C.P.Vellingiri has been an enterprising go getter all his life. He hails from an agrarian family of Narasipuram and he spent much of his early years at Nadar Veedhi behind Vysial street in the old town part of Coimbatore. Vellingiri set out to make a living no sooner on he knowing how to read and write. He began making silver anklets from the year 1941 when he was just 10 years old. His customers were mainly shop keepers and they used to provide silver to him and he could produce up to 6 pairs of silver anklets per day. This would fetch him Rs.2 per anklet as labour charges and he used to spend a third of the Rs.12 earned per day for inputs. Vellingiri spent about 12 years of his life making silver anklets and this gave him the experience and capital required to set up a gold jewellery making workshop in the same locality.
The octogenarian gets nostalgic while talking about his early days, "Slowly silver anklet production moved over to Palakkad and later to Salem (from 1955) picked up in a big way. Therefore I started making gold ornaments in my own workshop near the Dharmaraja temple. At one time I had 14 smiths under me and we used to produce Jangiri manga malais which used to start at 12 grams and Kasumalais which used start from 16 grams. It used to take just one per piece and the shop keepers used to pay Rs.15 per piece as making charges. Earlier 'kambi marams' were used for wire drawing and subsequently machines were used. The introduction of the Gold Control Act in 1963 brought down the number of ethical players in the business and the entire jewellery fraternity suffered as a consequence of the same. However we continued to be active till the year 1968. The workers used to work in between 9 am and 9 pm on all days except Sundays when they would wind up by 1.30 pm and push off to watch a movie in one of the theatres nearby. Our clients used to give us gold in advance and Kandaswamy Chettiar of Shanmugha Jewellery used to deal with me from the time that used to make silver anklets. People like Annai Chettiar and Venkatarama Chettiar used to give us job orders too. I was quite close to C.Ramdas of Karpagam Abharana during his early years in business."
Those were the times when jewellers ran 'box shops' in the bazaar and Vellingiri used to supply the 'kanni kalusu' or the first anklet for babies to them. Eventually the trust earned by him enabled him get orders from the growing fraternity of jewellers. Since the workshop was kind of a shack, Vellingiri had to take the 'work in progress' home everyday. As years went by the jewellers had to face a lot of harassment and workshop owners like Vellingiri were often frisked by the Central Excise officials while they were on the move. He used to supply ornaments to the North Indian merchants at Vellore, Pondicherry, Chennai and Tiruvannamalai for a number of years. Vellingiri recalls the street side transactions at Chennai, "I used to stay at a lodge on NSC Bose road and my clients were small shop keepers who used to transact on the street itself while walking with me. On a number of instances I used to deliver the finished goods at the railway station and return immediately. The era of harassment was tough to handle and therefore I quit the jewellery business and took to logistics which was followed by chit funds later."
Dhanalakshmi Vellingiri was a school teacher and the couple got blessed with one daughter and four sons. The daughter did her medicine and the sons are in diverse activities. Periyathambi, the elder brother of Vellingiri was well known as the trustee of the Koniamman temple for a number of years. The family shifted to Ponnaiyarajapuram later on in order to facilitate peaceful educational progress for the kids. Vellingiri has not changed and continues to wear the old styled shirt with just a small T shirt kind of opening near the collar. He still goes to the market everyday and chats up with his old contacts for a couple of hours and returns home for lunch. Vellingiri makes it a point to use only plantain leaves for all the three meals and he procures it directly everyday. It would be next to impossible to know about his political leanings and tinsel town experiences unless he shares the details on his own.
"We used to invite a number of drama cum movie artists to perform in our area those days. I was a keen supporter of DMK from day one and I knew the leadership very well. The former MLC Rajamanickkam was close to me. All of us bought tickets in bulk in order to ensure the success of Parasakthi, the movie that launched Sivaji Ganesan. In fact Sivaji has stayed in our neighbourhood for a week in order to act in a play during those early years. Former Chief Ministers M.G.Ramachandran and Karunanidhi have in fact come home. Actor K.R.Ramaswamy was very close to me. Those were interesting times and this egged a few of us to produce the movie "Edhaiyum Thangum Edhaiyam" starring S.S.Rajendran, Vijayakumari, M.R.Radha and Muthuraman between the years 1959 and 1963. Yes it took us 4 years and therefore it was not a financial success. Thanks to this experience both S.S.Rajendran and Vijayakumari used to drop by whenever they visited Coimbatore. M.G.R helped us a lot during those times and the Story and Screenplay was done by none other than our Former Chief Minister Arignar Anna. He was really non commercial, kind and extremely supportive. In short he was a rare person. The movie was distributed by Anandha Films of Coimbatore. The movie experience made us wise and we returned to our routine life thereafter. Those were the times when I used to make some boiled keerai (greens) with onions, green chillies and salt for M.G.Ramachandran who used to relish it with chappathis. Arignar Anna used to love Angannan Biriyani and some of us used to carry it for him up to the railway station" stated C.P.Vellingiri while going back in time trying to recall his silver screen years.
C.P.Vellingiri has archived the movie beautifully in the form of over 250 lovely black and white photographs. The viewer can go back into a time machine and enjoy the nicely shot pictures which display the emotions portrayed by the artists in the movie. He has also preserved a number of pictures belonging to the times when he was a political activist and this includes a group photo of the former Minister V.R.Nedunchezhian with a number of party ideologues. Vellingiri is a happy man for his four sons Rajendran, Sampathkumar, Rajashekhar, Chandrashekhar and the daughter Dr.Maheswari are doing well in life. One of the sons, Chandru is an industrialist who is doing much with the green NGO Siruthuli these days. "The straight forward nature of my father and his interest in upholding Dharma has only brought me up," adds the entrepreneur son Chandrashekhar (Chandru). The Silver Anklet to the Silver Screen experiences of C.P.Vellingiri display the Coimbatorean grit and innovativeness.
