There was music all around me even before I was born. My father Veenai Ramanathan lived at 20, Sydoji Street, Thiruvallikeni, Madras. The house consisted of two rooms, one upstairs and one downstairs. The ground floor was my mother Gowri's kingdom, where she cooked on one side and we children hung out in the rest of the space. Upstairs, appa held classes almost all day. His school was called Kalaimagal Isai Kalloori.
We were nine siblings, seven sisters and two brothers (my elder brother Ravi passed away a few years ago).
The first memory of my childhood days is of our trips to the Marina beach at five o'clock every morning with appa. The milk would not come that early (I was addicted to coffee from an early age), so no coffee before we left home. Amma would never come with us.
On the way, appa would either quiz us on English phrases or just chat with us. My younger brother Raju reminices about the noisy cries of birds in the trees at the Gosha Hospital complex on Pycrofts Road (Bharathiyar Salai now). At the beach, we would sit around appa on the sand while he taught us Kamba Ramayanam, Bharatiyar songs, Divya Prabandham, or Thevaram We learnt to recite them. He would patiently explain the meaning of the verses and then as a reward all my siblings, except me, would go near the water to get their feet wet. I was hydrophobic even and would request appa to allow me to keep a watch over their footwear.
My father’s students would start arriving by the time we reached home at 6.30 a.m. The days we did not go to the beach, the early comers would be the ones to wake us up. I would then start my day, after having amma’s coffee, by playing the veena with them.
I remember some students would come at dawn: Srinivasan, the son of late T.S. Parthasarathy (secretary of the Madras Music Academy), Parasuram, Shantha, and Aravinda (daughter of Tamil scholar Jagannadachari). Rain or shine, they would be at 20, Sydoji Street.
I was told that I did not speak for a long time. But I remember all the music around me. If you wake me up in the middle of the night, I can sing or play any song appa taught me at that age. My father used to tease me about not speaking until I was four, and felt I made up for it by talking a lot later. The husband Frank Bennett says the same when I chatter a lot.
I remember appa practising the veena at 4 a.m. I would often join him and we would play the sarali, jantai, alankarams, geethams and varnams in different speeds before the sun came up. These early morning sessions honed my skills greatly.
Appa would then look at some of my sleeping siblings and say: “Only the royalty wake up to the sound of the veena. Look at your sisters and brothers. They are kings and queens.” And I do believe they were and are.
