Vaikom Vijayalakshmi, Singer
Vaikom Vijayalakshmi proves that music is a sense in itself. The 34-year-old singer, who was born visually-challenged, never needed eyes to manoeuvre her way through the vast world of music. Born on the auspicious ‘Vijayadashami Day’, Vijayalakshmi grew up listening to the Tamil movie songs of Ilayaraja and M S Viswanathan and was soon humming them by the time she was two. Thanks to a formal education in music, Vijayalakshmi, today, has performed on more than 400 stages in all the major cities like Chennai, Tanjore, Madurai and Coimbatore.
But, the real moment of fame came when she bagged the chance to sing for the Malayalam movie, Celluloid. The song took Mollywood by storm even before the film’s release and won her a Kerala State special jury award. Her third film song won her the State Film Award too. More accolades came her way, including the Filmfare Award and Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Academy Award, with her voice getting popular all across South India. She has sung over 40 songs for 20 films in four languages - Malayalam, Tamil, Sanskrit and Telugu, apart from numerous records of devotional songs of different faiths.