Playback singer S. Janaki | Photo Credit: N. Sridharan If Bharathiraja taught people how to look at villages, then it was certainly S. Janaki who taught them to listen to the women in these villages. She was the perfect acoustic accompaniment for Bharathiraja’s vast rural landscapes. There’s no scientific way of telling how this combination dressed up folklore as a living, breathing, urgent way of life through celluloid, but it would be safe to say they pulled off something there.   Janaki amma’s voice gave contour to the heroines, their fears, their desires, their hopes and their dreams, even as Bharathiraja wrote them lion’s space on the screen. Take the classic, much-feted 16 Vayathinile and the wonderful Sendoora Poove. A young Sridevi is footloose and fancy free; she starts with a lilt, and as the melody progresses, a mild, tender eroticism creeps in as the young girl asks the breeze to carry her message, not coyly or hesitantly, but with a confidence that Janaki’s voice lends to Mayilu’s character. Like the director, Janaki amma’s singing created a safe, legitimate space for female desire. Even if they will be punished by the real world later.   And when she sings for the women from the …