Not very far from where it
all began, a motley group, thrown together 50 years ago, and bound by that
solitary incident, gathered on March 08, 2014. The four of them, in the
twilight of their lives, sat in Chennai’s not-yet-summer gentle shade, and
spoke about that epoch of their lives: ‘Kadhalikka Neramillai’.
The three heroines of the
film — Kanchana, Rajasree and Sachu — and one of the men behind the rip-roaring
comedy, ‘Chitralaya’ Gopu, co-writer on the film with director Sridhar, came
together, chatting merrily over cups of coffee and biscuits, talking as if they
were still on location at the Aaliyar dam bungalow; as if not a day had gone
past since.
In March 1964, ‘Kadhalikka
Neramillai’ broke out on celluloid screens in the South, in glorious Eastman
Colour, with songs (by Vishwanathan-Ramamoorthy) that were an instant hit. It
was a romcom (romance and comedy), in the days before the word came into being,
probably, and from a director known for his pathos and gripping scenes that
wrenched tears out of you.
Gopu, Sridhar’s buddy, says,
“We were sitting in a car on the Marina
“We were so thrilled to be
working with Sridhar sir,” the women chorus. Kanchana, an airhostess, made her
debut; Rajasree, the Telugu actor, got a break in Tamil; and though Sachu had
started as a child star, this was her first solid role. “Sridhar sir had the
courage to introduce fresh faces,” says Sachu. From time to time, they crack up
at the recollection of a fond, shared memory. The loudest laughs are reserved
for reminiscing about the legendary scene between Nagesh and Balaiah, where the
former is narrating a horror story.
“I was standing behind,
trembling to control my laughter. The moment the scene was over, the entire
team began to laugh, so hard, we soon had tears running down our faces,” says
Kanchana.
Rajasree played the heroine,
not only in Tamil, but also in Telugu (‘Preminchi Choodu’) and Hindi (‘Pyar
Kiya Jaa’). “Those colours and the clothes… we wore nighties, and tight jeans,
perhaps for the first time in Tamil cinema. The movie breaks for interval with
a shot of a lipstick mark on a pillow. You could say it was sexy in a subdued
way, for our times,” says Rajasree.
For all the success the film
turned out to be, no one wanted to exhibit it initially. “Chitralaya, our
production house, released the film in Madras ,
at Casino Theatre, and in Madurai
As the four of them chat on,
the shadows lengthen. If you hear them speak, you cannot tell they are alone.
For them, Sridhar hovers about in spirit, as do Nagesh, Balaiah, Muthuraman and
the dashing Ravichandran.
Slowly, the spacious grounds
of Iyal Isai Nataka Mandram seem to fill up with the spirits of the departed
stars of ‘Kadhalikka Neramillai’, and this time around, there is time to love.
