘Rosamma’ came to be. That is what Daniel took and changed to Rosy.” According to Madhu, the whole family had converted to Christianity, “but only for a short time (till the stepfather worked with the Church).”

Vinu Abraham, Celluloid’s screenplay writer, and the author of the book Nashtanayika from which the film has been inspired, says that his research found that Rosy’s family had converted. To explain this, he provides a sweeping generalization: “Because, in those days, the Pulaya community used to convert to Christianity.”

Madhu brushes aside these statements. “The people talking about it don’t know anything. Kunnukuzhi doesn’t know anything. They are from outside (of the family). We are the ones who know about it.”

Madhu then goes on to contradict himself by disagreeing with another family member as well: “My relative Kavalur Krishnan is the one telling Kunnukuzhi all this. And Kunnukuzhi must have told Vinu Abraham.”

Says Kunnukuzhi, about Madhu, “He is her relative. Yes. But it is only recently that he has come out into the open saying that he is her relative. I asked him about her several times but he didn’t know a thing.”

And so it goes on.