If you are a regular viewer of the mega serial, ‘Uravukku Kai Koduppom,' on Kalaignar TV, the child in the picture should be very familiar. Yuvina Parthavi, the precocious two-and-a-half-year-old, is a favourite on the small screen and off it too.
K. A. Bhuvanesh, the director of the serial, which is telecast Monday to Thursday (8 p.m. to 8.30 p.m.), can't stop talking about her capacity to grasp matters in a jiffy.
“Yuvina's shots get canned in a single take. She hangs on to every word I say and delivers them verbatim, with the right modulation and expression. She's fantastic,” he says. Yuvina is equally fluent in Telugu too!
‘Uravukku Kai Koduppom' has as its theme rebirth. A mother, with grown-up sons, daughters-in-law and daughter, is reborn into the same family after her death. Now a child, she makes others realise that she has returned and is well aware of the nature of each one of them. Their goodness, evil intentions, deficiencies, idiosyncrasies … she knows them all.
The sequence in which the baby goes to meet an old, religious guru is particularly poignant. The angst of a caring mother comes out in the performance of Yuvina so well that the viewer is moved.
“I've always found the subject of re-birth, and true-life stories about the phenomenon, intriguing. So, I suggested that we could have it as the theme of our mega serial. The daily soap was received well from the beginning, but the ratings shot up incredibly after Yuvina entered the scene,” says AVM Saravanan, the producer of ‘Uravukku …' “It is now the most-viewed mega serial on the channel,” he adds. Sekkizhar is its dialogue writer.
The director met Yuvina and her folks while on a tour. He was so impressed with her astuteness that he took her to Saravanan. “Immediately, the producer told me to go ahead and finalise Yuvina for the part, though he had almost decided on another child for the role. The response to her screen presence shows that his judgment was right,” says Bhuvanesh.
“She strikes me as a very different child. My daughter wanted to gift her a toy of her choice and took her to Citi Centre. I was surprised to hear that she played there for a long time but didn't wish to take anything home,” says Saravanan.
‘Uravukku Kai Koduppom' is well past the 345-episode mark and is still going strong. “Yuvina has a lot to do with its success,” certifies Saravanan.
