All of us siblings called her “Patta,” occasionally as “Pattamma,” but rarely ever merely as “Amma” — which was what she was. For, she was as much a friend and an equal as she was mother. September 11, 2011 marks her birth centenary. These are a son's random reflections.
She had lost her mother when she was three days old. Her maternal grandparents, Visalakshi and Rao Bahadur K.S. Venkatarama Iyer, decided to treat her as their daughter and named her Meenakshi, which was the name of her mother, whom they had lost. She was brought up in a prosperous household: it is said that she was often made to sit on a heap of gold coins with which she was allowed to play.
When she was hardly seven, a guru initiated her with srividya mantropadesam. Her devotion made her spend hours in daily pooja. Her Sanskrit and Tamil lyrics were blessed by Ramana Maharishi, the Paramacharya of Kanchi and Swami Chinmayananda.
As she was nearing nine, as per custom her marriage with K. Subrahmanyam was arranged. He was still a student. He later gave up his legal practice and became a cinematic pioneer of South India: “Director K. Subrahmanyam.”
As a child, Meenakshi had learnt Sanskrit at home. She was an accomplished singer, proficient in playing the veena, the violin and the harmonium. Veena became her forte.
The combination of her scholarship in Tamil and Sanskrit and her effervescent creativity as a Carnatic musician made her a lyricist-composer. During a life of 76 years, she composed almost a thousand songs in Tamil and Sanskrit – kirtanas with full notations. While much of this was her expression of bhakti, she also wrote songs in praise of nature and dealing with contemporary societal problems.
Although she was not a part of her husband's creative efforts during the first decade of his career as a director, in the late-1940s he began to utilise her talents as a lyricist and music composer. Arguably, she was South India's first woman music director. Her verses on Mahatma Gandhi were notable. Her concern over inequities in the newly independent nation found expression in her songs for Subrahmanyam's Tamil film Geetha Gandhi (1948).
She taught her children music, and on all of them she wielded a magical influence – not with a disciplinarian's approach but through sheer endearment. She trained my sister Neela in the fundamentals of music and musicology, made her a concert artiste, and contributed to her becoming the head of a music college in Madurai. She made an immeasurable contribution in making my sister Padma Subrahmanyam a success as a dancer. She inspired my brother S.V. Ramanan to compose music for stage shows and for his short films.
She endeared herself to everyone she came into contact with – artistes, political personalities, Left leaders who were my father's friends, as well as the members of the Mylapore aristocracy.
My mother was shaken by the trauma of my father getting one more woman (S.D. Subbalakshmi, a star he had introduced) as life-partner. But over a period she took it in her stride with stoic resignation.
She was never upset by the ups and downs of her husband's career as a filmmaker. On the contrary, she was proud of his patriotism resulting in financial losses. One of his important films, Thayagaboomi, based on a story by Kalki, was banned by the colonial government.
Her equanimity was shaken in the last decade of her life after a relative cheated her out of her ancestral property. More than the loss of her ancestral home, the thought that someone she had trusted had deceived her, upset her.
Perhaps the acid test for a woman lies in how she gets along with her daughters-in-law. When Mohana, my wife (at that time she was a senior scientist in a government-run research institute), developed a misgiving that I was getting friendly with another woman, she chose to confide not in her parents, not in her friends, but in her mother-in-law. My mother kissed her and advised her: “Babu [as I am called at home] does not merely love you. He respects you, as every man should respect his wife.” She moved into our house for a few weeks and ensured that relationships were not strained.
A mother is indeed more than a thousand times worth all the details in her biodata. On this centenary occasion, let me invoke her blessings.
(Dr. S. Krishnaswamy is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and a Padmashri awardee)
