The precise year is yet to be ascertained. It must have been sometime in the early 1940s. Odeon, a recording company, which was later taken over by HMV, set up a recording machine in Madras with the intention of recording voices on gramophone records from the south of India. They recorded many voices, many songs in the other languages except Malayalam. That was when Odeon decided to record a Malayalam song. They picked Pollayil Bastian Vincent, or known more popularly as Sebastian Kunju Kunju Bhagavathar, for this. He was a very successful singer and theatre actor of the time. The company asked him to select the song to be recorded. Bhagavathar chose Vancheesa Mangalam , the national anthem of the erstwhile Travancore State.
Sree Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma was the ruler of Travancore at that time. After a long rehearsal the song was recorded in Bhagavathar’s voice at a studio in Madras. Bhagavathar expressed a desire to present the gramophone record to the Maharaja.
He went to Trivandrum with the disc. Those were days when it was not possible for an ordinary citizen to meet the Maharaja. There was a system of applying for prior permission. Bhagavathar knew the complex process involved in getting such an appointment. An application had to be submitted days in advance, the officials at the palace would scrutinise it thoroughly before granting permission.
ADVERTISEMENT
This usually took days and sometimes weeks. To avoid these formalities Bhagavathar approached his friend E.V. Krishna Pillai, father of the late Adoor Bhasi, the popular film actor. Krishna Pillai had his contacts in Kowdiar Palace and he agreed to accompany Bhagavathar to the palace.
Both of them reached the palace and met the private secretary to the Maharaja. Bhagavathar played the song on the gramophone player he had carried with him. The private secretary seemed to be convinced but said that permission to meet the Maharaja would take a few days. According to him the Highness was busy with discussions with his officials as he was preparing for his forthcoming European tour.
Bhagavathar felt that the private secretary was making excuses and deliberately trying to delay the appointment because he was a Christian.
ADVERTISEMENT
Frustrated, Bhagavathar hurled the gramophone record on the floor destroying it. Of course, the Maharaja did not know of the drama that happened in one of the ante-rooms of his palace.
P.B. Das, Bhagavathar’s son, who lives in Thiruvananthapuram, treasures a rare copy of this gramophone record. He also believes that his father was denied permission to meet the Maharaja only because the name P.B. Vincent was etched on the record. He, however, does not know about that part of the story where his father allegedly threw it on the ground breaking it.
Interestingly, Sebastian Kunju Kunju Bhagavathar and his brother Alleppey Vincent share a significant, historical milestone. The brothers have the unique distinction of being the first recorded voices in Malayalam. While Sebastian Kunju Kunju Bhagavathar’s song was recorded on a gramophone disc, Alleppey Vincent’s dialogue, ‘good luck everybody,’ from Balan , the first talkie, was a first in Malayalam cinema.