Thirumbi Paar

Thirumbi Paar, directed by T. R. Sundaram, was an interesting film in which Sivaji Ganesan played a role with negative shades. The character dabbles in avenues such as journalism and politics. T. P. Muthulakshmi plays the dumb wife of an elderly husband (K. A. Thangavelu) who goes to work early. Sivaji Ganesan, a seducer, who sneaks into the dumb woman’s house, alters the clock to send the husband away well before the usual time. This sequence was mercilessly scissored by the censors and what was left lost its touch of satire and innuendo! Sivaji Ganesan was brilliant playing the fraud to the hilt. Pandari Bai was his sister who in the climax offers herself to him. Others included Krishnakumari (Sowcar Janaki’s sister), seduced and abandoned by the anti-hero, P. V. Narasimha Bharathi, Girija, Thangavelu, and T. S. Dorairaj as Sivaji Ganesan’s sidekick. Thirumbi Paar was racily narrated on screen in characteristic Modern Theatres style by T. R. Sundaram. There were also melodious songs and one particular song, a satire on society, “Kalappadam… kalapadam…engum edhilum kalapadam…” (music by G. Ramanathan and sung by S. C. Krishnan) was a hit. Thirumbi Paar fared well at the box office and acquired the status of a mini cult film because it had political innuendoes.