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Kalyana Parisu
aka The Wedding Gift 1959 194’ b&w Tamil d/s C.V. Sridhar pc Venus Pics lyr Pattukotai Kalyanasundaram c A. Vincent m A.M. Raja lp Gemini Ganesh, A. Nageshwara Rao, K.A. Thangavelu, B. Saroja Devi, Vijayakumari, M. Saroja, S.D. Subbulakshmi
The playwright Sridhar’s directorial debut is a melodrama featuring the student Bhaskar (Ganesh) who has a secret liaison with Vasanthi (Saroja Devi), a fellow student in whose house he rents a room. However, he marries her sister Geetha (Vijayakumari), the breadwinner of the family. Vasanthi stays with the couple until Geetha asks her sister to leave. When Geetha dies and leaves Bhaskar a single father, he tries to secure Vasanthi again but finds her already married to Raghu (Nageshwara Rao), so he hands her his child as a ‘wedding gift’ and disappears into the mist. The film presents the egotistical Bhaskar as a victimised, tragic hero in a story advocating the observance of social convention, with popular songs performed by playback singer and music director A.M. Raja in his debut as composer. Its autonomous comic sub-plot also proved very popular and is still sold on audio cassettes. Sridhar went on to make a series of ‘eternal triangle’ pictures in a similar vein.