Vaikom Vijayalakshmi, the visually impaired singer from Kerala loved much for her unique voice recognisable among scores of new singers, is getting married next month. In a phone call, her dad Muraleedharan confirmed the news.
The groom to be, Anoop N., is an interior designer and mimicry artist who ‘has a taste for music’, Muraleedharan says. The engagement is happening on September 10 and the wedding on October 22 in her hometown, Vaikom. “At the Mahadeva Temple there,” the bride’s father says.
Anoop has been known to the family for a while now and Vijayalakshmi is happy about the marriage, Muraleedharan added.
More than a year and a half ago, Vijayalakshmi had called off her wedding with an NRI Malayali, shortly after the engagement. At a press conference the singer said that the groom had suddenly changed his mind about a few conditions and didn’t want her to continue her music career. He also didn’t want to live in her house like it was agreed upon earlier.
Vijayalakshmi, also an expert of a musical instrument called Gayathri Veena, came to Malayalam cinema through her much-noticed rendition of ‘Katte Katte’ for the film Celluloid. She won the Kerala state award for best singer for her rendition of ‘Ottaku Paadunna’, for the film Nadan.
From Malayalam she also hopped on to Tamil. She went on to make a name for herself for her unique song rendition and voice, working with musicians like Ouseppachan, Bijibal and Shaan Rahman in Malayalam, and Santhosh Narayanan, D Imman and GV Prakash Kumar in Tamil.
Last year, she made her debut in Telugu with Meda Meeda Abbayi.
Hanan, the 20-year-old college student who shot to fame after a photo of her selling fish in Kochi markets went viral, was to play Vijayalakshmi in a biopic of the singer, however Hanan has been injured in an accident since.