Shy Girl from Madurai

Gowri Ramnarayan's talk at Illinois Univ., Urbana Champaign

15 September 2011
Text plus slideshow
COPYRIGHT GOWRI RAMNARAYAN 2011

PHOTO WITH NAME: MADURAI SHANMUKHAVADIVU SUBBULAKSHMI

TRACK ONE: RANGAPURA VIHARA 1 min 4 seconds

#It is a great honour and privilege to be asked to talk about one of India’s greatest musicians MS Subbulakshmi, before this august audience here today, especially, at the invitation of the eminent scholar Dr Rajmohan Gandhi.

#There have been great musicians in India, acclaimed as prodigies, admired as geniuses, and hailed as pathfinders. But Subbulakshmi was seen as a saint, a goddess, a celestial being. As her grandniece, and vocal accompanist for the last 16 years of her career, I have had the unenviable task of steering her out of milling crowds, everyone trying to touch her feet, some intoning “Lakshmi! Saraswati! Minakshi!” “Kamakshi!” Yes, these are the names of our goddesses! She triggered this kind of rapture in the big metros, in small towns and in remote villages, all over India.

#You’d say, pop icons and film folk receive the same adulation. There is a difference. This was not starcraze, but worship, as if they were in front of someone who cast a divine light, a light that elevated those around her to some higher realm, even when she was not singing. A stranger in Paris said that she looked like the Madonna. Helen Keller touched her throat as she sang and said, “I hear the angels now.”

#Let me take you to a domestic scene back in the 1960s. The women of the family –mothers, grandmothers, aunts, cousins -- are relaxing into a post lunch siesta. The postman delivers a 20 page letter addressed to Mrs M.S.Subbulakshmi. As the youngest (I was 14 then) it was my job to read it aloud. Let me give you an approximate translation.

#“Divine, ethereal, celestial, angelic Subbulakshmi!
You are all the goddesses incarnate.
I am a humble worshipper at your resplendent shrine.
You don’t know this, but I know you are not an ordinary woman.
Who are you? What are you?
How did someone as pure as you, get into this sinful world?
I will tell you.”

What followed was a skit:

SCENE ONE: The lesser gods come to see Siva the supreme God.

THE GODS : (Wailing) O Siva! The earth is oppressed by evil. Please save us from being defiled by discordance!
SIVA: All right. I will go down to the earth and destroy all bad music.
THE GODS: Why don’t you give the job to your wife Parvati?
SIVA: Good idea! Parvati! Go to Madurai town and be born to Shanmukhavadivu, one of the few good musicians left in India.
PARVATI: Lord! How can I bear to be separated from you?
SIVA: Don’t worry. Only for a short while. I will be born as Sadasivam and I will marry you. Together we will battle all the discordant notes, restore peace, harmony and melody.

#My words are drowned in shrieks of laughter. But all of us knew, Subbulakshmi included, that absurd as it was, this letter reflected the adulation she evoked everywhere.

#In temples from the Himalayas to the tip of the Indian peninsula, her recorded hymns wake the gods at dawn. At one of those mountain shrines, imagine my astonishment when the entire congregation, pilgrims from every part of the Indian subcontinent, joined me as I sang her song in a quiet corner. What a reverberation!

#Nagendra haraya trilochanaya bhasmanga raagaya maheshwaraya

#She is the only south Indian musician to have conquered the north. Hindustani masters like Ravi Shankar and Bade Ghulam Ali Khan have been moved by her.

FOTO RAVI SHANKAR, BADE GHULAM, LATA MANGESHKAR, OM KULSUM

#India’s legendary film playback singer Lata Mangeshkar cancelled her own recording after listening to a Subbulakshmi session in the studio. Zubin Mehta refused to take the stage after her performance. She enchanted Om Kulsum in Cairo.

#Foreign listeners hearing Indian music for the first time in her concerts at the Edinburgh Festival 1963, or for the United Nations Assembly 1966, Carnegie Hall 1977 tended to rhapsodize too. The Scotsman (1963) said, “Before such art one can only bow the knee in humility” The New York Times (1966) exclaimed, “Subbulakshmi’s vocal communication transcends words. The cliché of the voice used as an instrument never seemed more appropriate. It could fly flutteringly or carry on a lively dialogue with the accompanists.”

FOTO: UN CONCERTS PICTURES 3

The San Francisco Chronicle exclaimed, “Mrs Subbulakshmi proved a master among masters. She sings with a reedy yet dark voice and the most extraordinary flexibility. Like sleight of hand she throws out embellishments almost too fast to hear.” After a standing ovation at Rachmaninoff Hall, Moscow, the special audience of musicians and music scholars followed Subbulakshmi out of the hall, down the staircase and into the street, applauding until her car disappeared from view.

