Balachander, the musician who was maverick movie genius

Sundaram Iyer was an advocate but more often than not he would surround himself with musicians and music. Therefore, the sounds and strains of Carnatic music were a constant in his house. Even when Balachander was 4 he showed signs of being a prodigy. When the renowned film maker Shantha Ram and his associates wanted to make a film in Tamil they approached the authors of the film magazine Sound and Shadow, who in turn approached Sundaram Iyer. They were keen on making a film called Seetha Kalyanam as they wanted to use the sets put up for their earlier Hindi film.

Sundaram Iyer was all for the movie and immediately roped in one of the musicians whom he had helped a lot – Papanasam Sivan and left for Kolhapur with his children. Balachander was just 6 years old. His brother recalled fondly – Balu insisted on playing his kanchira —he was extremely proficient in that in the film and hence the director told him that there would be a special scene where he could perform. The young lad was told to perform in the durbar of Ravana where he held everyone spellbound. His brother Rajam acted as Rama and his sister Jeyalakshmi as Seetha. His father acted as Seetha’s father Janaka, and the other sister as Urmila. Upon their return he and his brother became very popular and his father started organising concerts and shows for the children to get good exposure. 

In the meanwhile, Bala was extremely proficient in chess and used to set puzzles for the readers of a newspaper as a ten- year- old. In addition to the kanchira, he mastered the tabla and started to teach himself the veena. Yes, he was a selftaught veena player. His life as a great musician has been dealt by many and I shall restrict myself to SB – the movie genius. 

He started to act in a few films as he reached his mid- teens. Rishyasringar (1941) was one such. He then decided to adopt Danny Kaye’s film Wonder Man and acted in it: Idhu Nijama (1948). Here he wrote, acted, directed parts and even helped with the singing. This film went on to inspire the Kamal Haasan classic, Kalyanaraman. SB’s singing in this film at a time when multiple tracks were not available to record is amazing. From a normal song to a high falsetto, from Tamil to so-called foreign languages, he did it all. It is indeed sad that not one copy of the film is available. 

He continued to both direct and act. He became a part of the AVM Studios and acted in Penn, Sangham (Telugu) and directed the cult classic Andha Naal (1954). This too was a pathbreaker. The hero, was actually a villain. For a musician-director, he made the movie without any song. Maruthi Rao’s camera work from that film is still studied in film schools. 

The structure of the film was based on Kurosawa’s classic, Rashoman. It’s about a murder seen from various points of view— again inspiring later day films like Virumandi. 

Balachander went on to start his own production company and made films like Avana Ivan, Bommai and Nadu Iravil. Every film of his had some path breaking feature in it. He was very involved with the film industry till he bid goodbye to it. He organised the Charity Celebrity Cricket match in 1952 and was also involved with the Cine Technicians Association. He even presented a paper on Film Music and organised a film festival in Madras in 1951. He passed away on April 15, 1990, while on a concert tour in Bhopal.

To me, he was always SB Mama, our family friend.