My brothers and I grew up on a staple diet of books and music, and we learnt to identify ragas, by dipping into father’s huge collection of gramophone records, Ariyakudi and DKP being our favourites.
With no volume control, the gramophone would blare loudly in the silence of the afternoon. DKP’s ‘Ninaindurugum’ (Surutti raga, film Thyagayya ), has a lovely swara passage, and my brother Nandakumar knew which groove in the record he would have to move the stylus to, to zero in on this swara passage, and we would hear it repeatedly. DKP’s music was very much a part of our growing up years, in our ancestral house — Lady Napier Villa. Through her music, DKP seemed to be walking along with us every step of the way, with us always in joy or sorrow.
We would often take a gramophone to the dining room, where our Ambuja paatti would relax in the afternoon, and play records for her. One Deepavali, dressed in our finery and savouring the sweets, we played DKP’s ‘Thanga oru nizhal illaiye’ (film Lavanya ) and she laughed hard with Nandakumar trying to match his expressions to the sentiment of the song. Since the lyric goes — ‘thanga oru nizhal illaiye; kulir thaangavum orudai illaiye; thinga pidi annam illaiye’ (I have no shelter; no garment to keep me warm; not even a fistful of rice to eat). DKP’s ‘Kottai kattadhedaa’ (film Pizhaikkum Vazhi ) talks of the dangers of building castles in the air, and warns that nothing ever happens in life as it is hoped. This lesson learnt in childhood has helped me keep things in perspective.
On those rare occasions when my lawyer-father lost his cool, we would play DKP’s ‘Ninaippadeppodu nenje’ in Nadanamakriya, a composition by Vedanayakam Pillai, where Pillai talks of loud argumentative lawyers who give him a headache — ‘Thondai kizhithu kondu sandai seyyum vakkilgal.’ The message was not lost on father. His anger would vanish. Since this record seemed a good tool to deal with parental displeasure, we used it often. The result was that one day, father pulled out a 1945 Ananda Vikatan and pointed to a review of a DKP kutcheri. The reviewer had commented, ‘The vakil song has been overdone. Time to move on to some other composition of Pillai.’ And thus again, it was DKP who, in an indirect way, taught us the undesirability of overuse!
Learning Thiruppavai
While everyday recitation of Sittranchirukaale was de rigueur from the time I was two years old, among the other Tiruppavai verses, the ones I learnt first were ‘Thoomani’ and ‘Maale Mani Vanna’, for the simple reason that we had a 78rpm disc of DKP singing the two pasurams. When we played DKP’s ‘Varidhi Neeku’ (Thodi), father told us that Ariyakudi had sent K.V. Narayanaswamy to DKP, to learn the song. When we played the Rama Nataka kriti — ‘Yaaro Ivar Yaaro’, father showed us a review of that record in the 1945 Ananda Vikatan Deepavali Malar.
The reviewer had written, ‘Pattammal has sung this song so well, that I think this song was tuned in Bhairavi, with Pattammal in mind.’ Mother’s guru was Vaidyanathan, a disciple of Ariyakudi, and when Ariyakudi set Arunachala Kavirayar’s Rama Nataka kritis to tune, DKP learnt them from Vaitha sir, mother informed us. And thus, we picked up anecdotes about the music world too.
Our lives crashed around us, when Nandakumar came home one day from school with a severe headache and fever, which turned out to be meningitis. And then followed years of agony, with each year bringing a further deterioration in his condition. He kept cheerful throughout, still passionately in love with music. And when death embraced him, I am sure he went with a tune in his heart, most probably a DKP song.