#To understand anything of her mystique, we have to trace two entirely different but equally unremitting influences on Kunjamma’s psyche.
FOTO MS CHILD

a)Her birth in a special clan called DEVADASI with its specific social background.

b) The legacy of south Indian Carnatic music which prioritises devotion, through lyrics about a personal god. For the composers and for some singers, this is not music for concerts and performance; not for elite patrons, or a ticket buying public. For them faith becomes music. Music is not art, but self surrender.

#PHOTO: MADURAI TEMPLE

#Let me start with the name of this legendary artist - M S Subbulakshmi (1916-2004).
Subbulakshmi was her given name.
#The initial M stands for Madurai, her hometown in south India, with its heritage of a spectacular temple, ancient poetry, sophisticated learning, exquisite arts and crafts.

Born in a little narrow lane close to the great Madurai temple, Kunjamma – Kunjamma was Subbulakshmi’s nickname meaning LITTLE ONE – stood on her threshold to hear the nadaswaram pipes and tavil drums in the procession of the temple deity that circled the streets in a grand procession. This was high classical music, the best of the times.

#PHOTO: SHANMUKHAVADIVU PHOTO

#The S in the name stands for mother Shanmukhavadivu, herself a fine veena player. She was also her daughter’s first guru, or teacher. Home was full of music, Shanmukhavadivu practised and taught disciples including her three children. Illustrious musicians came to her humble home to exchange not only words, but music.

#In Tamil Nadu there are no surnames. People have initials denoting their hometown and father’s name. For example, Rajmohan Gandhi would be known as Porbander Devdas Rajmohan.

#But why was the child given the mother’s middle initial? Because Kunjamma was born in the clan of DEVADASIS, meaning handmaidens of God. Women of this artists’ community did not marry, they were dedicated to the temple deity and performed music or dance at the temple rituals. They also had rich, aristocratic, landowner patrons to support them, by whom they had children.

#Shanmukhavadivu was an old school martinet, rarely showing affection. But with sister Vadiva on the veena and brother Shaktivel on the drum (mridangam), Kunjamma’s practice sessions were like a game.

FOTO: MS CHILD

#Kunjamma’s stage debut was as natural as a bud blooming at dawn. The child was playing in the yard when an uncle picked her up, dusted off her skirt, and put her on the stage next to her mother, giving a semi-formal recital close to their home. The child sang a song or two before running off to play again. Was she scared? No. “I am always afraid to speak, never to sing,” she once confessed.

#Of those early years Kunjamma spoke but little. They were years of privation, deprivation, and social disparagement. Why disparagement? Because Kunjamma was born in the community of the devadasis. Dedicated to temples, they sang and danced at temple rituals, at royal courts, and at the family functions of aristocratic landowners.

#Somewhat like geishas in Japan or hetairas in ancient Greece, the devadasis were women of intellectual learning, skilled in the arts, and remained the custodians of culture, through times good and bad.

#Under British colonial rule, patronage from royalty and princely landowners dwindled. The devadasi courtesans lost their standing as artistes as well, and were stigmatized as nautch girls, meaning dancing prostitutes.

#In 1880, Justice West of Bombay called the temple dancer tradition evil and vicious, and denied devadasis protection under all civil law. In south India, pioneering reformists launched a furious anti-nautch (dance) campaign, demanding the wholesale demolition of the devadasi system.

#Crippling legislation was passed against the devadasis in 1927, followed by total abolition in 1934. Independent India has continued to legislate against devadasis in different States – like the ‘Madras Devadasis Act of 1947’, ‘The Andhra Pradesh Eradication of Devadasis’ Act 1988, and so on up until 2004.

#Such bans led to greater suffering for the devadasis. Temple stipends ceased, and only illegal concubinage offered subsistence. No one would marry a devadasi. The social stigma was too great. In the 1920s and ‘30s, women from respectable families did not sing or dance in public, or even attend public concerts. Anyone who did incurred serious censure.

#What a paradox we have here! Devadasi women were scorned for practising the very arts that they were celebrated for on the stage!

#From a very young age, Kunjamma was conscious of the evils of her situation. She knew that for her, the road to fame could also be the road to infamy.

FOTO: SUBRAMANIA IYER

#Shanmukhavadivu had a patron in a lawyer, Subramania Iyer, who lived nearby with his “legitimate” family. Kunjamma loved her father who now and then visited their dingy home on a narrow street,. He called her “Princess darling”. She was inordinately proud of the fact that he was a Brahmin, belonging to the “so called” highest caste.
All her life, she was ruled by the obsession to live like a Brahmin.

