Balachandra Menon Recalls Srividya’s Grace and Rajinikanth’s Rise

In a new tribute, Malayalam actor-director Balachandra Menon opens up about the late actor Srividya — and the story he tells begins, unexpectedly, with Rajinikanth.

Menon, who worked as a film journalist in Madras in the mid-1970s, remembers meeting a struggling actor in a yellow T-shirt at a hotel. The young man was entertaining the staff and asked Menon to get his photograph published. Menon tried, but the magazine declined.

A prediction that aged perfectly

Later, Menon went to interview Srividya on the sets of K. Balachander’s Apoorva Raagangal. Kamal Haasan was being mobbed by photographers while a newcomer in a different get-up went almost unnoticed. That newcomer was the same man from the hotel.

On the drive home, Srividya offered Menon a lift and made a quiet observation. She said she had worked with the young actor for just two days, and she was certain he would become a superstar. Menon writes that she was the first person to predict it. The man was Rajinikanth.

It is a warm, telling detail: sometimes star quality is first recognised by a peer watching closely, not by the cameras.

Why Srividya stayed with him

Menon describes Srividya as “the complete package” for an actor — expressive eyes, a dancer’s face and a natural ability to emote without overstatement. She played his mother in Tharattu, and the two developed an easy rapport.

Their collaborations went beyond the screen. Here are three moments Menon says have stayed with him:

• Srividya sang the hit Aana koduthal um kiliye for his first production, Oru Painkili Katha, and they performed it together at shows abroad for years.
• She playfully teased him by working his wife’s name, Varadha, into everyday Tamil sentences.
• She worked with him again in Arante Mulla Kochu Mulla, where she and Lakshmi played rival sisters-in-law with a healthy sense of competition.

In his telling, Srividya had an undeniable aura. “When she walked, she had a dancer’s grace, as though her feet touched the earth ever so gently,” he says. Even in his list of the five most beautiful women he has met, she would rank at the very top.

The sadness behind the warmth

For all the jokes and music, Menon also remembers a persistent melancholy in Srividya. He writes that she had personal problems after a hasty marriage that took a heavy emotional toll, though she never discussed them with him and he never asked.

Years later, when he heard she was unwell, he called to cheer her up. She declined a visit, saying her condition was not good and she was at risk of infection. A few days later, she passed away. Menon writes that seeing her once-gorgeous face looking frail and pale was one of the most heartbreaking moments of his life.

For fans who know Srividya mainly as a name in film credits, Menon’s account is a reminder of the person behind it: a performer with grace and instinct, who could spot a future superstar before the world caught on.

Source: Filmfare

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