Pari, Charriot, Mullai etc

It is no surprise that God chose to reside in her voice.

M.S. and her group returned to Madras on November 15. During her tour she had ensured that plans for two temples could transform into reality thanks to the money that was collected through her performances.

The Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan could have a new home. Yet the star herself was returning to Madras where she was now without a residence to call her own. The sprawling Kalki Gardens where she and her husband had lived for three decades and had entertained every celebrity possible and had hosted lunches and dinners for many friends and well-wishers, had been sold owing to financial compulsions. She and Sadasivam moved into rented and very small premises in the Valluvar Kottam area. A way of life had ended. It would have been a shock for anyone and for today’s generation where a “mood out” can happen for anything trivial, undertaking an international concert tour and making a success out of it while something as traumatic as the sale of a loved home was taking place, would appear inconceivable. Yet M.S. and Sadasivam had done it, thereby proving that their faith and Gandhian way of life were unshakeable.

Every paisa earned during the concert tour had gone for charity. Had M.S. or Sadasivam so wished, they could have asked for and got a share of the proceeds for themselves. But this was anathema to both of them. On learning of their living in rented premises, M.G. Ramachandran as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, offered them a Government bungalow for free. But the couple refused.

Theirs were hands that could extend only to perform acts of charity and never to receive them. And they practised this till the end.