Sasikala Menon

Sasikala Menon to whom goes the credit of being the female to have penned the most lyrics for songs in Malayalam cinema, lives in Panayappalli in Ernakulam.

Her father Viswanatha Menon, who recognized his daughter’s flair for writing at a very young age encouraged her. Sasikala started off writing in children’s magazines like Poompatta and Balarama. She also won several prizes.

When she was a student in 10th standard, Sasikala wrote a song ‘Yadukulamadhava’ which was adopted in Dr.Balakrishnan’s movie ‘Sindooram’ (1976). This marked her entry into the world of cinema.

When she was a Pre-Degree student, one of her poems was chosen through her father’s acquaintance Vincent, for Manjilas’ ‘Agninakshatram’. Devarajan chanced upon this poem and requested her to write four more songs. Thus she ended up writing five songs for the movie. She based four of them upon the situations mentioned in the script of Agninakshatram.

Sasikala has written 13 songs for 5 movies. The last time she wrote for a movie was for the 1981 Balachandra Menon film, ‘Tharattu’. She was a Degree student then. She has also penned lyrics for several drama songs.

Sasikala was unable to pursue her passion after marriage because travelling to Chennai for recordings became difficult. So she gave up her writing for her family.

However, she is coming back to the field once again. She has written the lyrics for a collection of devotionals on Lord Krishna in an album with music by Vidyadharan master, and Unnikrishnan, Srinivasan and Manjari the singers.

Prepared by: Remitha Satheesh