KOCHI: Every evening Gauri Amma would give her three daughters - Ponnamma, Jagatha and Sarasamma - an oil bath. Then she would send them to a well at some distance from the house to take a bath. One day, as Sarasamma sat on the edge of the well, she slipped and fell into the water.
“I started screaming,” says Ponnamma.
“Thankfully, my mother heard me.” Gauri Amma came running and jumped straight into the well. Surprisingly Sarasamma had remained bobbing on the surface even though she was only three years old. “My mother, who did not know swimming, grabbed her and held on to some plants along the wall.” Ponnamma continued to shout. The neighbours saw that she was peering into the well and quickly realised that somebody had fallen in. “So they came running with a ladder,” she says. “And that was how my mother and sister were saved.” But this incident had a lifelong impact on Ponnamma. “Ever since I have never stepped into water, be it pond, river or beach,” she says.
Even though Ponnamma was born in Kaviyoor she spent her childhood in Ponkunnam where her father T P Damodaran ran a business. Once as Damodaran took Ponnamma to the town on a Sunday evening through a rubber plantation they heard a girl singing to the notes of an instrument.
"I told my father we should find the source of the voice,” says Ponnamma.
They reached a clearing where a man was playing a harmonium. A fascinated Ponnamma immediately told her father she wanted the same instrument.
Damodaran refused. However, a week later, he bought her the harmonium.
Then Ponnamma expressed an interest to learn singing. “Somehow my father managed to find a guru and I began taking lessons from the age of five,” she says.
One day Damodaran took Ponnamma, who was eight years old, to a concert by M S Subbulakshmi at the Thirunakkara Maidan at Kottayam.
“I stared at Subbulakshmi in wonder,” she says. “My only thought as I listened to her perform was that when I grew up I wanted to sing and look like her: the diamond nose ring and earrings, the big red bindi in the middle of the forehead, and the jasmine flowers pinned in the hair.” Ponnamma’s own singing debut took place at Kaviyoor when she was 11 years old. It was at this ‘arangettam’ that she got her name. At that time there was a senior music artist called Kaviyoor Revamma. The announcer said, “After Revamma it is our own little Ponnamma who will bring glory to our village. And I am sure one day she will be known all over the world as Kaviyoor Ponnamma.” Ponnamma got her break in acting rather accidentally. In 1958 the Kerala People’s Arts Club (KPAC), with its close ties to the Communist Party, was looking for a young girl who could sing to act in their drama ‘Mooladhanam’.
A teacher who belonged to the party and knew Ponnamma mentioned her name.
One day when Ponnamma was returning home from school she saw an Ambassador car following her. “I ran up the steps of my house and told my mother that some people were coming after me,” she says. As she spoke, the men entered the house. Damodaran recognised them immediately as KPAC stalwarts -- Thoppil Bhasi, Devarajan Master, Kesavan Kutty and Shankaradi. Since Ponnamma had never seen a film or a drama she had no idea who they were.
They told Damodaran they were looking for a young singer. So Ponnamma was asked to sing a ‘keerthanam’.
“They must have liked my singing because they gave me the role in ‘Mooladhanam’,” she says.
Ponnamma learnt the songs and sang well. However, there was a crisis.
The organisers could not find a girl to play the heroine’s part. “I saw people whispering to each other,” says Ponnamma.
Little did she realise that they were planning to make her the heroine even though she was only 13. When Damodaran informed Ponnamma about the decision she began crying.
“I felt it would be an enormously difficult task for me,” she says.
However director Thoppil Bhasi told her, “There is nothing to fear. Just follow what I say and you will have no problems.” And, indeed, she did not have any problems because she showed a natural flair for acting from the very beginning.
But away from the public eye, Ponnamma was by nature a loner and an introvert. And she would think about things that children normally did not. “I would ponder over the meaning of life,” she says. “Where do we come from? Where do we go after death? Why are we here? Why has God created the earth, the animals and the birds? Why did God create us?” Sitting on the steps of her new bungalow on the edge of the Periyar near Aluva Kaviyoor Ponnamma, 63, pauses, smiles, and says, “So many questions and, so far, I have not received any answers.”
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