09 January,2011 06:46 PM IST | | Dhamini Ratnam
He may be known as Rekha's father, but down South, Gemini Ganesan reigned undisputed as the Kadhal Mannan -- the king of romance -- of Tamil cinema for close to two decades. The man wasn't much different in his personal life too, reveals his biography
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Eternal Romantic: My Father, Gemini Ganesan by Narayani Ganesh is part of a Roli Books series called Family Pride, written by children on their famous parents. Rahul Singh wrote one on his father Khushwant Singh, as did Anoushka Shankar for her father Ravi Shankar.
It's a book that could have been much more.
Ramasamy Ganesan or Gemini Ganesan, as he came to be known, was an immensely popular actor from the 1950su00a0 to the 1970s. Ganesan won many fans for his understated style of acting (which ran opposite to the melodramatic acting of the other leading stars of the time) as well as for his dashing good looks. He was also incredibly lucky -- his first film happened only because the actor he'd cast to play the role of Panduranga didn't show up on the day of the shoot.
Ganesan also had more than one wife, and supported three households. Narayani Ganesh is one of his four daughters from his first marriage to TR Alamelu, or Bobjima, as she is referred to in the book. Ganesan married Savithri, a popular Tamil actor and his co-star in more than 40 films. They had two children. Beside them, Ganesan had a brief affair with another immensely popular Telugu actor, Pushpavalli, and had two daughters with her -- Rekha is one of them.
The author does little more than allude to the families, and devotes perhaps no more than a paragraph on what her mother thought about Ganesan's other wives. Ganesh instead, dwells on her father's childhood, his many interests, his excellence in different sports and his "naughty ways" with his mother.
Ganesan fans will find a few interesting snippets in the book, such as the time he went dressed as a beggar to a producer's house to bag the role of the character based on Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Ganesan, we're told, was so convincing that the producer's family actually gave him alms and asked him to leave. When they got to know that Ganesan had impersonated the beggar, the role of the disfigured character in Kanavane Deivam was given to him.
But these interesting anecdotes are far and few in between. Most details about Ganesan's life can be gleaned from the several photographs in the book.u00a0
The absence of Bobjima's voice -- who married a 19-year-old college-going Ganesan when she was barely 15 -- is perhaps the most disappointing aspect of this biography. She is referred to as a "poor thing" by her family elders, and Ganesan himself, in a diary entry recording the birth of their third child.
The photographs reveal more of Bobjima. There are many with her and her children and step children, smiling with a steely look.
Glimpses of the children's reactions to their father comes through when Ganesh talks about the fallout between Savithri and Ganesan after 15 years of being together. Both turn to alcohol, and Ganesh's sister, Kamala, becomes their father's conscience-keeper, often given the unenviable task of picking up an inebriated Ganesan from a friend's house.
But Ganesh keeps all emotions, other than adulation, off the book. And although we are informed of Ganesan's affairs, we are merely offered a compendium of events that leaves us with nothing more than a two-dimensional cardboard cut-out of Gemini Ganesan --much like his larger-than-life on-screen persona that brooked no resistance or criticism, leaving him safe to play the role of the adulated, sometimes tragic, but always charming, heroic figure.u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0
Eternal Romantic: My Father, Gemini Ganesan by Narayani Ganesh
Published by Roli Books, Rs 495
