In my home I was never engaged in any of the household activities and got married into a big joint family as the third daughter-in-law. I was always having the mind set to get adapted to any given situation and I used it as my strength. I was lucky to have the support of my mother-in-law, and she extended similar type of support I received from my grandmother. My mother-in-law was the driving force of the big family. She taught me the life’s basic lessons and helped me to learn the positive aspects of life. In the very beginning of my family life, she helped me to not to have the practice of blaming others and assisted me to look for the best qualities in them. She appreciated every activity of mine and made me feel at home.
My husband’s eldest brother was engaged in cinema production. The second brother Mr. Mohan and my husband were engaged in producing television programs for the Tamils living in other countries. I don’t want my education to go waste and joined my husband, in his work. Another gateway of opportunity opened for me to learn all the activities related to the production of a TV program. The Tamils living in overseas countries were anxious to visit the Indian temples. In order to satisfy their needs we produced a serial titled ‘Temples of India’ and the serial received appreciation from all the corners.
The encouragement we received by the other novel themed programs produced by us gave me an idea to try a program of introducing varans (bride or groom) in TV. The idea was well received and liked by my husband and his brother Mr.Mohan. Pyramid Natarajan the eldest brother and head of the family also liked the idea and suggested that we ourselves can produce it. The growth of Kalyanamalai started from there.
The SUN TV, too liked the idea and allotted us 30 minutes slot. We took earnest efforts right from naming the program to its completion. It was a joint effort of all of us and we were able to assist each other to complete the tasks. In the meantime the business of my husband picked up and I joined his brother Mr.Mohan in the works related to Kalyanamalai program production.
Our earlier efforts to get the program directed by a big name and hosted by a well known actor resulted in mental fatigue. We bitterly learned that it will be difficult for others to receive our ideas fully inorder to present them. We were looking for someone to understand our theme to present it consciously and whole-heartedly. Then, I suggested to my husbands brother Mr.Mohan to present them of the program. He started making the presentation reluctantly and I also began to direct the program from its third episode. Every aspect of such attempt was new to us but our enthusiastic devotion and involvement guided us to succeed. We learned after a few episodes that it will be difficult to sustain the interest of the program with the mere introduction of brides and grooms. We decided to engage famous speakers to conduct the pattimandram on family related topics and mix it with the varan introduction program to sustain the interest. So far we have conducted pattimandrams with over 400 different family related topics successfully.
