Folk singer, actor Kollangudi Karuppayee passes away at 99

Actor Kollangudi Karuppayee with Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi at an event in April 1997.
| Photo Credit: V. GANESAN

She and her late husband Chellaiyya were agricultural workers. They had no children. She had one sister and three brothers, the grandchildren of whom had been taking care of her in her final years. 

It was in the 1980s that she made waves on stage, then State-run television, and eventually on the silver screen. With her long dresses twisted in a rustic knot and saree tied in the traditional pinkosavu way, her singing caught the attention of actor-director R. Pandiyarajan, who cast her in almost all of his films. “In Aan Paavam, we had the role of a grandmother, and she suited it. I saw her on television and when I met her, she said she did not know acting and felt shy. I told her even I did not know acting, and she should just do as we told her to. She would say indha machine kumunnaadi nadika varala, meaning ‘I can’t act in front of the camera’. She couldn’t say camera!,” Mr. Pandiyarajan said.

When he was admitted to a hospital as the result of a car accident, some six months after the release of the film, Ms. Karuppayee, who had learned of the accident, visited him at the hospital. “She stood outside my room for three days wailing and crying that her peraandi (grandson) was hurt and would not come inside. She used to address me as peraandi,” Mr. Pandiyarajan added.

Marimuthu, her relative, said she had been ailing for the past few months. She stopped working in farms after she rose to fame and also due to old age, he added. 

Lenin Raja, another relative, who runs a music troupe named after her, said she had taught him to sing. “We performed together for around 10 years,” he said proudly.