As she sings Sangeetham sahithyam… , a melodious light song, over telephone from Chennai, you know why she is a prize-winner at the State School Arts Festival.
N.K. Meera still sounds sweet, some 37 years after she came second in the light music contest in Thrissur. And she had finished second to K.S. Chithra.
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“And I am probably the first unofficial Kalathilakam of the festival, as I won the cup for the individual champion at the festival in 1978,” says Meera. “I had come first in Malayalam recitation and got an ‘A’ grade in Mono-Act.”
Meera, who had represented PSHS, Chittur (Palakkad), is also the younger sister of actor Krishnachandran, who had won the first prize in classical music in 1975. She remembers Chithra’s performance from the festival. “She had sung Odakkuzhale... She was brilliant of course, but those days the expectations about Chithra’s elder sister K.S. Beena were higher,” she says. Meera had no guru for her song, though. “I learnt it through the music lessons conducted by A. Ananthapadmanabhan on All India Radio, Thrissur, where he was a Veena artist,” she says.
“Yes, there are times when I regret that I could not make music a career, especially during school festival times like this,” she says.
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