In the evenings, Bhagavateeswara Iyer would sit on the pyol of his house in Karamana agraharam, Thiruvananthapuram, listening to the children of neighbours singing. The slightest slip, and his voice would boom in Malayalam, “Thettu (Mistake).” Granddaughter Jaya was, therefore, always scared to sing when Bhagavateeswara Iyer was around. But he would insist that she sings. And when she spent holidays in Karamana, he would teach her Swati Tirunal’s compositions. Jaya’s maternal grandfather Ramasubba Iyer was also musically inclined. Her mother, who was trained in music, taught her many Tyagaraja kritis. “My mother’s most prized possession was a book, which had compositions of major composers with notations. she bought it for 12 annas in the early 1900s. I still have the book with me,” says Jaya.
Jaya learnt compositions of Lakshmana Pillai from her maternal uncle. She has won many prizes in music competitions, when she was a student in Srirangam High School. To Jaya, music was always an offering to God, and her ishta deivam was Rama. While in school, she set up a small brick structure in the yard of the house, where the family resided, and installed a stone in it. She imagined the stone to be Lord Rama and offered fruits and flowers to it every day. In the evenings, when her schoolmates came over to play hopscotch, she would give them the fruits and tell them it was prasada from Rama.
After passing the lower and higher-grade exams in music, Jaya prepared for the Diploma in Music, offered by Madras University. Prof. Sambamurthy was the examiner, and a nervous Jaya’s voice began to quiver. Sambamurthy put down his pen, and said, “Start singing. In a few minutes, you will overcome your fear. I will begin grading you then.” Recalling the incident, Jaya says, “I can never forget his magnanimity towards students.”
In 1951, Jaya married Anantharaman, who belonged to a family of Vedic scholars, patronised by the Mysore royal family. Anantharaman, who worked for Defence Estates, was never posted in a town for more than two years. And as they moved from one place to another, Jaya lost touch with music, until they moved to Delhi. There were many options available and she wanted to resume her music. She wasn’t sure she could, because she was 45 years old then, and had not sung for two decades. But with practice, she got back her voice, and began to teach a few students.
Extempore ragamalika
“When we left Delhi, a friend gave me a stone and said, ‘Worship this Anjaneya.’” Jaya says that it did not look like an idol. It had the figure of Anjaneya etched on it, although the contours were rather faintly inscribed. She placed it in her puja room and began worshipping it with devotion. Over the years as she continued to do abishekams for the stone, the contours became clearer, with all the details like a crown and ornamentations showing up distinctly, until she finally had a full-fledged vigraham of Anjaneya! One day, during her puja, she became too emotional and as the tears coursed down her cheeks, she broke into a song! It was a ragamalika in five ragas, in praise of Anjaneya. And that was the beginning. In course of time, she started rendering extempore hundreds of songs in praise of Anjaneya, with raga and tala. Of the roughly 600 compositions of Jaya’s, half are in Sanskrit, a language Jaya never learnt. “I even checked with a Sanskrit pandit, and he said they were error free,” says Jaya.
She and her husband have been visiting the Muruga temple in Delhi for the past 30 years. “It is a climb of 108 steps. I am 88 years old, and my husband is 92. How do you think we manage it without divine grace,?” she asks. During each visit, she composes a song in praise of Muruga. During Gauri puja, she composes a song in praise of the Goddess. She has given pravachanams on Anjaneya at the Rama temple in Tippa Sandra.
Jaya’s student, Mythili Krishnan, has published all her compositions in three volumes, with notations. They are titled Jaya Maami Bhakti Padalgal . The songs are in simple Tamil and Sanskrit. ‘Sameerajam smaraami,’ a Sanskrit composition in Varali lists the qualities of Hanuman. He is the servitor of Sripathi, he is the one who saved the life of Lakshmana and the one who nullifies the negative effects of Sani. Continuing the theme, ‘Kunkuma chandana’ (Punnagavarali) also in Sanskrit, extols Hanuman as the one who saves people from the doshas of planetary positions, and as the one who is a terror to his enemies — shatru bhayankara. ‘Manamenum vilanginai’ (Abhogi) is a Tamil composition which details the power of Rama nama.
