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Literary Review
'It runs in the family... '
C.S. LAKSHMI
G.V. Sundaramma
AFTER the film and TV invasion, not many people remember the grand mythological and social plays performed with songs and long dialogues, with a harmonium player singing after the main singer. Sometime back, friends spoke to me about G.V. Malatamma. The name did not particularly ring a bell but her father's name — Gubbi Veeranna — immediately put things in place. G.V. Malatamma is now 75 years old. She can hardly see and has to move about in a wheel chair because of an accident which took place during one of her performances. But Malatamma lives and relives her theatre days, every day of her life and can recount details which seem unbelievable to us. From a huge trunk in the house, tumble out many old photographs. The photograph which draws your attention most is that of her mother Sundaramma about whom Malatamma is always willing to talk.
Sundaramma's life, closely linked with Gubbi theatre, is an amazing one of dedication and love for theatre and for her husband, Gubbi Veeranna. Sundaramma was brought to the Gubbi company as a young child of five by her parents who were so poor that they thought it would not be possible to bring up a child. Someone advised them to take the child to a drama company, where, if she was lucky, she may find her vocation. The drama company owner asked them what they expected in payment for the child. They wanted 24 rupees and some rice and Sundaramma was taken into the company by the owner and brought up as his own daughter. In time Sundaramma was asked to marry Veeranna who was also in the same theatre company. He was already married but since the owner asked him to take over the theatre company and also marry his daughter, he agreed. But when his first wife died, his family wanted him to marry again. Sundaramma was not considered a "proper" wife. Sundaramma, although deeply hurt by this, herself looked for a girl for him and got him married. Malatamma talks of her father's fourth marriage as more of a strategy than a need. There was the threat of a young girl who was doing her roles well in the Gubbi company leaving the company for better prospects in cinema. It was difficult to get actresses those days and Veeranna decided to marry the girl just so that she won't leave the company.
Sundaramma lived through all this standing by him like a rock. Even if suffering from a raging fever, if there was no one to take the role of a character that had to speak a three-page dialogue, Sundaramma would be there so that the show could go on. There was not a single instance when the Gubbi company had to call off a show, according to Malatamma. Even on the day Sundaramma died, the news arrived, half way through "Sadarame" play. A much upset Veeranna, did not stop the show. The show went on and only after that did he and Sundaramma's daughters, who were also in the play, go to see their departed mother. When one talks to Malatamma, one realises that all these achievements of a theatre company don't come easily. They come trampling over the feelings and emotions of women who form the pillar of a company and who have to shape their lives according to the whims of men who decide what is good for them.
G.V. Malatamma.
Malatamma's life also got shaped this way. She was married off at a very young age much against her will to a man whose first condition was that she should give up acting. To Malatamma, drama was her life and she had started acting even before she could talk properly. The theatre was the home in which she and her sister Swarnamma, who also acted in various plays, grew up. Learning music from stalwarts like Veenai Doraswamy Iyengar and Vasudevachar, and singing with a voice resonant with feelings so that the four-anna ticket person could hear them clearly, these sisters did not know any home other than the theatre. And yet Malatamma loved and respected her father and so gave up something that she loved most. But she came back to the theatre and her marriage collapsed. At a dramatic moment when her husband told her to choose the theatre or himself, she chose the former. But Malatamma is luckier than most. For, when she returned, she found a partner about whom when she talks even now, she breaks down. Basavaraj, who acted as Rama in "Lava-Kusa" while Malatamma played Sita's role, was a person who brought love, warmth and friendship into Malatamma's life.
Malatamma's career in theatre came to an end even while she was acting as Sita and stepped on some live wire carelessly dropped in the side-wings. She survived but could not move about. But worse was that immediately after, Basavaraj died in an accident. Malatamma has lived through it all and is game enough to narrate the story of a theatre company. And she carries so much of the theatre and her father and mother with her. She says her father always waited to hear a particular song of hers in "Lava-Kusa", which Sita sings after being abandoned in the forests by Rama. Her father used to wait in the side-wings and wipe his eyes with the edge of his dhoti after the song, and only then leave for home. And today when her daughter B. Jayashree sings a song and one turns to look at the almost blind Malatamma, one can see tears flowing down her cheeks. If asked about it, she would smile and say, "You see, it runs in the family... "
C.S. Lakshmi is an independent researcher and a writer. She writes in Tamil under the pseudonym Ambai. She is the founder-trustee and director of SPARROW (Sound and Picture Archives for Researches on Women).
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