A flight of rickety steps takes me to the door of the Krishnans in Delhi's Ashok Vihar. On a cold day, their warm smile welcomes me in. Seventy-eight-year-old P.N. Krishnan retired from the telecom sector years ago. Wife Akhila, 74, needs assistance to move around after undergoing a major operation on the spine some years ago. But this is not your usual elderly couple living in Delhi saddled with the worries and ailments of the sunset years with children living far away. In fact, their house is a bustle with young people going in and out: their music students.
While Krishnan is a talented Carnatic flautist who took up the instrument to tutor youngsters post retirement, Akhila has been a respected concert and kacheri singer in the Carnatic music circle of Delhi for decades now. Among her students are a host of stage performers including Mohiniattam dancer and vocalist Deepthi Omchery, while young Aniruddha Bharadwaj, under Krishnan's flute tutelage, has been impressing connoisseurs since he was hardly 10. Never one to chase publicity, Akhila, known to many pursuers of Carnatic music as Akhila mami, remained a name known only to the interested few despite being a singer for greats like Sonal Mansingh, and Yamini Krishnamurti for about two decades. A talented Carnatic violinist too, she had to stop playing after the operation. “Now I can't bend my knees to balance the instrument,” she says.
Hailing from a family devoted to music for six generations, Akhila met her husband through music. “I was a disciple of her uncle, the flute vidwan Nochur Krishna Iyer, in Palakkad (Kerala),” says P.N. Krishnan. Initiated into music by her father, renowned violin vidwan Erode Vishwanatha Iyer, Akila was already an A-grade artiste of All India Radio (Calicut) at the time of her marriage. However, she had to leave behind a promising musical career and follow her husband to Delhi.
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Even after 60 years, Krishnan can recall his first day in the city vividly. “It was September 30, 1951, very different from where we came from,” he says with a smile. Coming all the way from Kerala to work in the city, he and Akhila took up a house in Karol Bagh, a preferred location of many South Indian families then. It was just a matter of time before Akhila began to look for a window to pursue her musical talent. “But not knowing Hindi restricted me. So I thought I must learn the language first,” she says.
Once she began to pick up a smattering of the local language, doors opened for her and she could travel on her own “all the way from Karol Bagh to R.K. Puram” to learn from Guru T.K. Jayarama Iyer. A national scholarship from the Government followed and so did performances in temples and singing on the radio, all over again. “I was so lucky to have got T.K. Jayarama Iyer as my guru. He called respected critics like Subbudu and K. Srinivasan home to listen to my singing. Today, I can't think of a guru organising media interviews for their shishyas,” she remarks.
The publicity bore fruit and she got in touch with well known Bharatnatyam dancer Swarna Saraswati, Yamini Krishnamurti and others. “Swarna Saraswati belonged to the same family as (legendary dancer) Balasaraswati. Their family had the knowledge of many rare padams and javalis. I learnt them from great padam singers of that family like Brinda and Mukta,” recalls Akhila.
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Also a student of greats like K.V. Narayanaswamy, Musiri Subramanya Iyer and Tirupambaram Swaminatha Pillai, Akhila's repertoire today is enviable in Delhi. Her student Deepthi says, “I have learnt about 500 compositions from her, many quite rare.”
Akhila mami, a winner of many awards including “Madhura Gana Ratna” bestowed on her by Shri Venkateshwara Fine Arts Trust this past week in New Delhi, was also a member of the audition board of AIR and an examiner for music in Delhi University for years together. “Now I can't move much; all that is over,” she says with a laugh. On the insistence of her two sons living in the U.S., Akhila now also teaches music to a set of students there through Skype. “Both my sons are professional violinists despite their busy jobs. They have been asking us to live with them. We have said no. It is so much nicer here to be among people who know your musical heritage,” she says.
The Krishnans, having seen Carnatic music spread in the city, though, have some remarks to make. “There is a lot of pressure now from parents. They want their children to be on stage even before they are ready. They now spend so much money on arangetram (debut performance). I have been teaching for the last 40 years. I have not done any arangetram for my students but they are all stage performers today,” says Akhila. To help youngsters pursue their art, they, however, have been running a Music Appreciation Centre since 1981.