The octogenarian gets nostalgic while talking about his early days, "Slowly silver anklet production moved over to Palakkad and later to Salem (from 1955) picked up in a big way. Therefore I started making gold ornaments in my own workshop near the Dharmaraja temple. At one time I had 14 smiths under me and we used to produce Jangiri manga malais which used to start at 12 grams and Kasumalais which used start from 16 grams. It used to take just one per piece and the shop keepers used to pay Rs.15 per piece as making charges. Earlier 'kambi marams' were used for wire drawing and subsequently machines were used. The introduction of the Gold Control Act in 1963 brought down the number of ethical players in the business and the entire jewellery fraternity suffered as a consequence of the same. However we continued to be active till the year 1968. The workers used to work in between 9 am and 9 pm on all days except Sundays when they would wind up by 1.30 pm and push off to watch a movie in one of the theatres nearby. Our clients used to give us gold in advance and Kandaswamy Chettiar of Shanmugha Jewellery used to deal with me from the time that used to make silver anklets. People like Annai Chettiar and Venkatarama Chettiar used to give us job orders too. I was quite close to C.Ramdas of Karpagam Abharana during his early years in business."
Those were the times when jewellers ran 'box shops' in the bazaar and Vellingiri used to supply the 'kanni kalusu' or the first anklet for babies to them. Eventually the trust earned by him enabled him get orders from the growing fraternity of jewellers. Since the workshop was kind of a shack, Vellingiri had to take the 'work in progress' home everyday. As years went by the jewellers had to face a lot of harassment and workshop owners like Vellingiri were often frisked by the Central Excise officials while they were on the move. He used to supply ornaments to the North Indian merchants at Vellore, Pondicherry, Chennai and Tiruvannamalai for a number of years. Vellingiri recalls the street side transactions at Chennai, "I used to stay at a lodge on NSC Bose road and my clients were small shop keepers who used to transact on the street itself while walking with me. On a number of instances I used to deliver the finished goods at the railway station and return immediately. The era of harassment was tough to handle and therefore I quit the jewellery business and took to logistics which was followed by chit funds later."
Dhanalakshmi Vellingiri was a school teacher and the couple got blessed with one daughter and four sons. The daughter did her medicine and the sons are in diverse activities. Periyathambi, the elder brother of Vellingiri was well known as the trustee of the Koniamman temple for a number of years. The family shifted to Ponnaiyarajapuram later on in order to facilitate peaceful educational progress for the kids. Vellingiri has not changed and continues to wear the old styled shirt with just a small T shirt kind of opening near the collar. He still goes to the market everyday and chats up with his old contacts for a couple of hours and returns home for lunch. Vellingiri makes it a point to use only plantain leaves for all the three meals and he procures it directly everyday. It would be next to impossible to know about his political leanings and tinsel town experiences unless he shares the details on his own.
"We used to invite a number of drama cum movie artists to perform in our area those days. I was a keen supporter of DMK from day one and I knew the leadership very well. The former MLC Rajamanickkam was close to me. All of us bought tickets in bulk in order to ensure the success of Parasakthi, the movie that launched Sivaji Ganesan. In fact Sivaji has stayed in our neighbourhood for a week in order to act in a play during those early years. Former Chief Ministers M.G.Ramachandran and Karunanidhi have in fact come home. Actor K.R.Ramaswamy was very close to me. Those were interesting times and this egged a few of us to produce the movie "Edhaiyum Thangum Edhaiyam" starring S.S.Rajendran, Vijayakumari, M.R.Radha and Muthuraman between the years 1959 and 1963. Yes it took us 4 years and therefore it was not a financial success. Thanks to this experience both S.S.Rajendran and Vijayakumari used to drop by whenever they visited Coimbatore. M.G.R helped us a lot during those times and the Story and Screenplay was done by none other than our Former Chief Minister Arignar Anna. He was really non commercial, kind and extremely supportive. In short he was a rare person. The movie was distributed by Anandha Films of Coimbatore. The movie experience made us wise and we returned to our routine life thereafter. Those were the times when I used to make some boiled keerai (greens) with onions, green chillies and salt for M.G.Ramachandran who used to relish it with chappathis. Arignar Anna used to love Angannan Biriyani and some of us used to carry it for him up to the railway station" stated C.P.Vellingiri while going back in time trying to recall his silver screen years.
C.P.Vellingiri has archived the movie beautifully in the form of over 250 lovely black and white photographs. The viewer can go back into a time machine and enjoy the nicely shot pictures which display the emotions portrayed by the artists in the movie. He has also preserved a number of pictures belonging to the times when he was a political activist and this includes a group photo of the former Minister V.R.Nedunchezhian with a number of party ideologues. Vellingiri is a happy man for his four sons Rajendran, Sampathkumar, Rajashekhar, Chandrashekhar and the daughter Dr.Maheswari are doing well in life. One of the sons, Chandru is an industrialist who is doing much with the green NGO Siruthuli these days. "The straight forward nature of my father and his interest in upholding Dharma has only brought me up," adds the entrepreneur son Chandrashekhar (Chandru). The Silver Anklet to the Silver Screen experiences of C.P.Vellingiri display the Coimbatorean grit and innovativeness.