Thiruvananthapuram: She was the ugly duckling who refused to transform into a beautiful swan. But in the fairy tale of her life, the miracle happens when the world falls for her ugliness. She was the graceless bulk who gave the shapely sultanas a mighty complex.
Kalpana held on to her ordinariness with her dear life, as though it was her magic lamp.
In the second half of 1980s, when she was at the peak of her stardom in Tamil films, she casually jettisoned the trappings of stardom like they were unwanted fluff and took up her first big comic role in Kamal’s ‘Peruvannapurathe Visheshangal’ (1989). Ever since, comedy was her forte. “I am most happy when I am laughing at myself,” she wrote in her memoir ‘Njan Kalpana’.
Bhagyaraj’s ‘Chinna Veedu’ (1985) and Visu’s ‘Thirumathi Enna Vegumathi’ (1987), in both of which she played the lead, were such big hits that she had inspired comparisons with K. Balachander’s heroines. Balachander himself had compared Kalpana to Saritha for her dignified portrayals of suffering women in these films. If only for a painfully minuscule period, Kalpana subverted the image of the Tamil film heroine from cute dolls to women of stunning inner beauty.
