Lakshmi Shankar

Sister-in-law to Ravi Shankar, mother-in-law to L. Subramaniam, Lakshmi Shankar is a remarkable singer. As a young girl she fell under the spell of dance and, encouraged by her forward-thinking mother, she studied Bharat Natyam dancing. She married the scriptwriter Rajendra Shankar, an elder brother of Ravi Shankar, and joined Uday Shankar's artistic circle during the early '40s. Ill-health forced her to give up dancing but, for us, this had the joyful effect of catalyzing her singing career. Around 1946-47 she worked on the historic adaptation of Pandit Nehru's Discovery of I...