#A rich patron was found for sister Vadiva. But in the case of Kunjamma, Shanmukhavadivu was eager to establish her first on the stage. It would increase her value.

#Kunjamma was trained in Carnatic music. This classical music of south India is far older than Hindustani music prevalent in North India. Carnatic music is rule-bound, logic-driven, with a complex form, and multi-tiered theoretical framework. It demands both right and left brain skills. .

#Carnatic music is based on 72 fundamental ragas, which have all the seven notes in both the ascent and descent. Ragas are melodies. Permutations and combinations of these 72 parent ragas, with or one or more notes absent in the ascent or descent or both, offer endless melodic possibilities, for shaping a vast range of ragas. The 7 talas or rhythmic cycles too, demand high technical command in a concert performer.

#But this ravelled grammar is only the grid for a content of overwhelming emotion - the emotion of BHAKTI, loosely translated as devotion. You surrender to a chosen god, and finally to the ultimate, supreme source of life -- NADABRAHMAN. Godhead experienced as primal resonance - the omnipresent Sound Principle that pervades through, and animates the universe.

#Unlike north Indian music, Carnatic music has a diverse plethora of musical compositions, in five different languages – Telugu, Sanskrit, Kannada, Malayalam and Tamil. These lyrics are vital to the music, as they describe the chosen deity, exemplify some philosophic truth, or bristle with longing for union with the ultimate reality Nadabrahman. The songs are about Hindu gods, but they reflect this elemental urge for transcendence.

#Bhakti or devotion is the lifeblood of Carnatic music, not sringara or romance, associated more with Hindustani music.

#The history of bhakti is a fascinating one and beyond the pale of this talk. But I would like to say that bhakti originated in south India, in Subbulakshmi’s home state Tamil Nadu, in the 6th-7th centuries, as an assertion of regional language and native culture, against established religion with its Sanskritised rites, controlled by the privileged class of priests and learned pundits. It was also a resurgence of a more egalitarian, on-the-streets Hinduism, battling against other creeds.

#You will be intrigued (as I am) by the fact that this bhakti movement was actualized as protest poetry, the poets singing of a personal God, accessible through personal devotion alone. A natural corollary was to disregard differences of caste, class and gender. Bhakti admits no class hierarchies. In bhakti, all humanbeings are equal in the eyes of God. Manav seva madhav seva – service to man is service to God, says Bhakti, believing that compassion alone can reach grace.
IMAGE – TYAGARAJA, SYAMA SASTRI, MUTHUSWAMI DIKSHITAR

#Carnatic music centrestages this bhakti in the magnificent compositions of a triumvirate - Tyagaraja, Syama Sastri and Muthuswami Dikshitar – who composed lyric and music simultaneously . They are venerated as saints from their own times. Of course, not all composers are saints, but since most of them sing of God, they accumulate a kind of holiness.

#Perhaps it is Subbulakshmi’s natural adherence to the composer’s vision even while improvising freely on a line from the composition, made her a favourite with lay listeners as well as veteran musicians. Listen to her painting the beauty of Minakshi, as Madhurapuri nilaye, the deity of Madurai, Subbulakshmi’s own hometown.


TRACK TWO: MADURAPURI NILAYE 1/ ½ mins

#In an oral tradition the guru too becomes a god, whose lessons are seen as the dispensation of grace. Subbulakshmi remained a student all her life, learning from musicians belonging to several genres.

FOTO WITH GURUS – SEMMANGUDI, DILIP KUMAR ROY

#From the start, Subbulakshmi won applause from lay listeners and praise from the masters. Her first recital at the Madras Music Academy had senior musicians eagerly moving to the front row. “Child, you have bhava, emotion! That is the essence of music.” said a master, amazed by her pitch perfect clarity, her sensitive modulation. From the start she could achieve splendour without showiness, move hearts without lapsing into sentimentality.

DELETE

#While bhakti music was the highway, the genre of music associated with the devadasis was the padam – erotic lyrics with music so fine and rich that today even mature musicians rarely sing such songs. Popular musicians don’t go anywhere near it.

#Shanmukhavadivu’s padam impressed a German sound engineer so much that he recorded it for a German label. But the daughter rarely sang of romance -- was this because of the erotic content with its associations with the courtesan’s life that she hated and feared?

PHOTO: SADASIVAM

#In 1936, she met the man who would take her out of the courtesan’s circuit and shape her into a saint.

