Posts Tagged ‘ Ragini ’

Here are some color photos of India’s Travancore Sisters, snapped long ago by my family’s friend George E Miller II. Thanks very much to his son George E Miller III for digitizing them and sending them on. Left to right: Ragini, Lalitha, and Padmini. Their matching outfits suggest that they had a publicity or social obligation to fulfill, something more than just hanging out on a weekend morning. Lalli looks mischievous and Pappi quite demure. Had they a …Read More

This week brought the sad news of the death of South Indian film star Sukumari, whose career spanned over six decades. An accident resulting in severe burns led to heart failure on Tuesday, March 26, in Chennai. Sukumari’s year of birth is variously reported as 1938 and 1940. In any case, she was very young when she acted in her first film, Oru Iravu (1951), with her cousin Lalitha of the Travancore Sisters, appearing in scenes depicting Lalitha’s …Read More

We were the new kids on the block in 1953, the block being Edward Elliot Rd (now Dr. Radhakrishnan Salai) and the city being Madras (now Chennai.) It could have been a difficult adjustment–but instead, it was like falling into a warm bath. This was largely because of the kindess of our hospitable next-door neighbors–the mom, Saraswati Amma, her three daughters, Lalitha, Padmini, and Ragini, their brother, Chandran, and their cousins, Ambika and Sukumari. We were still learning …Read More

Some of the traffic to my blog comes from people searching online for pictures of the three Travancore sisters, my family’s movie star neighbors in Chennai. Queries come from India, but also from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Malaysia, Singapore, Canada, Sri Lanka, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and the Netherlands. Perhaps the sight of these three beautiful ladies has been a remedy for homesickness for people spread over the globe by …Read More