Once an actress is a novel by Jayakanthan, which was actually written in Tamil in the name ‘Oru Nadigai Naadagam Paarkiral’ in the year 1971 which was translated by Dr.K.S Subramanian. The novel is the complete story of happenings between Kalyani, a stage performer and Ranga, a news reporter. Kalyani is our Protagonist and Ranga@ Rangaswamy is our hero. The story starts with Kalyani waiting for Ranga for an interview. She has also called Annasamy, the guardian of Kalyani. Annasamy have known Kalyani from her childhood, he have also been guardian for her mother also. Annasamy has also known a lot of things about Kalyani than Kalyani know about herself. Kalyani have never known that her mother was one devoted to temple but Annasamy knows all these details. The novel starts with Ranga visiting Kalyani’s house for an interview and Kalyani feels that the presence of Annasamy would make it better. So she also calls Annasamy without informing anything about the interview. She expects and wishes Annasamy to arrive before Ranga. Kalyani was very simple during the interview both in her attire and her behaviour. There were totally four persons present in the scene Ranga, Kalyani, Annasamy and here we have Pattu, she is Kalyani’s cousin. She was sent here by her by Pattu’s mother to be with Kalyani after the death of Kalyani’s mother. So when the interview was going on many questions were posted to Kalyani and she replied very openly to the questions. There was a very important question posed to Kalyani from Ranga about entering the cine field and whether she is using this as a step to cinema for which she replies she has no intention of getting into cinema and she was to be drama actress forever and to serve the art. Also when kalyani was inquired about her age she openly said her true age for which Annasamy was not happy. He says when every actress hides their age that is the reason for her to explicitly say her age. And it was not interview for Kalyani alone but for Ranga too. Kalyani via this interview learned a lot about Ranga. She found that he was married and has a child who is growing with his wife’s sister. They have snacks and tea prepared by Pattu. And while going he took a photo ok Kalyani from the album he has seen during the interview. The photo was very simple and kalyani looks beautiful. This meeting was the result of anonymous letter written by Kalyani to Ranga after their first meet up in the theatre. Their first meeting begins with quarrel between Ranga and Annasamy, where Ranga criticises Annasamy and their troop for the dramas they perform and writes them in magazine. After that the voice was raising when the other reporters started supporting Ranga and few started supporting Annasamy. Later Annasamy compromises Ranga and takes him into the makeup room where the stage performers were getting ready. There happens the meeting between them. Annasamy introduces to each other and Kalyani enters the stage and before that she stands at a dark place near stage turns and sees Ranga and then enters the stage. After her scene is over she comes back and makes a conversation with him. She says he have heard a lot about him but never seen him. He feels a bit embarrassing as he doesn’t want to remember those days of writing short stories. And after that Kalyani writes a letter stating if u could guess who the writer of letter is, come and meet me. For which he replies stating that he would like to meet her for an interview.
After the interview while he was returning to his home he was occupied with the thoughts of Kalyani her smile her simple attitude. He goes to a hotel and orders food and even there he has thought of Kalyani. Late night he goes to his house. He lives in a small street which was named after Ranga’s grandfather. His grandfather has done a lot of good things to the people over there and they have named the street so. And Ranga has a special respect in the street and among the people one because of his grandfather and another reason is he was educated and also he has been guiding the youngsters of the area and an advisor to them. He said to Kalyani that the interview will be published in the Sunday’s paper. That night spends just to make ready the interview and next morning he goes to meet Kalyani with a reason of showing the interview before it gets published. And they meet each other several times and the meetings have become very common between them. Ranga have put that picture of Kalyani in a frame and kept it on the table. In between this we could see Annasamy expressing feelings for Kalyani for which Kalyani don’t feel worried or angry but she calmly responds that there is nothing wrong about Annasamy having such a feeling for her. But she says that she has feelings for Ranga and Annasamy was happy about her decisions and stood by her side on all happenings of her life.
In the house where Ranga lives, every morning he gets tea from the nearby teashop and a small girl comes to clean his house. And the girl asks him, who is the lady for which he replies that she is the lady whom he is going to marry. And the girl takes the photo out and shows to everyone and repeats what Ranga has said. A boy from the crowd says ‘I know her, she is a drama actress and her name is kalyani’. And everyone mute him. They asked Ranga about the picture when he comes out and he accepts the things said were true and he is going to marry her, and people were disappointed about it. Chinna naina above whose house Ranga lives, advices him not to get into a serious relationship with an actress and to breakup with her. He also advices Ranga to get married to Sumathi, his sister-in-law who is waiting for Ranga to accept her hand in marriage. And even Chinna Naina’s wife advices the same. Then He stops visiting his own house and started staying with Kalyani.
