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When the young lady breathed life to the 55-year-old mother in ‘Veluthambi Delava’, thus began the long journey of T R Omana as mother, mother-in-law and grandmother through films like ‘Potter Kunjali’, ‘Aa Chitrasalabham Parannukollatte’, ‘Siksha’, ‘Pretheekha’, ‘Sarasayya’, ‘Aswametham’ ‘Agniputhri’… Omana, a Nair girl from Alleppey, who wanted to be a famous dancer in addition to a heroine, had to forget dancing to show justice to her role as mother: “When dancers do the mother role, some dance movements will naturally appear. This will adversely affect the role we do. A young lady doing the role of the mother has to practise the slow movement of an aged person. It requires much mental and physical preparation. So I had to set aside dancing, which I had cherished from childhood,” Omana says. Before putting on the mother’s garb, Omana, the eldest of the five daughters of T R Gopalapillai and Meenakshiyamma, had done baby roles in two or three films in the early 1950s. Later, she worked with drama and dance troupes. Her mother’s death and the losses her father suffered in his timber business forced her to discontinue studies and take to acting and dancing as a profession. Moreover, she had to take care of her younger sisters.
About one-and-a-half-months had passed by the time Omana and her father came to Chennai with the youngest sisters. They hired a house in Kodambakkam and contacted the producer of the film who had given the offer. But the shooting for the film had already started, with another actress doing the role allotted to Omana. However, the producer helped her by introducing her to Satyapal who was all set to make a film. “Satyapal Chettan” had fixed artistes for all the important roles, except those for two or three old people’s roles. He offered her one of those, but she did not like doing it. She was in a great dilemma and he gave her time to decide. “An artiste must be willing to take any role. It is not what role we do but how we do it that is important,” her father advised her. And against her dreams, Omana acted as Mathu Tharakan’s wife in ‘Veluthambi Delava’ which catapulted her to fame. Along with acting, Omana began to lend her voice for other actresses as her Malayalam was free of the “Tamil taste”. And she became very busy by 1970. Omana, who acted with “four generations of artistes”, says, “When I watch what the youngsters are doing now, I feel what I did in the past was nothing. They have much freedom. I envy these children”. “We didn’t get the encouragement that they get now. There are lots of advertisements, interviews and things like that. I wonder what would have been the situation had we got all these,” she says.
“But in our case, we were not well-educated and so we had to take acting as our profession to make a future for a our family. We remained in the field over twenty or thirty years. But the youngsters quit the field in maximum five years,” Omana, whose last films are ‘Megham’ and ‘Friends’ which were released four years ago, says. It will be more apt if we say it is not fate but rather a blessing that made Omana a mother - a mother to one’s own sisters, a mother to those artistes who are her seniors and a mother to a theatre-going people. That is why she says, “I am happy that I could do all these roles. Wherever I go, everybody respects me as a mother”. Salil Jose Readers' response/inputs can be e-mailed to salil@chennaionline.com.
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“Amma intha role cheyyumbothu azha koodathu (Don’t cry when you do this role). I know you will reach a high position. You will be known by this role tomorrow,” said a Tamil make-up man to a 20-year old Malayalee girl, who came to Chennai with a dream of becoming a heroine and was destined to don the role of a mother at the very outset.
Omana got an offer to act in a film in the early ’60s. But her father was against sending her alone to Chennai. So he let out his shop and house on rent and sent two of his daughters, who were studying, to a hostel.
“The youngsters are well-educated and they are from sound family background. They don’t want to take on acting as a profession. If there is a chance, they will act and if there is no chance, okay, they are ready to seek some other profession. Their sole aim is to act and shine for some time, to make some money, to buy a car, to love somebody and to leave the field,” Omana, who stays with one of her sisters at Kodambakkam, says.
