She has a positive vibe about her. But the infectious smile, the big bright eyes and her silken southern voice won’t be heard on the Indian Idol 9 platform anymore. Maalavika’s elimination was completely unexpected. As everyone wished her well for her future soon after the announcement the Chennai girl couldn’t hold her tears. Fondly called “Maalu” by her friends, Maalavika Sundar is surely going to be missed in the finale.
The Making of Maalu
She was just a two year old toddler when Maalavika started singing MS Subbulakshmi’s Hanuman Chalisa and other classics that used to play in her family home. Her proud parents decided to train a two and a half year old Maalavika in classical music. At the age when some kids learn to speak coherently, she had started learning to sing!!!
About her journey, Maalavika said in a December 2016 interview, “My father had to move to Delhi when I was in the ninth grade. I refused to go with my family. By then my connection with my guru was at an emotional level, and I considered her my paati. So, I wanted to stay back in Chennai and pursue singing. After that, my gurukula vasam started”. She gives her guru Srimathi Padmavathi Ananthagopalan, younger sister of Lalgudi Jayaraman, full credit for where she has reached.
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During the show, Maalavika also revealed that her relations with her Guru had become strained due to some reason and what she really wanted was to connect and thank her Guru for everything.
Her prior experience and training in classical music reflected in her performances on Indian Idol. She has already sung over 200 songs for the South film industry, making her debut with the song Nuvvu nenu kalisunte for the film Gangotri. She had won the Nandi Award for the Best Playback Singer for the year 2005 – 2006. The Nandi Award is given for excellence in Telugu cinema, theatre, and television by the Government of Andhra Pradesh.
She made her mark with her act in Vijay TV’s Airtel Super Singer 3, a Tamil song based reality TV show which premiered in 2010. Until her song ‘Dang Dang…’ for the movie Manam Kothi Paravai became a hit, Maalavika Sundar never thought she could sing film songs. “I was exposed only to classical music,” she says. “Only after I participated in the Super Singer programme, I learnt to sing a lot of film songs. I was made to sing different genres of Tamil music and got seasoned.” She said in an earlier interview.
In 2016, she decided to participate in Indian Idol to go beyond her comfort zone (read Tamil industry) and explore other cultures. She was inspired by Sonu Nigam saying, “Yeh manch nahin, rishta hai jo Bharat ko Bharat se jodta hai”. She wowed the judges in the audition round itself, where she got a straight entry to the theatre round.
Maalavika feels her training in classical music renders her an advantage in playback singing — “Because of my classical background, I understand the ragas on which a song is based.” All her performances have been top notch, starting with “Pal do Pal ka saath hamara” in the audition round to “Girls like to swing”. She has gone beyond the limitations of language to emerge as the fresh new find of Indian Idol, no matter she could not make it to the top three.