PHOTO: RAJAJI

#This was Thiagarajan Sadasivam, a firebrand freedom fighter, inspired by the nationalist leaders Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and even more, by C. Rajagopalachari, or Rajaji, the prophetic statesman. Quitting school to work as a volunteer for the Congress party, he happened to attend a smalltown music festival. Before he saw the girl, he was riveted by her voice.

I play the last line of that song, “O Lord, remove my fears of birth and death.”

TRACK THREE: DHAVA VIBHO

#Sadasivam was an attractive young man, intelligent and persuasive. He was a successful pioneer in advertising, and later, publishing (magazine?). But the demands of freedom fighting and courting imprisonment for seditious activities against the British, left no options for a steady job.

He had a mother, wife, two daughters, an orphaned nephew and niece, and a grand uncle to support, and many impecunious siblings claiming financial assistance.

PHOTO: MARRIAGE

#Subbulakshmi was always timid as a fawn. But desperation drove her to escape from home and arrive at Sadasivam’s doorstep seeking protection, to a house crowded with his widowed mother, first wife, children, an orphan niece and nephew, and sundry relatives coming to stay when they ran out of money, though Sadasivam himself had empty pockets then. Kunjamma comforted him. “Surely you can earn hundred rupees a month. I will manage to earn the same. We will manage, you will see.” That was in 1936. But neither then, nor at any other time did Sadasivam turn away any seeker. Kunjamma herself was ready to give everything away. We know that her benefit recitals have raised huge amounts for charity. But this charity began with personal concern for everyone. If you came to see Kunjamma, the poorer you were, the more attention you received. “They must not feel slighted, she said. She talked about the snubs she and her mother had faced. When the President of India came to visit, Subbulakshmi remembered to send a cup of coffee to his car for the waiting chauffeur. She never failed to personally thank maids and attendants anywhere she stayed.

#Four years later, Sadasivam’s wife died and he married his Kunjamma. This gave her security, and the means to turn “respectable”, following Brahmin rituals and lifestyle with greater zeal than the brahminborn. The question I ask myself is- is it what she wanted to do, or did she do it to feel secure?

FOTO:MS WITH FAMILY
#From day one, she accepted his financial responsibilities and family duties. Her concerts and roles as singing star in four films got them through the tough times. Her first step daughter Radha became Subbulakshmi’s inseparable partner as vocal accompanist on the stage, and protective soul mate in life. A unique bonding.


FOTO: MS, RADHA, SADASIVAM

#A witness to that marriage was best friend and eminent writer Kalki Krishnamurti. With the funds raised by Subbulakshmi’s acting in a film, the friends launched an eponymous weekly Kalki, to propagate reformist and nationalist goals, and the ideals of mentor C Rajagopalachari, or Rajaji, Rajmohan Gandhi’s maternal grandfather. As the largest circulated weekly in India in those initial years, Kalki the magazine, played a huge role in the cultural renaissance that preceded India’s independence. Kalki the man became a star in his own right. Interestingly, Subbulakshmi’s most popular signature songs were written by Kalki, an occasional poet, and Rajaji, who was no poet at all.

#PHOTO: KALKI, SADASIVAM, RAJAJI

#Kunjamma’s world had a nationalist sweep now, and the music she made reflected it.
Her concerts included songs from 11 Indian languages, from nationalist songs to lighter strains. While this eclectic repertoire created mass appeal, diehard critics saw it as attrition or dilution of classicism.

#Her last film Meera (1947), in which she played the role of the 15th century Rajasthani saint poet Meera, transformed Subbulakhsmi, from a regional Carnatic vocalist into a pan Indian celebrity.

FOTO: MEERA STILLS

#Meera premiered in 1947 in India’s capital New Delhi, with the last Viceroy Mountbatten and his wife as chief guests, attended by all the Congress bigwigs (led by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru who displayed a proprietorial pride).

THE MOUNTBATTENS

For them the story of saint Meera, a princess who spurned all material wealth and suffocating conventions, to walk with the poor, marginalized and the homeless, became the story of India breaking free from the British empire.

PHOTO: NEHRU & SAROJINI NAIDU

Happily surrendering her title “Nightingale of India” to Subbulakshmi, nationalist poet Sarojini Naidu prophesied, “Subbulakshmi is not the interpreter of Mira, but Mira herself. You will cherish her, you will be proud that India in this generation has produced so supreme an artiste.”

