Kaviyoor Ponnama, synonymous with evergreen motherhood in Malayalam cinema, vexed several disturbing factors in movies in recent years. One of them is the waning of grandparent characters in new-generation films. “These days, children don’t need their parents as everyone has become self-centred.
This trend has affected movies too,” she said. Ponnamma has good reasons to feel that way, having appeared as mother and grandmother in hundreds of films. In ‘Atom Bomb’ (1969) she even enacted the role of Dolly Lakshmi, a mother of 12 children.
However, it was a comedy character. At the same time, the role that defined her career was the ideal mother in ‘Kudumbini’, released in 1964. Her character Mahalakshmi, which Ponnamma enacted when she was a mere 19, was based on the hypocrisies surrounding a typical family in Kerala those days.
In the movie, Ponnamma plays a newlywed bride who tolerates the taunts of her mother-in-law and the onslaught of her sister-in-law. She is a devout wife, who finally sacrifices her life by donating blood to the wife of her husband’s brother. This role earned Ponnamma so much popularity among family audiences in Kerala that she was in demand to play similar characters all her life.
When K S Sethumadhavan adapted ‘Odayil Ninnu’, a novel by P Kesavadev, into film in 1965, Ponnamma played the major character Kalyani. She also enacted the main role in P N Menon’s ‘Rosy’, where her character dies after delivery. The same year, she was mother to Sathyan and Madhu in ‘Thommante Makkal’ and there was no looking back.
In 1984, when the film was remade as ‘Swanthamevide Bandhamevide,’ Ponnamma reprised her role. Even while repeatedly appearing as a mother who sacrifices everything for her children, Ponnamma enacted roles of mothers with extraordinary mettle. For instance, in ‘Nizhalattam’ (1970), she was a bedridden mother who curses her husband and in ‘Thinkalazhcha Nalladivasam’, she was Janaki, a woman who calls the trees on the compound of her house the names of her husband and children.
Ponnamma’s other notable roles include the grandma waiting for Unni in ‘Elakkangal’ (1982) directed by Mohan; Ponni, who discretely supports Kannan when he has a rift with his father in Balachandra Menon’s ‘Oru Painkili Katha’ (1984); the grandmother who is a devotee of Guruvayur Krishna in ‘Nakhakshathangal’ (1986) and ‘Nandanam’ (2002); Walayar Paramasivam’s mother in ‘Runway’; Bhageerathy Thampuratty who awaits the return of her deceased son Unni in ‘His Highness Abdullah’ (1990); Yashodamma in ‘Thenmavin Kombathu’ and the mother in ‘Chengol’, ‘Bharatham’ and ‘Vadakkumnathan’. She had scenes of feeding children since ‘Pravaham’ (1975), but the mother who feeds poisoned rice to her son in ‘Thaniyavarthanam’ touched viewers’ hearts. While Ponnamma was the mother to four generations of actors in Malayalam, she loved being the mother of Mohanlal the most.
Moreover, the audience enjoyed the chemistry between the two actors. “When I met Mohanlal for the first time, he was only 23. He was a naughty boy and that endeared me to him.
Our physical attributes matched and the audience preferred to see us as mother and son,” she said. Some people also asked Ponnamma that she should act as mother to Mohanlal only. Similarly, whenever Ponnamma attended rituals at temples in villages of Kerala, women enquired about her son.
When Ponnamma replied that she had a single daughter, they would tell her, “What about your son, Lal?” Ponnamma would inform them that Mohanlal couldn’t accompany her as he was busy. “When Lal once said that he was my son who wasn’t born in my womb, I felt shaken. Even though I did not give birth to him, Mohanlal was my son,” she said.
Veteran actor Kaviyoor Ponnamma, who had wielded decades-long motherly presence in Malayalam cinema breathed her last at a private hospital on Friday..
