It was a daunting task for senior actor and Kuchipudi dancer Prabha Ramesh to shed her otherwise dignified walk and graceful draping of her sari to reel off expletives normally used by slum dwellers. Those who know her well will vouch for the fact that she can never raise her voice, hardly gets annoyed and at the most can get into shrewd, mean characters but this role as Arya's mother in recently released movie Vaadu Veedu ( Avan Ivan in Tamil) has had movie aficionados stupefied.
Big challange
Prabha says, “putting on the dark make up, pulling my hair behind and knotting it tight and also dancing for Sivaji Ganesan gari 's popular song with the band wasn't easy. To make matters difficult the director who is a perfectionist wanted me to dub, I had to use this particular Tamil slang, keep my face in one manner and scream the choicest epithets simultaneously.”
At the end of the day, she is happy, her family is wondering if it was her and the Tamil audiences are referring to her as that ‘dark girl' in the film.
Where has Prabha been all these years? Prabha says she kept doing small ‘mother roles' in Chala Bagundi, Kick, Nagavalli but with a gap of at least two years between each film. Bala saw her work in the Tamil movie Nadodigal and resolved to have her for his film. Both Prabha and Ambika got plenty of screen space and provided wholesome entertainment.
Prabha has been living in Chennai for the past 35 years, but has a flat here in Hyderabad and comes only when there is a film shoot. Otherwise it's her movies in Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and her family that take up her time.
Lost out on'Khaidi'
Prabha says in heydays she lost out on some good movies because of the lack of dates. “I was supposed to do Sumalatha's role in Khaidi . If I had taken that up, I would have got at least ten more films. I lost out on films with Kamal and Rajnikant too.” She had done 18 films with Chandra Mohan and around 16 with Murali Mohan and was a big actor at one point of time. She had an interesting repertoire..folk, social, mythological, comedy. “People connect with me easily when you talk of Chitram bhallare vichitram song in Dana Veera Soora Karna, ” she avers.
Shift to dance
One cannot always work with top stars like ANR, NTR — all that heroines would get with them were four dances and four dialogues. So she simultaneously worked with heroes like Narasimha Raju to keep her career afloat. As soon as heroines enter wedlock, offers recede, so that was the time the actor from Tenali took up Kuchupudi.
“Dance is my passion, I learnt it as a child but only took it up full time in 1988 when I found the right guru. My arangetram and marriage both happened in the same year. My most memorable time was in USA. I gave 40 performances and travelled from one end to the other with a live orchestra. I have no complaints with life, I have only two friends Jayaprada and Jayasudha who are my contemporaries,” she signs off.