And after all these Ranga was firm in his decision and gets married to Kalyani.
In the mean time we have a subplot that of Pattu and Damu. Damu is part of Kalyani’s drama troupe. He is a tabala player. They fall in love with each other. And Pattu was very adamant to marry Damu. Kalyani was against this love whereas Ranga supported them. So Kalyani wrote a letter to her Thotha i.e. Pattu’s mother to discuss this issues. Her mother was against her love but foe which Pattu replies that she will commit suicide if she is not getting married to Damu. Ranga was happy about their love and feels that Pattu’s love is do true and great as she is ready to sacrifice her own life for the sake of love. Pattu gets married and goes with Damu. Now Ranga and Kalyani decides that they could move to a new house, neither Ranga’s nor Kalyani’s as she will not be accepted in Ranga’s place and he also didn’t want to feel inferior. So they move to a new house leaving this house for rent. While moving to a new house, Ranga left his house and moved to new house, but Kalyani carries all her plants and shrubs. This creates their first misunderstanding. Ranga feels that when he was ready to sacrifice everything the street, his house, the people, she was not ready to sacrifice even the plants. Then in every conversation they have this misunderstanding grows. Once Ranga says that growing Crotons and plants are habits of western people for which she objects and counter talks. And when they talk of love, both have contrasting ideas. Ranga says that the Pattu’s kind of love is true as she was ready to sacrifice her own life. But Kalyani’s views were different. She said that if Pattu was not married to Damu she would not have died and she also says one who dies for love is a fool. This hurts him more. And because of these misunderstanding Ranga starts getting away from her. Mean whilst Kalyani complains about having back pain. Then we see He first stops coming home for lunch, then for breakfast. Later he avoid coming to the home and comes rarely when he wanted to see her. One day he asks her will you feel bad when am not coming home, for which she replies, ‘I am happy when you come home. But I am not sad when you don’t. I feel happy thinking about our past and happy days we had’. This kind of thing was very new to Ranga. This increases the no. of days he is absent to the house. But when he comes home Kalyani takes so much care of him. She never questions asks anything about those days he didn’t come.
At this time he started going back to his own house, in the street he used to live. And now again Chinna Naina advices Ranga to get married to Sumathi, Ranga’s sister-in-law, but he was not ready. He also says to Ranga to give some money to Kalyani and to make settlement. Meanwhile we see Pattu coming to Kalyani’s home and we could see that she is not happy with Damu. And Pattu is pregnant too. And after few days Ranga comes to Kalyani and says let us get divorced. And we could see Kalyani doesn’t have any objection towards it, as her only intention was Ranga’s happiness. So they plan to meet one of Ranga’s friends who is a lawyer to discuss about their divorce. And on a fine evening, Kalyani and Ranga visit his friend. And they talk to him about it and he replies that they should need a valid reason for their divorce. So he questions whether either of one have an incurable disease, or affair with anyone else or they could not conceive baby. They said they don’t have any such reason the only reason they want to get divorced is they don’t like each other. But the lawyer says that would be void before law. And it’s not even a year they got married. So the lawyer advices them to stay away for a year. So with that they may get divorced.
Ranga and Kalyani plans to get separated and live for a year. And they do so. Kalyani stays in the house that is newly rented and Ranga in his own old house. Ranga lives a very normal life and Kalyani tries. Later one day Annasamy visits Ranga in the morning. Ranga was a bit shocked and tries to find out reason for his visit. Annasamy asks Ranga to come with him and Ranga goes. They do visit a hospital, where Kalyani was admitted. Later Ranga comes to know she was paralysed because of some problem is backbone and gets bedridden. Ranga gets so emotional and cries. And later doctor says she will not be able to walk and it will take time and she should take enough rest. Now Kalyani says to Ranga that with this as a reason he could get divorced. But he says he doesn’t want to do that. Instead Ranga decides to be with her and to care her. And they now live in the house they have rented and Ranga takes care of her. Every morning after waking up he takes her out in the wheel chair to the rose plants and crotons she grows. This helps Kalyani to heal. And she tries herself to wake up and walk. And in the last scene we could see Kalyani is taken to a drama which is being performed by her troop but the heroine was replaced by another actress, which hurts her the most. She cries and weeps seeing her role being swapped. And with this the Novel ends.
Moonlight 