PHOTO: ELLIS R DUNGAN

#As the film was being shot on location, director Ellis R Dungan (very strangely, an American from Ohio State was one of the more successful directors of south Indian films back then) didn’t have to engage extras to follow saint Mira on her journey. As soon as Subbulakshmi stepped into the street singing,

Brindavan ki mangal leela yaad ave yaad ave
OR
Or Chaakar Rakhoji amane chaakar raakhoji

the pilgrims came rushing in hordes. They followed the singer as if in a trance. They must have seen the camera and the crew, but that did not make them stop falling at Subbulakshmi’s feet, believing that she was the original Meera returned miraculously to life. There was something about her voice and person which fostered this illusion.

The prince of Udaipur, a descendant of the original Mira, heard Subbulakshmi and said, “Take my kingdom!” Sadasivam interposed, “That’s not necessary, but please do allow us to shoot a sequence with your royal army and elephants!”

#Subbulakshmi too must have identified her own plight with that of Mira the misunderstood, Mira the scorned, who walked out to seek her destiny elsewhere. You can hear it in these lines of Mira crying out, “I have borne sorrow, humiliation, hardships. O Lord! Cut this noose of life.” For Subbulakshmi, music was not only sublime, but sublimation.

TRACK FOUR: MEIN HARI CHARANAN KI DAASI

#Whatever the reason, Mira the film launched the mystique of Subbulakshmi, and made her a national icon. Nehru once famously said, “Who am I, a mere Prime Minister, before the Queen of Song?”

PHOTO: SUBBULAKSHMI GARLANDING NEHRU

#Quite early on, Sadasivam became convinced that his wife’s extraordinary voice had to do something more than merely entertain, or arouse wonder with technical virtuosity. Believing that music was God’s gift to promote community welfare, he directed her to explore the possibilities of moving people towards patriotism, devotion, compassion, idealism, and finally, uplifting spirituality through her song.
SHE COULD NOT BE A PERFORMER. SHE HAD TO BE A SEEKER.

PHOTO: SUBBULAKSHMI SINGING

#He was shrewd too. He knew that the real glory was not in amassing wealth, but in giving it away. The fact that MS won the highest honours among Indian musicians, including the Magsaysay Award and India’s highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, had much to do with the fact that he channelled her earnings into causes and charitable endowments. Starting with 5 concerts for the Kasturba Memorial Fund in 1944, (which brought her a handwritten thank you note from Mahatma Gandhi) this grew into public service contributions of formidable proportions. She raised millions for medical, educational, scientific, research and religious institutions.

#Watching her learn a new work was a lesson in sraddha, or singleminded focus and sadhana, relentless internalization. She is known for her impeccable diction in many languages, her breath control, her voice modulation. But her mastery of technique wasalways aimed at heightening the emotion. “This is not about singing, but being worthy of our predecessors. We can’t tamper with what they have done and call it innovation,” she would say. The only time she admonished me was when, as her vocal accompanist, not having learnt a piece properly, I reassured her, “Don’t worry, I will manage on the stage.” She said, “I AM worried. Managing on the stage? Music is not for OTHERS, but for YOU to soak in.” Possibly, this attitude came from her belief that she was only a part of a dynamic, organic, ongoing tradition.

#If Subbulakshmi is today regarded as a symbol of national integration, a major reason is the inclusion of compositions from many parts and languages of India, including quite a few from Hindustani music. Sadasivam ensured that she received the best training from the best gurus in classical and lighter music. While redoubtable doyen Semmangudi honed her Carnatic presentation, Dilipkumar Roy, A Kanan and veteran Siddheshwari Devi gave her lessons in Hindustani music. All her life, Subbulakshmi remained a disciple. She revived and popularized the compositions of venerable but forgotten composers like the 4th century Annamacharya, and gave an impetus to singing bhajans, verses by north Indian bards. But everything she learnt from many sources, she made her own.

#An early profile notes, “Success and fame bring in their train friends and adulation as well as jealousy and carping critics. She has been paid the most extraordinary tribute by musicians, scholars, high dignitaries of state. I have also heard her dismissed as a pretty singer with a pretty voice. She herself takes all this in her stride.”

#There are critics who dismissed her for straying into bylanes from the high road of classicism. Some deemed her a popular artist merely, lacking originality, not being inventive enough. Others praised her contemporary D.K.Pattammal for being more knowledgeable.

FOTO: MS & PATTAMMAL

#Pattammal was also the first Brahmin woman to take up music as a profession, and given credit for beating men at their own game of virtuosic displays. However, a critic notes, “Subbulakshmi was the erliest to compete with male musicians in the form and substance of a concerrt, including aspects of niraval, swaraprastara and pallavi singing, a fact hardly noticed in the early years because it was accomplished with a quiet innocence.” Unnoticed, because in a Subbulakshmi concert, the meditative quality drowned razzmatazz. (virtuosity?)
#But here is an example of that kind of feat.

