BANGALORE: It is said that politicians remember voters once in five years during election. But the actress Soundarya, who died in an air crash while she was campaigning for the BJP during the last Lok Sabha election even during election time nobody spares her a thought.
While this is the sad state of memory in her homeland, Soundarya lives on in the web world.
A New Hampshire-based journalist with a passion for obituaries started the Blog of Death which is a frequently-updated weblog highlighting obituaries of the famous, infamous and interesting unknowns.
The blog started in 2003, has obits of more than 1,500 personalities across the globe with more than 24,000 tributes by viewers.
Jade had written an obituary of a few lines on Soundarya on April 20, 2004, for which the readers are responding and paying their tributes even today. The tribute pages run for more than 100 pages.
In Karnataka, Soundarya is almost forgotten. Apart from her family members who started the Amara Soundarya Vidyalaya in RMV Extension and ‘Soundarya Memorial award’ constituted by Karnatandhra Lalitkala academy in memory of Soundarya for every ugadi, no memorable work has been done by either the film or political parties, where she served for years.
How dreams Crash Soundarya, who acted in Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Bollywood films, died on April 17, 2004 in a plane crash near Bangalore. She was 32 years.
She had joined the BJP and was traveling to Andhra Pradesh to campaign for the party for Lok Sabha elections 2004, when the four-seater Cessna 180 caught fire and crashed minutes after take-off from Jakkur. Her brother Amarnath, BJP worker Ramesh Kadam and pilot Joy Phillips were also killed. Soundarya had joined the BJP in 2004 at the behest of Amarnath, an RSS worker who was been active in the BJP since 1990. Soundarya won many national and state best actress awards including the Swarna Kamala for her Kannada film ‘Dweepa’, state awards given by both Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh and also six filmfare awards.