In the Malayalam classic, Manjil Virinja Pookkal (Flowers That Bloomed in the Snow), the hero hears the heroine sing before he gets to know her. Prem is at Prabha's house waiting to meet her father when the song, 'Mizhiyoram,' floats into the room. He is immediately captivated.

Prem was not the only person mesmerised by that stunning voice. I was a child on my first ever visit to a movie theatre that I recall, when I heard S Janaki sing playback in director Fazil's 1980 blockbuster. I was too young to know that she was already an icon by then. But the melody, and her soulful rendition, never left me. Nearly half a century later, 'Mizhiyoram' has been the background score to my days since Janaki passed away at 88 this month.

In a nearly 6-decade-long career, Sistla Janaki sang thousands of songs capturing an endless range of emotions across languages - some international, mostly Indian. Asha Bhosle once told me in an interview that good acting is an essential element in good singing. Janaki, like Asha, embodied that quality.

You can hear it in the conversational 'Sippi Irukkuthu' (There is an Oyster) from the 1980 Tamil film, Varumaiyin Niram Sivappu (Red is the Colour of Poverty), and 'Kanmani Anbodu Kadhalan' (To My Sweetheart, With Love) from the 1991 Tamil movie, Gunaa, that was resurrected for the Malayalam film, Manjummel Boys, in 2024.

Janaki also had an astonishing felicity for languages. Exhibit A: her natural accent in the peppy Hindi duet, 'Yaar Bina Chain Kaha Re' with Bappi Lahiri in Saaheb (1985). She won numerous accolades, with her first National Award for Best Female Playback Singer coming for the lilting 'Senthoora Poove' (Saffron Flower) in 1977 from the cult Tamil hit, 16 Vayathinile (At Age 16).

Janaki was a treasure, as was evident in the South Indian media's coverage of her death on July 11 and the state funeral accorded to her. Yet, her passing was barely a blip here in North India. This glaring instance of the country's North-South divide revived an unfortunate memory from 2013 when Janaki rejected a Padma Bhushan, stating that it had come too late, that she deserved a Bharat Ratna at that stage, and expressing sadness 'that North India has been given more prominence than South India' at the awards.

Not that Janaki needed validation. She told the press, 'I consider the recognition of my fans in various languages the highest award.' But an injustice needs to be called out here.

The great Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle both received the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, India's highest honour for achievement in cinema. Mangeshkar was also a recipient of the Bharat Ratna. Janaki, who was no less accomplished, received neither. Asha and Lata were worthy candidates, of course. But it would be disingenuous to claim that the dominance of Hindi in their lifelong output played no role in these decisions. South Indian languages dominated Janaki's oeuvre.

The primacy given to Hindi and North India by successive governments, and the so-called 'national' media, has meant that there's little awareness about Janaki in India outside the South. Such lack of awareness then gets cited as justification for limiting national-level recognition.

Ironically, this 'Hindi=India' thinking seeped into obituaries even by some commentators from the South, who reductively described Janaki as 'Nightingale of South India'. The thinking presumably is that calling her 'Nightingale of India' would be disrespectful to Lata, the other singer with whom the title is usually associated. This is an illustrative example of individuals internalising and echoing the marginalisation of their own communities consequent to years of conditioning.

There is a larger concern here. The decades-long imposition of Hindi across India has had a ripple effect on cultural awareness in the country, that is robbing our own people of exposure to the vast beauty in our midst. It is not just that Janaki deserved more, but that music lovers across India deserve to know more of the vast body of work by this true ratna of India.