TRACK FIVE: BHAIRAVI SWARAM

I must add that once the Alathur Brothers, a Carnatic vocal duo renowned for the fireworks of the improvisational part of their concert music, once came to her and admitted ruefully, , “We thunder and blaze. How we wish we could move audiences with bhava, emotion, like you!”

#Critic V.KNarayana Menon once remarked, “She is, no doubt, constrained to sing music she would rather not. But that is the price she has to pay for being a celebrity. A musician is at once an artist and public entertainer. This is not succumbing to popular acclamation. It is a kind of inverted responsibility.”

#There could be no withdrawing into elitist classicism in her public performances. She followed the singing saints of the bhakti cult who reached out to people on the streets. A key aspect of her concerts was the savvy programming masterminded by Sadasivam to suit each place and event that was responsible for Subbulakshmi’s flawless presentation. He drew up her programmes, inflexibly, inexorably, heedless of her suggestions, choices, inclinations. She could not deviate from his plan, on the stage or in life. He was her most ardent and critical listener. “I don’t worry about audiences, only my husband,’ she would say, with fretful amusement.

#Even those who hated Sadasivam’s (autocratic ways?) guts and flaming temper admitted that without him, Subbulakshmi could not have become a national icon, or acquired the singing saint image. By firmly monitoring her interactions with friends, admirers and the public – controlling press releases, speaking on her behalf at interviews, he intensified (enlarged?) her mystique.

#Apparently, she was content to be ruled by him. His tyrannical tantrums and blazing rages were terrifying, but there were intimate moments. Once, on a moonlit terrace, as he was teaching me – his favourite grandchild then – a song about a mother cat caring for kittens brown, black, grey, white, his wife came up and began to sing with him. As they looked into each other’s eyes, I sensed her love and pride in him. There was another strand to that moment. Suddenly, catchphrases like universal brotherhood and racial harmony became living reality.

#Many saw the darker side. I asked novelist RK Narayan whose short story Selvi is a take off on the Sadasivam-Subbulakshmi story, why he made the singer leave her control freak husband. “Let her be free at least in my story!” he laughed. Guru Semmangudi, an unrivalled maestro himself, and Sadasivam’s crony, once mused, “Without his control her music would have been deeper, if less dazzling.” (Contradiction, because you said earlier that she preferred the spiritual to razzmatazz. Also what follows also says the opposite) He was referring to the fact that Sadasivam made his wife emphasise bhava and bhakti in the verse, while minimizing technical displays in improvisational segments of Carnatic music – alapana, swaraprastara or pallavi singing.

#Though Subbulakshmi cavilled at some of these restrictions in private, native diffidence made her submit to all his diktats. Martyrdom became a habit. Perhaps these restrictions made her soar all the more. Perhaps, as she lost herself in the music she loved, she found the freedom she lacked in life. The bird in the cage sings all the more poignantly as it recalls its loss.

#Once, as she explored the heights in the alapana (melodic improvisation) of the raga Sankarabharanam, her signature raga, her guru Semmangudi cried out from the front row, “Stay up there! Don’t come down. Don’t make us crash from the skies!”

TRACK SIX: ALAPANA SANKARABHARANAM

#In their 40 years of togetherness, Kunjamma was NEVER known to raise her voice or rebel against her husband’s decrees. She remained unworldly, worshipful of gurus and godmen, humble before elders, caring towards family members, delighting in simple pleasures, modest in appearance and behaviour. Like water drops on a lotus leaf, arrogance, greed, envy, anger and meanness simply left her untouched.

#Her indifference to praise and accolades was uncanny. In a ruminative moment after receiving the Bharat Ratna the highest civilian award in India, (repetition) she confessed that the only recognition that meant something to her was an unremembered award, because it was given to her by a senior musician. Not an honour, but a blessing.

#I was Subbulakshmi’s grandniece, and her vocal accompanist for the last 16 years of her career, when step daughter Radha’s illness made it difficult for her to perform that role. While I was not immune to the spell she cast with the bhakti of her music, I also came under the magic of the music of the devadasis exemplified by the dance diva Balasaraswati, and her brother T.Viswanathan who taught here in Wesleyan University, and the magnificence of Semmangudi, Subbulakshmi’s guru.

# Yet, as she sang, eyes closed, hand s half raised in supplication, the diamonds on her nose and ears glinting rainbows, I too believed that the singer, and the deity she sang about, were one and the same. It is difficult to be rational and analytical about Subbulakshmi’s music. All judgement is suspended, all critical faculties are muted. Then I feel like the man who wrote the line of one of her songs back to her:

Deenuda nenu, devudavu neevu (I am destitute, you are my god!)

