There she is, leaning on her car in the front porch, watching her husband drive in for lunch. Rajini Chandy is in a pair of gray three-fourths and a loose black tee, comfortable, casual, cheerful. A visitor comes along, seeing the name of V.V. Chandy outside the house, and the many flower pots on the fence, that make it easy to spot the place. It is a few kilometres off Aluva, a quiet street in Kodikuthimala. Rajini waves the visitor in, and Chandy says he will wait till she is free for lunch.
He has become used to her new busy schedules these days, interviews and talk shows. His only concern is she doesn’t get enough rest. But Rajini doesn’t seem the kind that rests. In some ways, she is a lot like the character she has just portrayed on screen, making her debut as a heroine at the age of 65 for Jude Anthany Joseph’s Oru Muthassi Gadha. But then she is not grumpy like Leelamma, the character. She is the friendliest of souls, and could put at ease anyone who talks to her. Friends flock to her all the time just to get some positive energy. And when you meet her, you understand why.
“I have always been like this, never had any inhibitions. Even as a young girl, I was more a tomboy. There was none of that teen romance,” Rajini says, sitting at the back porch. There, in that large compound, had once been animals of all sorts. Now it is just hens. “I couldn’t manage them well. That was one of the first things I took up when I came to live in Kerala after 21 years in Mumbai.” She had gone off to Mumbai as a young married girl, leaving her home in Thodupuzha where she grew up as one of eight children of a family.
“Two of my elder sisters went to become nuns. So my parents were afraid I’d do the same, and got me married off after pre-degree.” She speaks of the innocence of those days, when girls knew nothing about marriage before they became wives and entered new homes. “I had thought marriage would mean wearing a lot of jewellery and eating from house after house,” she says, laughing. Laughing comes easily to her, so do words. There is no stumbling, no pauses. That’s what surprised Jude when he came to meet her for the first time.
“There was this notice on an online site, about an audition for actors, between the ages of 60 and 70. Anil, of the F3 Health Club that I visit every day, told me to try it. But I am very bad with technology, I didn’t know how to apply online. So I told Maju Mathew (who acted in Action Hero Biju) to tell Jude. And Jude happened to see a video of mine and liked my actions. So he came home the next day with his pregnant wife Diyana and Appu, the actor who plays the Bengali servant in the film. I was wearing these same clothes (T shirt and slacks) and I hear Jude had said then, ‘Ithu aanu nammude muthassi (this is our grandma)’.” Jude also found her saying his lines from the script, without the delicacies of a first-timer.
Trying new things has always excited her. After the animal domestication didn’t work out, Rajini decided to start a fitness centre for women. In her Mumbai years, she had regularly played badminton, did aerobics and swimming. The fitness centre was there for a few years, and once she appeared on Kairali TV with an aerobics section. Even now Rajini goes to a gym every morning at 5. After the fitness centre was closed, she found another passion — Mathematics. She wanted to learn Maths again, and joined tuitions with a reluctant teacher. The teacher was impressed by Rajini’s commitment and in two months, she mastered the tenth grade syllabus. Rajini then took tuitions to students from poor families.
“Afsi, Chikku and Regina were my first students. At first, it was just Maths but knowing they were failing in other subjects, I got them to stay at my house for a month before the public exams, and gave tuitions for all the subjects. They became the first students to get first class from that area.” Today, they are a nurse, a teacher and an M.Com holder, and still keep in touch. Rajini continued with a few batches of students after that. Sometimes she took them along to clean the street in front of her house.
The tuitions stopped a few years later and she went back to her old passion of stitching. On different walls of her house are stitched works which look like paintings. That again, is self-taught. She also went on to clear the NCFM test to help her husband in stock market. Together, they have travelled to many countries including the US, the UK, Italy, Germany, Russia, China, and so on. “I liked Australia the best, people are so friendly there.” Not something she had found in Kerala when she came back after many years with her free-spirited ways. “Some people didn’t like that I make jokes and laugh freely. I have lived 65 years for my family, now I’d want to do what I like to, and spread a positive spirit.”
