SEVASADHANAM
Sevasadhanam was produced by MUAC-Matharas united Artist.(K.Subrahmanyam)
Released on 2-5-1938.
Lyrics: Papanasam sivan and Rajagopala iyer.
Starring: M.S.Subbulakshmi, F.Nadesa iyer, S.G.Pattu Iyer, Jayalakshmi,S.Varalakshmi,Kamalakumari.
In Seva Sadanam, M. S. Subbulakshmi played a young woman who finally frees herself from a tyrannical old husband and becomes a frontline musician. Her songs by singer-composer Papanasam Sivan ("Ma ramanan," "Syamasundara") became instant hits. F.G. Natesa Iyer's performance in the role of the old man was impressive.
Seva Sadhanam championed the cause of women's equality. Based on a novel by Premchand, the film was a bitter attack on the dowry system, which often compels poor young girls to marry men much older to them. The film forcefully discussed the havoc caused by the incompatibility between such couples. Seva Sadhanam was an unusual film on the age-old practice of old men marrying young girls as their second wives in a male-dominated society. Subrahmanyam introduced M.S. Subbulakshmi in the film, which was a big success.The director chose a real-life widow, with a shaven head and a white saree, to play the role of a widow.
Writer Asokamithran recalls his memories of Sevasadhanam: “Sevasadan was Premchand’s first novel. He wrote it in Urdu in 1917. The novel in Hindi came out in 1918. The original title of the novel was Baazare Husn (A Beauty for the Market). The first edition of Sevasadan brought him Rs 400.
Nanubhai Vakil, who made Sevasadan in Hindi, , had to make a number of changes with the novel for a desirable form for Hindi audience. Premchand was not happy and returned to Lucknow. Nearly twenty years after it was written,in 1937 Ananda Vikatan serialised the Tamil translation of the novel as Sevasadanam and the translator was Sister Subbulakshmi, one of the heroic figures of the women’s upliftment movement in Tamil Nadu. The Tamil film pioneer K Subrahmayam chose to make the novel into a Tamil film since it had strong social reformistic elements as his earlier film Balayogini.. But Premchand died in 1936, two years before the Tamil film Sevasadanam was released.
Subrahmanyam negotiated with Sadasivam for the film rights for Sevasadanam with the agreement ofstarring M.S.Subbulakshmi in the film.Thus started the film career of Subbulakshmi in "Seva Sadhanam."
Subrahmanyam had also made a few changes in the story-line. Premchand’s Suman does have a weakness for jewellery and others. When she is driven out of the house by her husband, she does end up as a public woman and at a stage even longs for the company of a young customer. Subrahmanyam’s Sumathi of Sevasadanam is unblemished even under tempting circumstances.
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In one of the early scenes of the film, she sings in pain “Un uruvam kallanri thiruvulamum kallo?” It is in a temple and a number of people notice her. One of them compliments the husband for the musical prowess of his wife. This infuriates the husband.
Un uruvam kallanri thiruvulamum kallo?
http://www.coolgoose.com/music/song.php?id=205575
Later at a function at a well-wisher’s house, Sumathi and the hostess wear similar sarees. While it is the hostess bantering with her husband, Sumathi’s husband thinks it is his wife flirting with the other man (who also happens to be rich). That is his limit and he throws his wife out of the house. Sumathi had already been noticed by another woman and her younger sister (played by S Varalakshmi) and the two give shelter to Sumathi and also work out a singing career for her. Her first line as a concert singer is ‘Guha Saravana Bhava Siva Bala’ and the song in Simmendramadhyamam was over a succession of images of public acclaim for the new singer.
Guha Saravana Bhava Siva Bala
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Sumathi will follow that song with a full-fledged rendering of Neethu Charana in Kalyani, with alapanam, swaram, etc. The gramophone record of the song was very popular though what ran for ten minutes on the screen was compressed to six minutes.
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Now the heroine has achieved fame, wealth, and managed to get her sister married. Sumathy organises a sanctuary for castaways. She sings “Ma Ramanan” for a six-minute gramaphone record when the remorseful husband dressed like Vivekananda returns to his wife. Sevasadanam was a well-acted film and M S Subbulakshmi could not have asked for a more appropriate role. It was her very first film. Knowing the singing potentials of Subbulakshmi, the director made the heroine an exceptional singer from the beginning.
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Sevasadanam as a film told a lucid story with well-sung songs every few minutes. Recalling it fifty years after seeing it, the electrifying montage of the young woman’s entry into the world of public singing, the scene when the already tortured husband mistakes his wife to be in somebody else’s arms, and the retribution scene of the sadistic sister-in-law stand out in memory. It is sad that except for a handful of photographs (including the one that appears in both biographies of M S Subbulakshmi available now in English), they say that nothing of the actual film exists today.”
Tamil film critic and historian Aranthai Narayanan observes in his book. Thamizh Cinemavin Kathai that Seva Sadhanam proved a turning point in the history of Tamil cinema. In the climax, the aged husband, now a totally changed man, was shown as casting aside with utter contempt his `sacred thread', which symbolises his Brahmin superiority. It came as a stunning blow to the orthodoxy, he writes.
“After seeing father's "Sevasadanam" an old man came home and declared that he had not only stopped his own marriage to a young girl, but was himself going to arrange her marriage to a suitable boy.”Padma Subrahmanyam recalls.