On the Coimbatore-Tiruchi road is the town of Sulur. Three kilometres from there is a little hamlet called Kasigoundan Pudur. Today, it is better known as Sivakumar’s place of birth. His father, Rackiappa Gounder, a self-taught man, was blessed with the ability to cast and read horoscopes. He married Pazhaniammal and they were blessed with a boy (Shanmugam) and a girl (Subbulakshmi). Three years later, another boy (initially named Palaniswamy, later known as Sivakumar) was born.
As soon as the youngest was born, Rackiappa predicted that he’d die before the boy’s first birthday. All his friends ridiculed him as he was just 32 then and in good health. But Rackiappa Gounder proved to be right and passed away when the boy was just 10 months old.
The burden of bringing up the children fell on the widowed mother. When Sivakumar was just four, his eldest brother, a strapping young lad of 16, passed away. The mother worked even harder to bring up her two remaining children.
Sivakumar recalls that he first drew pictures of animals and birds, even before he wrote his first alphabet. Twice a year, on Pongal and Deepavali, he was permitted to go and watch a movie. Till he passed his school final exams, he had watched just 14 films. But he’d spent a lot of time staring at the film posters on the walls.
With a sense of determination and purpose, he dreamt of moving to Chennai to pursue a career as an artist and a painter, after his school exams. All these dreams came crashing down when his mother told him that she had made arrangements through her brother (Arumuga Gounder) to get him a job in a textile mill nearby at a salary of Rs. 1,000 a month. Undaunted, he went on a four-day fast to persuade everyone that he wanted to join the School of Arts in Madras.
His uncle would visit him, he was told, and that got him sulking. But the uncle had a different idea – he said that the young lad must follow his dreams and be allowed to pursue painting. Sivakumar left for Madras on June 8, 1958.
The city was to welcome him with a disappointment. He was too late to sit for the entrance exam for the School of Arts.
A relative of his took the young lad to meet Sivaji, who saw the drawings that Sivakumar had drawn of him and advised him to join his friend’s firm, Mohan Arts. The company specialised in painting film banners and cut-outs.
Sivakumar recalled the days he spent staring at the posters of films and immediately agreed to the offer.
It was only later that he realised that it was a tough job – the working conditions were terrible, as they had to paint in a tin-roofed shed using natural light.
The art was quite technical and the planning of the cut-outs was an arduous process. All this was done for a princely sum of 15 paise per square foot.
Tough as it was, this experience not only hardened him, but also honed his skills as a portrait painter. Ten months later, he managed to secure admission in the School of Arts and learnt the various nuances of art and design.
He loved realism and used water colour, oil paint and could sketch any person or landscape. However, abstract art was not his cup of tea.
Over time, he toured various places in India and spent many hours painting what he saw. All this he managed with the Rs. 75 that was sent to him every month.
Sivakumar was poised to become an artist.
But, fate has its own way of throwing the dice and landing up numbers that we least expect. His photographs (he’d asked a cameraman friend, Williams, to take some pictures) were being circulated in the studios of Madras, and impressed by his looks, popular director-duo Krishnan-Panju cast him in its film Chithrapournami . Sadly, the film did not take off, but the directors were so impressed with Sivakumar that they recommended him to AVM for Kaakkum Karangal (1965). Thus, he had started acting even before he had finished his art course.
May 1, 1969, saw the film Kaval Deivam being released in Globe Theatre. Greeting the audience in front of the movie hall was a huge cut-out for Sivaji, who plays a guest role in the film, and a small cut-out for Sivakumar. They were erected by Mohan Arts.
“My heart swelled with pride. The same firm where I had worked for 10 months and the same people who were my colleagues had now sketched my figure. That day, I realised that I will make it in the movies,” recalls Sivakumar.
(An exhibition of Sivakumar’s paintings is on at the Lalit Kala Akademi, Greams Road, Chennai, till October 26.)
