Manpoondia Pillai was a lantern-bearer in the Pudukottai palace. His job gave him the opportunity to listen to music concerts, standing in a corner holding the lantern. One day, during a royal concert, he was so moved that he exclaimed ‘aaha!’ Suddenly, all eyes fell on the till-now invisible lantern-man. “Why don’t you learn music and become a vidwan instead of bearing lanterns?” asked someone sarcastically. ‘Why not?’ thought Manpoondia.
The kanjira katha
Manpoondia approached Mariappa Tavil kaarar, a tavil vidwan. Mariappa hesitated to accept the unorthodox Manpoondia as a student. But when he heard him play percussion for the first time he was floored. He realised that Manpoondia was special. The man could play with just one hand! He encouraged his student to make his own instrument that could be played using one hand, and thus was born the kanjira. Music historian and writer Lalitha Ram shared this story at his presentation ‘Isayil Pudukottai’ at a meeting organised by Aruvi, a literary club. “Sometimes, music chooses certain people to better itself,” said Lalitha Ram. Try as we might, it’s only a fortunate few from whom music flows effortlessly. It was these people, some of them from ordinary backgrounds, that Lalitha Ram focussed on, especially the percussion greats who followed the Pudukottai style .
A software engineer based in Bangalore, Lalitha Ram is the author of Dhuruva Natchathiram , a book on percussion exponent Palani Subramaniya Pillai. “Those days, during temple festivals, dancers would perform for about three hours. But nadhaswaram vidwans would have to play the entire night,” said Lalitha Ram. This is when the mirdangam came to the rescue. The mridangam vidwans took over in between to give a break to the nadhaswaram players. Therefore they had to work hard to create more patterns to keep the listener entertained, he added.
Lalitha Ram spoke about how Dakshinamurthy Pillai, Manpoondia’s student, gained more popularity than his guru due to his on-stage charisma. He traced the success story of Palani Subramaniya Pillai, who was left-handed, and struggled because he was that way. Lalitha Ram spoke of Palghat Mani Iyer, Alathur Brothers and G. N. Balasubramaniam. Subramaniya Pillai, he concluded, was a person who elevated the singer. It was an experience listening to Madurai Mani Iyer and Subramaniya Pillai, he said. Such was his gift that Subramaniya Pillai added beauty even to the singer’s silences.