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DARD CENTURIES OF PAIN, A DIVINE MELANCHOLY ARISING OUT OF TEMPORAL EXISTENCE THAT ALLOWS FOR TRANSCENDENCE.

Indian music emphasizes the term sadhana and sadhakam. LABOUR. Hard, focused, Herculean labour. But neither group – those who adored her or those who dismissed her, saw Subbulakshmi’s training and practice that produced that silk-edged result. They somehow thought that her singing was purely intuitive, like a songbird in springtime. Just listen to this all time hit, written by my grandfather Kalki, describing the magic of Krishna’s flute as it wafts in the breeze.

TRACK SEVEN: KATRINILE

What made Subbulakshmi impeccable? With a perfection that is not rigid or static, but melts hearts?

#The poet Rabindranath Tagore said that, to an artiste, techniques are not a machine’s wheels but wings for the imagination to soar. Subbulakshmi assimilated the techniques so thoroughly that she was no longer aware of them. Her flawlessness came from the balance of the clinical conscious and self forgetful unconscious elements in art.

#Not a day went by without vocal practice. Not advanced music, but relentless singing of scales in six speeds to keep the voice lubricated, resonant. Peter Callatin, a voice expert from the U.K was astonished by all the things her voice could do. “She uses her voice like a champion Olympic athlete uses his body,” he exclaimed.

#To talk about MS is to talk about the person. The kind of music she made came from the kind of person she was. There have been in this country of ours, many artistes, prodigies, geniuses, but rarely someone like Subbulakshmi. She was not only a great artiste, but a great human being. In fact, the two aspects were not separable. There was no difference between what she was in personal life, and what she was in her public life. In Subbulakshmi’s case, the image WAS the real thing.

#MS didn’t see her music as reserved for concerts. It was a means of communicating with everyone. That is why friends were overwhelmed when she attended weddings in their families and sang there unasked, unexpected. It was the same on train journeys. Fans were astonished when she unhesitatingly sang their favourite songs for them, accompanied by the chugging of the train.

#When she was 70, after a 3 hour open air concert in a remote village before thousands of listeners drawn from the entire region, two rough looking men came to disturb her sleep at the guesthouse. “After walking 15 miles we came too late to hear the concert. We hoped at least to see you,.” they said. Unhesitatingly, she asked them to sit down, and sang the final song of the concert for them, with all the details of a concert presentation.

#Early years of poverty made Subbulakshmi always empathize with the destitute. It also made her lose interest in material possessions. I’ve known her to be upset by ostentation. She thought no one had a right to be ostentatious in a world full of suffering.

#As an artist she never stopped training to improve. But she didn’t have to train to be a good human being – to be kind, generous, to care about others. Hers was the spontaneous goodness of a child, wanting the world o be a happy place. She read the newspaper and everyday she grieved over calamities, wars, sufferings, violence, poverty, deprivations… She had lived through the Gandhian struggles of the independence movement; to her, they were not just for political freedom…

#Her own Spartan living, and donation of most of her earnings to charity, made the singer merge with the ideals she sang about. When she said, Hari, Lord, remove the sorrows of humanity, you thought the Lord would listen.

PHOTO: MAHATMA GANDHI & SUBBULAKSHMI

#This quality of goodness did not suddenly appear for Mahatma Gandhi. It was part of her being. As my daughter once said, “Patti (grandmother) can’t help being good, even to a squirrel.” In her last years, her mind wandered but no harsh word escaped her lips, even unconsciously.

#When MS passed away my son Abhinav, also a journalist, then 19 years old, ended his obituary in the Economic Times with this sentence – And so died the greatest musician of our times, and the shy girl from Madurai. I think he said it all for me. (Omit?)

#I end with a song by saint poet Mira. Mahatma Gandhi said, “I would rather hear Subbulakshmi recite it, than anyone else sing it.”

PHOTO: MIRA SILHOUETTE

#What Mira had to say was addressed not to fellow humans, but to her God.

#Lord, remove the sorrows of humankind
Where there is sorrow, there is suffering.
Lord, remove our fears.

#All of us know how much we need this prayer in our brutalized, terrorized,
blasts-ridden, (Omit?) dehumanised world.

Thank you.

