Who is that paati ? I see her walking with a cloth bag in hand in a cramped street in Teynampet. She turns a corner and disappears before I can place her. At another instance, she disembarks from an MTC bus at Nandanam and walks wiping her brow with her sari’s free end. She looks familiar, but I cannot seem to recall where I’ve seen her before. It’s only later that I realise I saw her in Mayakkam Enna . On screen, she looks exactly like her real self: in a crinkled cotton sari, grey hair in a bun, and a smear of orange senthooram on her forehead. She is GT Kasthuri, the quintessential bajji , idli , and pookkarapaati (old flower seller) of Tamil cinema.
The 68-year-old has done small roles in over 700 films. You would have seen her in Muthu , Arai Enn 305-il Kadavul,Engeyum Eppodhum , Madras , Idharkuthane Aasaipattai Balakumara .... “I will have to refer my diary to name all the films I’ve acted in,” says Kasthuri. “They’re all good roles.” She may have got not more more than a few seconds in several of them but for Kasthuri, all it matters is that she got an opportunity to act. “There are so many cinema aspirants who get their dreams crushed in Chennai. Look at me, I get roles even at this age. I’m grateful for each of them,” she says.
In cinema, there are several kinds of actors: stars who are worshipped, comedians, villains, supporting artistes...then there are the nameless extras. Kasthuri falls somewhere between the last two. She’s not famous, but is a face that’s recognisable. “I’ve not made much money despite being in the industry for over 25 years,” she says. “But people come up and talk to me wherever I go; they say ‘Paati-a paaru’ (look, it’s that grandma). I’m happy.”
Kasthuri came to Chennai 30 years ago from Ariyur Kuppam in Vellore with her 10-year-old daughter. She shrugged off a bad marriage and wanted to start afresh in Madras. “I thought there was so much I could do to fend for myself and my daughter. I could cook, become a tailor...I also knew the ghee business,” she recalls.
And so the young Kasthuri started delivering ghee that she made from butter sourced from Madhavaram. “One day, a customer who worked in All India Radio told me I had a good voice and asked me to come to their office the next day.” Kasthuri thus got her first acting assignment. “It was for an audio drama. I played a character called Kamala.”
Back then, Kasthuri recalls with some pride, that she was quite attractive. “People liked my bold voice too,” she says. “I spoke my mind and was fearless. I also knew I had to maintain boundaries since I was a single mother.”
Kasthuri then joined theatre and moved on to cinema. “I’m now a member of the Nadigar Sangam,” she says. She started off by playing the sister-in-law, the mother, the aunt. She got to deliver a few lines here and there, but nothing more than that. Today, she’s doing the same kind of roles that give her a sliver of screen presence. She’s also forayed into TV serials — she’s presently acting in Devathaiyai Kanden in Zee Tamil — and short films. Kasthuri believes that it was Mayakkam Enna that gave her career a boost. “It took me to young audiences,” she says. “When actor Dhanush once saw me, he asked, ‘ Enna paati, enna theriyudha ?’ (Do you remember me, grandma?) I asked him how I could ever forget him,” she laughs.
She recalls another incident in which she was repeatedly getting calls from the office of “someone called Mohanlal”. “I had no idea of who he was and kept ignoring them. Later, someone told me that he was a big star like Rajinikanth in Malayalam. I then agreed to act in the movie Lucifer ,” she says.
Kasthuri says she doesn’t necessarily prepare herself for a role. “I go dressed the way I usually would and speak how the character would,” she says. In her field that’s ruled by casting agents, she gets around ₹1,500 for a role. She lives alone in a rented house in Teynampet, cooks her meals, and has the luxury of picking from the barrage of roles that come her way. “This is more than what I dreamed of,” she says. Kasthuri paati makes one think if success in the film industry is not merely fame and money. For her, it is independence and freedom.
