Vaikom Vijayalakshmi’s journey in music began soon after she learned to speak. At the age of two and a half years, sitting in her then residence in Chennai, little Vijayalakshmi sang the first few lines of ‘ Njan oru sindhu …,’ originally sung for the film Sindhu Bhairavi by K.S. Chithra. Her parents immediately knew that she was something special.
“She had a sense of raga and tala at a very young age,” says her father V. Muralidharan. “She would hear cassette recordings of Yesudas’ classical songs and learn them instantly. She can identify the raga of a song quickly,” he says. Vijayalakshmi and her parents were in Kochi on Sunday morning to attend the release of a documentary on them named ‘Salute.’
The film, directed by V. Subhash, is a salute to the singer’s talent and her parents’ support for her.
Sitting at the release function listening to the speakers, Vijayalakshmi’s fingers tap out rhythms on the armrest of her chair of their own volition. She smiles shyly as they heap praises on her.
“Whenever she speaks to me over the phone, she asks me about ragas and talam. But she has so much more knowledge of those things than I do,” says music director Jerry Amaldev. “She is an extraordinary individual and we are blessed for her presence,” he says of the visually-challenged singer. Writer and critic M.K. Sanoo similarly praises her talent and knowledge.
Her parents too came in for much praise for nurturing their daughter’s musical talent.
“Yesudas came to Vaikom when Vijayalakshmi was four-and-a-half-years old. We asked him to impart the first lesson in music to her. We were very lucky that he agreed,” says Muralidharan. Since then, Vijayalakshmi learnt music from several masters, developing her technical skill. With her natural talent in music, she also mastered the ‘Gayatri veena,’ a one-stringed veena that she learnt to play on her own.
“A cousin once made her a toy veena just for fun. She began twanging the string and then she asked me to get her a spoon. With that flat side of the spoon, she began modulating the tension of the string and playing the toy veena. Later, I made a veena just for her,” says the singer’s proud father.
Over the years, Vijayalakshmi performed Carnatic music at over 6,000 venues. But fame found her with the song ‘ Katte Katte…’ in the film Celluloid . The song became a hit and Vijayalakshmi soon bagged many awards.
The 17-minute documentary was shot at the singer’s house over three days.
