Legends of Indian cinema honoured at centenary celebrations in Chennai

As many as 41 legends of Indian cinema including Amitabh Bachchan and K. Balachander were felicitated by President Pranab Mukherjee at the centenary celebrations of Indian cinema in Chennai held last Tuesday. The president, who presided over the valedictory function presented medallions to the awardees. Artistes from 12 film industries including Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Odiya, Assamese and Bhojpuri were honoured. Tamil Nadu chief minister J. Jayalalithaa, a former actress, was the first recipient of the award. From the Tamil industry, legends such as AVM Saravanan, M.S. Vishwanathan, Vyjyanthimala Bali and K. Balachander were awarded while veterans Anjali Devi, K. Vishwanath, K. Raghavendra Rao, Lakshmi Naryana Sattiraju aka Bapu were honoured from the Telugu film fraternity. Awards were given to Parvathamma Rajkumar, Bharati Vishnuvardhan, Ambareesh, S.V. Rajendra Singh Babu, B.S. Dwarakesh, Ravichandran and Veeranna from the Kannada film industry. Malayalam industry legends Madhavan Nair aka Madhu, Chandran, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Kunchako Gopal, Mammootty and Mohan Lal were also honoured. From Bollywood, Amitabh, Sridevi, Rekha, Javed Akthar, Ramesh Sippy, Kiran V. Shantaram, Randhir Kapoor, Vinay Kumar Chumble and Kamal Warchatiya received the awards. Two Marathi artistes Ramesh and Seema Deo were awarded along with three Bengali actors Aparna Sen, Prosenjit Chatterjee and director Gautam Ghosh. Awards were also presented to Gujarati actor Naresh Kanodia, Punjabi actress Preeti Sapru, Odiya actor Uttam Mohanty, Bhojpuri actor Manoj Tiwari and Assamese actress Zerifa Wahid. Exclaimed an excited Preeti Sapru, "It's a great honour, especially for the Punjabi language cinema, to receive an award from the country's President at a function where a galaxy of stalwarts including Amitabh Bachchan, Rekha, Mammooty, Rajnikanth, Kamal Hassan, Aparna Sen and actors, directors and producers from the broad spectrum of Indian cinema from various languages were honoured." Speaking on the occasion, President Mukherjee said, "Indian cinema is incomplete without the contribution of South Indian cinema. The achievement of the South film industry at the National Film Awards over the years is proof of the development of the industry". The president also remembered some of the luminaries of Southern cinema such as M.G. Ramachandran, Sivaji Ganeshan, Prem Nazir and N.T. Rama Rao. After all this one thing that comes in mind is why organizing such a celebration has not come into the mind of Bollywood stalwarts yet.