Pugazhendhi-2
THE HUSBAND
 This was one role Pugazhendhi took up very seriously in life.
Married to his father's, sister's daughter Sethulakshmi in 1957, he treated her like a queen. Whether they were struggling in a rented house or splurging after their children were well-settled, he never made her want for anything.
People now recall that the two were always found together everywhere. "That is because quite early into the marriage he was upset that I had gone to an exhibition with a neighbour. 'Henceforth, I will take you wherever you want to go', he had said and kept his word."
"If we went shopping and he was waiting on the other side of the road by the car, he would rush to cross the road and take the shopping bag from me. He never felt ashamed to help me," says
Sethulakshmi.
Once, when he was waiting for lunch at a shooting spot, an actress teasingly asked him if he was afraid of his wife as he had refused to eat what they offered. He said a simple, "Yes", and made her keep quiet. But Pugazhendhi explained that since his wife was making the food for him with love and affection he would not want to hurt her feelings.
 His wife reciprocated his feelings. If he promised to take her out for a movie but failed to turn up, he would ask her to go with her friends. But she would miss the movie than go without him.
Sethulakshmi remembers his devotion till the day he died. The couple had gone to Thiruvananthapuram for the Attukkal Pongala Festival, an annual ritual. "He would stand amongst all the women and help me light the open fire to make the pongal," she says with feeling.
The day before he died they had gone to a temple. But after everyone got ready to leave, he again went inside the temple to pray. His wife teasingly asked him what special favour he had sought from the Goddess.
"I don't have to ask for anything. I get them by God's grace. I just asked that I should come next year also to the temple with you," he said, recalls Sethulakshmi with tears in her eyes. Because he died the very next morning in his sleep.
 They had been alone in the hotel room - Hotel Highland, which was built on his ancestral property - and his wife asked him to wake up since he was in the habit of pretending to be asleep. She even splashed some water on his face. But since even that did not wake him up, she summoned the hotel staff for assistance and rushed him to a hospital where he was declared brought dead. He had the good furtune of dying in the very place where he was born!
"How am I going to face the coming days without such a husband. Avar Oru Achariyamana Manushar. He looked after me so well. There cannot be a better husband or a better father on this earth," says Sethulakshmi emotionally.
Their daughter Kavitha, married
to Mohan, agrees. "There is no doubt that my father was a wonderful husband."
Sethulakshmi is great fan of his work and says there is "no song of his that she does not like". She likes his Telugu compositions and "at music programmes I would wait excitedly to hear songs from
'Sankarabaranam'.
 She says he would walk into the house and simply hand over the cover carrying the money to her without even looking at what was inside. Only she knew how much he was making.
While he took care of bringing home the bacon, she managed the finances and looked after the children. He would not tell her if something good had happened at the work place or if somebody had praised him. But if there had been a problem he would definitely talk to her about it.
In spite of the frustrations of merely being an assistant music director, he would tell his wife and family that he was indebted to music director K V Mahadevan for giving him a vital break in life and that God would take care of his needs.
When the children now try to console her now that she must face up to the loss of such an affectionate husband, Sethulakshmi swallows hard and nods her head.
To be continued....
Pugazhendhi-1
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S Chitra
R Rangaraj
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