Travancore Sisters

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The Travancore sisters refers to the trio of Lalitha, Padmini, and Ragini, who were renowned actresses and dancers in Indian cinema. The three sisters performed in Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, and Kannada films. The Travancore sisters were born into a joint Nair family and grew up at their ancestral tharavadu, Malaya Cottage, in Poojappura, Travancore. They were nieces of the celebrated beauty Narayani Pillai Kunjamma, who declined a marriage proposal from the King of Travancore and instead married the aristocratic landowner Kesava Pillai of Kandamath. Through her, the sisters were related to actress Sukumari's mother, Sathyabhama Amma, and to the Travancore royal family through their cousin Ambika. They trained in classical dance under the renowned Indian dancers Guru Gopinath and T. K. Mahalingam Pillai. Uday Shankar invited them to Chennai (then Madras) to act in a dance-based film he was planning. The matriarch of the family was Karthyayini Amma, wife of Panankavil Krishna Pillai of Cherthala, also known as Penang Padmanabha Pillai or P. K. Pillai. They had six sons, including Satyapalan Nair, a prominent producer of early Malayalam films. Another son, Raveendran Nair, was the father of Latika Suresh, a leading producer of Malayalam television programmes. The sisters performed at the 1955 Filmfare Awards. Ragini died from cancer in 1976, Lalitha in 1982, and Padmini in 2006. Few documents related to them have survived, apart from numerous films and articles in Indian newspapers.