Travancore Sisters refers to the trio of Lalitha, Padmini and Ragini who were actresses, dancers and performers in

Malayalam Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 22 scheduled languages of India. Malayalam was des ...

Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, nativ ...

Telugu Telugu may refer to: * Telugu language, a major Dravidian language of India *Telugu people, an ethno-linguistic group of India * Telugu script, used to write the Telugu language ** Telugu (Unicode block), a block of Telugu characters in Unicode S ...

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...

and

Kannada Kannada (; ಕನ್ನಡ, ), originally romanised Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 47 million native s ...

films. The Travancore sisters learned dancing under

Guru Gopinath Perumanoor Gopinathan Pillai, more popularly known as Guru Gopinath (24 June 1908 – 9 October 1987) was a well known actor-cum-dancer. He is well regarded as the greatest preserver of the dance tradition. He is a recipient of the Sangeet Natak ...

and Guru T. K. Mahalingam Pillai. Ragini died from cancer in 1976 and Lalitha in 1982. Padmini died in 2006. Few documents relating to them survived except for dozens of films and articles in Indian newspapers. The Travancore Sisters grew up in a joint family tharavadu 'Malaya Cottage' in Poojappura,

Thiruvananthapuram Thiruvananthapuram (; ), also known by its former name Trivandrum (), is the capital of the Indian state of Kerala. It is the most populous city in Kerala with a population of 957,730 as of 2011. The encompassing urban agglomeration populati ...

. The Travancore sisters were nieces of the famous beauty Narayani Pillai Kunjamma, who spurned the king of

Travancore The Kingdom of Travancore ( /ˈtrævənkɔːr/), also known as the Kingdom of Thiruvithamkoor, was an Indian kingdom from c. 1729 until 1949. It was ruled by the Travancore Royal Family from Padmanabhapuram, and later Thiruvananthapuram. At ...

in favour of marrying the aristocratic landowner

Kesava Pillai of Kandamath M. R. Ry. Chempakaraman Padmanabhan Kesava Pillai Avergal of Kandamath, Pillai of Kandamath (1830–1924), was an Indian Zamindar, one of the jenmis of Travancore and a member of the Sree Moolam Popular Assembly. Life Early life He was b ...

and through her related to the actress Sukumari's mother Sathyabhama Amma and the Travancore Royal Family through cousin, Ambika. They came to be known as the Travancore sisters. Uday Shankar called the sisters to Chennai (then Madras) to act in a film based on dance which he was planning to make . Padmini and her sisters were disciples of the noted Indian dancer Guru Gopinath . The matriarchial head of the family was Karthyayini Amma whose husband was Palakunnathu Krishna Pillai of Cherthala alias 'Penang Padmanabha Pillai' or P K Pillai, who had had six sons of whom Satyapalan Nair (Baby) was a leading producer of many early Malayalam films. Another son, Raveendran Nair's daughter Latika Suresh, is a leading producer of Malayalam TV programs. They performed at the 1955

Filmfare Awards The Filmfare Awards are annual awards that honour artistic and technical excellence in the Hindi-language film industry of India.Al The Filmfare ceremony is one of the most famous film events in India. The awards were first introduced by th ...

Filmography

Dance and musical drama performances in films.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sisters, Travancore Actresses from Thiruvananthapuram Indian film actresses Actresses in Tamil cinema Actresses in Telugu cinema Actresses in Kannada cinema Actresses in Malayalam cinema