Whenever he was in Madras, Jayan would spend most of his time with Manohar. He was seen in films starring legends such as Prem Nazir, but his most impactful roles came in movies that featured Jayan, a man with whom he shared a close personal friendship. Manohar managed to come into contact with those working in the Malayalam film industry while living in Madras. With his long curly hair, moustache and overweight frame, he fit the role of a ‘bad guy’ well at that time. He would go on to act in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam films, mostly playing the role of a villain. Manohar got small roles in films that starred some of the giants of Tamil cinema such as his idol Sivaji Ganesan. It’s a shame that music directors in India did not make better use of his singing talents. As soon as the song became popular in India, Manohar started making regular trips to Madras, and the roles in films came in slowly. His rendition of Surangani was made popular across the island by Sri Lankan Broadcasting Corporation (formerly Radio Ceylon), which in the 1970s had a loyal fan base in India. He sang with equal ease in Tamil, Sinhala and English He was one of the pioneers of the country’s new pop movement, where he combined Baila with elements of contemporary music. Sri Lankan music was undergoing a major transformation in the early 1970s when Manohar began performing regularly at major venues in the country. At that time all he could manage was a minor role in Maanavan, a 1970 film produced by M M A Chinnappa Thevar.ĭisappointed with his inability to get a break in Tamil cinema, Manohar moved back to Sri Lanka, where he first worked as a teacher and then decided to become a full-time singer. While he was a BA student in Trichy, he would go regularly to what was then Madras to try and get a role in a film. Like many Sri Lankans of his era, Manohar came to India to pursue his higher studies. He began acting in plays when he was a student at St John’s College in Jaffna in the 1960s. Perhaps the state’s people, landscapes, culture and art reminded him of his country.Īlthough he is best remembered as a singer, Manohar had his sights set on acting from a very young age. The singer, who was of Jaffna Tamil ancestry, had a special place in his heart for Kerala and even managed to learn good Malayalam. The song, in its original Sinhala version and dubbed Tamil version, was sung outside many college campuses in southern India in the 1970s. The few lines sing praises of “Sundaram Keralam,” where there is greenery everywhere, and its people are the singer’s own. In the 1970s when the Sinhalese Baila (Portuguese-influenced folk music) song Surangani became a rage across India, the man who made the catchy tune and Sinhala words “Suranganita malu genawa” popular, Anthony Pillai Emmanuel Manoharan (Ceylon Manohar) dubbed a part of the song into Malayalam.