TRACK : HARI TUM HARO











Niraval’ Minakshi memudam – 2 and a half minutes

Alapana Sankarabharanam - Emi neramu Adi

Swarm; Bhairavi 1 1/2 minutes) Koluvai Tyagaraja ADI

Track one Kirtanai -- Sri ranga pura vihara (United Nations)

Janana marana bhaya

Petrathai

Katrinile - Nila malarnda

Dukh apmaan -- mein hari

Boodhate jan ki bheer

Vijaya Mehta looks back

Thespian Vijaya Mehta has just finished writing her autobiography in her mother tongue, and is working on its English version. This will trace not only her journey in Marathi theatre, but also record a pioneering phase of Indian theatre.

Born in a family of radical humanist Theosophists, following the Varkari tradition, young Vijaya was with Jayaprakash Narayan in her teens. After her success as Desdemona in a college production (“Othello”), a theatre course with veteran Ebrahim Alkazi became a turning point. Training in backstage and direction with Adi Marzban strengthened her tools. Rangayan, the theatre laboratory she founded ( in 1960) with Vijay Tendulkar and Arvind Deshpande, launched the experimental theatre movement in Marathi, with landmark productions of Indian plays (Tendulkar's “Shantata Court Chalu Ahe”, Khanolkar's “Ek Shunya Baji Rao”, Elkunchwar's “Holi”), and adaptations of foreign masterworks.

Her 20 years' collaboration with director Fritz Bennewitz in Germany, produced not only Brecht, but plays from Kalidasa to Karnad, in an amalgam of Indian styles. After age 40, she directed and acted in memorable films (“Smriti Chitre”, “Rao Sahib”, “Pestonji”, “The Party”). Vijaya Mehta has been chairman, National School of Drama, and continues to be eExecutive dDirector, National Centre for the Performing Arts. Excerpts from an interview with the veteran.

With filmstars Nalini Jaywant for aunt, Nutan and Tanuja for cousins, and Durga Khote for mother-in-law, were you not enticed by the glamour of cinema?

I was too used to glamour at home. Instinctively I knew cinema was not for me. Learning about the interconnectedness of all the arts in theatre from Alkazi was a revelation. Adi Marzban said: ‘Don't talk, jump in', and made me a theatre director. I was barely 21 when I directed Tendulkar's ‘ Shrimant'. It made us both.

Were you not seen as an English memsahib in Marathi theatre?

Only initially! I kept telling Tendulkar, ‘I am very much your actress'. I talked in the ‘icebergian' way in which he wrote, showing only the tip. The old school people were unused to this emotional restraint — a drop instead of a flood.

How much did your theatre laboratory Rangayan shape the growth of playwrights and actors? Why did it break up?

Rangayan collapsed when I married Farrukh Mehta and went to England. I lost my innocence, gullibility, became an adult. Without batting an eyelid, I'd say that a lot of playwrighting, acting and production styles today are based on what Rangayan created. Rangayan was a breakthrough, a literary and performing arts movement. It stood for certain convictions of what theatre should be and how you experiment. I don't take all the credit. I had the right people for support.

Your Ionesco and Brecht productions set new trends. What attracted you to such dissimilar minds?

You'd laugh if I tell you. In an international workshop at Oxford, Americans and Africans found their own ways of producing Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi, and I thought, let me try tamasha. People were astonished! Then I realised I wanted to find a modern vehicle for folk conventions. Later, research led to Brecht. At Rangayan, we introduced a foreign classic each year. Nissim Ezekiel suggested Chairs (Ionesco). We called it Na-natya.

What was it like to work with German actors?

Fantastic learning experience! They want 27 answers to a single question. When they lift a finger, it gets layered with meaning.

How did you overcome your initial distaste to act in and direct films?

Satyajit Ray arrived on the scene. Then I saw Shyam Benegal's ‘Ankur' and Govind Nihalani's ‘Aakrosh'. I realised that filmmaking can be as satisfying as my theatre. Films came to me in my 45th year, an autobiography of Lakshmibai Tilak, others mostly based on my plays. So, though I didn't know what structuring was, I knew exactly what I wanted in ‘Rao Saheb'. I am proud of my medical TV serial ‘Lifeline'.

What about the cliché that unlike cinema, theatre is an actor's, not a director's medium?

I became a director because I couldn't find anyone to help me as an actor. I am an actors' director. But oh my God! I think every moment in theatre is a director's moment! The director decides which sentence, gesture, or reaction, the audience is going to watch.

In the rehearsal room, yes. On the stage the actor can take over and the director's intentions go for a toss.

Oh yes! In Marathi theatre, actors can get tired with 30 shows a month. Then, unconsciously, they start playing to the gallery. I want my actors not to act but to be characters. A character is not something you indulge in. You play with it. My actors play a lot. But only hard work can empower you to play.