Was watching "coffee with suchi" sometime back on Vijay TV. They were doing a rerun of one of the earlier episodes featuring Nadia and Suresh. It immediately brought back memories of childhood and the magic this couple had wrought on the screen in those days. Pariticularly so Nadia.
Nadia Moidu entered tamil films when it was not good to be middle class or female. Most tamil films either had very rich or very poor leads. The few films featuring the middle class were, what I consider, pathetic attempts at making socially relevant cinema. So women on films could be cleanly slotted into three categories. They could be rich, arrogant and haughty feminists waiting to be tamed by a very poor son of the soil. They could be very poor conservative and humble girls waiting to be wooed by handsome, rich inheritors. They could also be "bharthi kanda pudumai pen" (modern woman of Bharathiyar’s imaginiation), or at least tamil cinema’s interpretation of the same.
And immaterial of the director, all these interpretation had a common theme. The "modern" woman’s life revolved around her assets and liabilities. Assets were a Rs.900 per month job as a nurse or steno and a deeply mortgaged house badly in need of repair. Liabilities were a pensioner father, overworked and terminally ill mother, a hormone ridden younger sister dangerously flirting with suave and unscrupulous young men, an younger brother appearing for his 10th exams - for the 10th time of course and an elder brother who earned thrice as much as her but found himself incapable of contributing to the family kitty. The future, seen through the eyes of tamil cinema, was particularly depressing for middle class girls - until of course Nadia came into the picture.
And how she came. Riding a bicyle with all the neighbourhood kids following her, a smile on her face, a song on her lips and dressed nattily to boot. Tamil cinema had rediscovered the middle class and Nadia was its new symbol. As the granddaughter reaching out to her paati, as the lonely hieress searching for and finding love in a joint family, as the lovelorn college student, as the lovable daughter as the dutiful daughter-in-law she uncovered everything good and nice about being middle class. It was suddenly alright to be middle class – you had fun, wonderful neighbors, cool clothes, loving families and went on picnics, sang together and generally had a good time. And one knew Nadia would always be around to lead the way. Particularly so for young women to whom she was a living symbol of what they aspire(d) and optimistically claim to be - "the right mix of modern outlook and traditional values" :-)
Nadia was not the right mix – she was the perfect mix. She wore pedal pushers and T-shirts, but the pushers scrupulously remained below the knees and the T-shirt hem never strayed above the pants. She could ride bicycles (a big thing those days), drive a car, ride a horse and walk gracefully in a saree. Young men gave their hearts to her – and their mothers approved.
No longer was the "pudumai pen" buckling under the strain of what the cruel imagination of tamil directors could throw at them. Fragile shoulders facing the bleak prospect of carrying the weight of the world’s worries were now sporting the latest in Nadia wear.
Did I say Nadia wear? Absolutely. While new age designers with big bucks backing them whine about lack of this and that, and come up with a thousand justifications for not being able to put an Indian label on the stores, Nadia did exactly that two decades back. And she did that without even trying to. One of the best dressed actresses of her times, it is said that all the clothes and accessories she wore on screen were her own. As she puts it,
"Girls realize that everything I wore could be bought from the neighbourhood stores. So dressing up like me was very much within their ability".
The Nadia style of dressing was both affordable and available. Bringing fashion to the masses, the Nadia "brand" sold everything from earrings, bangles, jimikis to saris, churidhar and chappals. There even was a "Nadia konda" if I am right.
Having "scorched the southern screens" for more than four years, Nadia gave it up all in favour of family. And now after a decade and half she is back. Once again the perfect role model for a woman - as mother this time.
Young men are losing their hearts to her once more.
And yes - the daughters-in-law approve.