(Continued from last fortnight)

S.G. Kittappa with K.B. Sundarambal.

Destiny disengaged Kittappa from the winning scenario of Kannaiah’s company and catapulted him into Colombo in the early months of 1926. A dusky southern maiden of 18 called Sundarambal had been making waves there, bowling over people with her powerful singing and assertive personality. The expectation was that Kittappa would prove a powerful foil for her, something that seemed to have proved elusive in her career till then. Sundarambal had been warned not to pair with Kittappa; he was too overwhelming a presence and her singing would pale before Kittappa’s. And Kittappa himself, for his part, was asked not to act with an upstart actress whose attempts to find a male foil had led to audiences hooting the actors out.

Both seemed to have brushed aside the warnings, for one fine morning Kittappa turned up at Sundarambal’s residence in Colombo. Even as Sundarambal’s mother Balambal announced the arrival of a ‘royal personality’ to Sundarambal, Kittappa walked in and sat down by her side. What temerity to enter a woman’s bedroom and then to seat himself on her bed, thought Sundarambal. But Kittappa wasn’t allowing her time to react. He said that he needed rehearsals with her. Sundarambal replied that there was no need for rehearsals. “My songs are of a different kind,” Kittappa remonstrated. “I will manage,” said Sundarambal, holding her own. “You will be deceived,” replied Kittappa. “Let’s see who is,” retorted Sundarambal. One does not know what Kittappa’s reaction was to this first meeting, but we have Sundarambal’s. She was bowled over, she felt her gandharva had sought her out. “What a handsome mien! What clarity of speech,” she exulted.

They were a hit with audiences from the word go. Unlike the panoply of special effects and picturesque scenes that Kannaiah marshalled, the Kittappa-Sundarambal stage plays were like ‘special’ dramas which gave importance to star actors and their sterling performances rather than stagecraft and visual grandeur. They complemented each other musically, with Kittappa’s high pitched singing (in scale G or even A) easily matched by Sundarambal. If Kittappa sang like a maestro, Sundarambal had the self-confidence to cross swords with him with her ringing voice and clear diction. The chemistry, that resulted when the duo sparred verbally with retorts and repartee, endeared these special dramas to the fans. The audience lapped up the live thrills of their extempore conversational combat.

Their relationship had gone to its next stage too. One day, Kittappa had arrived at Sundarmbal’s home and declared his love for her. Sundarambal was in love with him, too. He was 20 and she was 18. After she extracted that most predictable promise – that he would never ever leave her – they were said to have married quietly in a temple ceremony at Mayuram in the beginning of 1927. She was soon pregnant, and insisted in letters she wrote to Kittappa that he must make arrangements for the valaikappu ritual (bangle ceremony for expectant mothers). But Kittappa was nowhere in sight when she gave birth to a male child and not even after the baby died ten days later. Sundarambal knew that he had been married with great fanfare in 1924 to 11-year-old Kittammal, daughter of a mirasdar of Tirunelveli, at a gala function held in the huge bungalow of Paramanandadas Chotadas in Tondiarpet. Sundarambal knew she was the other woman, but such was her adoration of Kittappa and her knowledge that he too loved her deeply that she was prepared to make generous allowances to him.

Meanwhile, relatives on both sides wanted them apart. Misunderstandings grew, with Kittappa suspecting Sundarambal’s loyalty and Sundarmbal asking him to desist from his flippant charges lest the skies cleave and shower brimstone on him! But the two got together in a few years and toured the South to stunning effect. Together, they helped the national cause. The salt satyagraha and civil disobedience movement had caught the imagination of the people and Kittappa contributed in many ways to it.

Other developments in Kittappa’s personal life seemed to have queered the pitch for him. The death of his mother Meenakshi, to whom he had been very closely attached, affected him deeply. Even before he could get over the loss, Appadurai Iyer, his eldest brother, died. Appadurai had been a father figure to Kittappa who looked up to him. It was said that it was Appadurai who kept Kittappa away from that most common failing of stage actors of the day – booze. With Appadurai’s death, Kittappa was left to look after himself. There was no one to look up to.

* * *

Despite not going to school, Kittappa was no uneducated stage actor of his time. He had learnt to speak, read and write Tamil, Telugu and English. He had such a powerful memory that one look at a lyric was enough for him to memorise it. His power to absorb music was uncanny. He was no lotus eater but a strapping young man raring to go. He cycled, swam, played cricket and football, and was a dashing driver of automobiles. He made tons of money, but never touched a wad of notes. He would have others spend it for him, never asking for accounts. He was no credulous fool though, and could see through deceit easily. He was generous to the members of his large family, and his house in Shencottah was more or less a dining hall open to all. He treated his servants like friends. How did a man of such values and character fall prey to alcohol?

Kittappa it seemed, needed to imbibe spirits for his spirited singing. He was said to keep a jug of hot water fortified with liquor and make a clean swipe of it before launching into a high pitched Amma Ravamma or Evarani, his entry song. Given the charged atmosphere of the stage, it seemed quite the natural thing to do. But for a man who was swinging between two women and was trying to beat back the angst of losing two people who had mattered the most to him, alcohol proved to be the black hole to nowhere, the path perhaps to the fulfilment of a death wish. Devious individuals posing as friends hastened his undoing to line their own pockets.

Towards the summer of 1933, the sunshine seemed to be going out of Kittappa’s career. He had swollen feet and yellow eyes, signs of cirrhosis of the liver. X-rays indicated that Kittappa’s stomach was severely inflamed and his liver had shrunk. He was treated continuously for two months – in a bungalow he rented in Mylapore – and showed signs of recovery. Then he went back all of a sudden to Shencottah with his erstwhile friends, then to his wife’s place in Tirunelveli and from there to the first floor of Chandra Vilas, a hotel in the town. He had had a relapse of his addiction. By the time he returned home to Shencottah, he was a changed man and had thoroughly lost his zest for life. It wasn’t long before he passed away. As he lived in the agraharam, he was cremated the same day. K.B. Sundarambal, who took his ashes to Kasi, donned the garb of a widow and announced that she would act with no other man on stage henceforth. Such was her loyalty to Kittappa whom she endearingly called ‘Enga aathukkarar’ (the man of my house, husband).

* * *

As his legacy, S.G. Kittappa left behind the fascinating story of a heavenly minstrel who held listeners in thrall with his magical music for an eternal moment, and a cluster of lovely recordings, a rainbow of songs. This treasure trove of music might never have been a possibility had Orr’s Columbia not pulled off a recording coup in its competition with HMV. It was almost the fag end of Kittappa’s short but cataclysmically eventful life, and future generations can only bless their stars that the gramophone medium won a race that celluloid lost. A movie planned to be made with Kittappa and Sundarambal in 1933 never took off. (Courtesy: Sruti)

(Concluded)