Vani Jairam, the versatile playback singer who strode over the South Indian film industry for more than five decades, is no more.
Jairam (77) was found dead in her residence in Chennai on Saturday morning by her maid servant Kalaivani. Chennai Police, who rushed to her home on being informed about her death, held a preliminary inquiry and shifted the mortal remains to Government Hospital for autopsy.
A case under sections of unnatural death has been registered by the police. Last week the Government of India had honoured Vani Jairam with Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian award of the country.
In a career spanning more than five decades, she has sung more than 10,000 songs in almost all Indian languages. Jairam became an overnight sensation with the songs “Bolire Pappi Hara..” and Hum Ko Mann Ki Sakthi Denaa..” she rendered for the 1971 Hindi film Guddi directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee.
The music for the film was composed by the maestro Vasanth Desai. Since then there was no looking back for Vani Jairam. By 1972, she started singing for Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada films.
Music lovers who were accustomed to Lata Mangeshkar, P Susheela and S Janaki found in Vani Jairam a unique combination of diction, mellifluous and captivating voice. Starting her career as an employee of a nationalised bank, Vani Jayaram opted for a profession in music and was an instant hit with music lovers.
Born Kalaivani in Tamil Nadu’s Vellore district, Vani Jairam bagged the National Award for best playback singer three times. In addition to this, she was bestowed with all the awards a musician could aspire for including State Awards for the regional language songs she rendered. Songs rendered by Vani Jairam remain as fresh and new even after five decades, speaks lot about her calibre.
Besides being a singer, Vani was a poetess, painter of repute and a mimicry artist. The septuagenarian artist had retained the charm in her voice and music till the end making her a rare breed of singer who was held in high esteem by music maestros like M S Viswanathan, Naushad Ali, Ilayaraja, K V Mahadevan, Salil Chaudhari.
