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Random Ramblings

vacations, two other occasions that attracted me those days to my

ancestral place were Sapthsthanam and Thyagaraja utsavam.

Before I dwell on my experience at the Thyagaraja festival, let

me tell you something about the former. Sapthasthanam, as the

name suggests, stands for seven spots and during this festival,the deities from the temples of seven villages surrounding

Thiruvaiyaru, would be brought in a procession in highly-

decorated palanquins, each vying with the other on beauty and

elegance. What was even more alluring for we, boys, was the

village fair that would be held the previous night on the riverbed

sands of Cauvery that would conveniently go dry during that

season. The fair used to have a host of attractions like bloated

cotton candies and chilly bujjies, bioscope and magic shows,

Bharath Gopalan

Iam talking about a time, quitebefore Thiruvaiyyaru got transplanted in

Chennai. A couple of furlongs eastwards

of Thiruvaiyaru, on the northern banks of

Cauvery river lies the small little villagecalled Thillaisthanam, where I had spent

most of my vacations during my half-trouser

days. Whenever our school holidays

stretched beyond weekend on either side,

my father would drive us down to our

grandparents place in Thillaisthanam,

which was about 15 kilometres from our

home on the outskirts of Thanjavur. My

grandfather used to have an arduous

task of force-lling my memory bank

with undecipherable Sanskrit hymns by

making me sit and go through a rigorous

regimen of reciting every word thrice after

him. We (my siblings included) would be

very alert to even his slightest slumber to

make an escape. But today, Im happy

that he had not let me escape much and

I gratefully cherish those memories of his

earnest attempt to transfer at least a little

of whatever treasure he had.

Though that was mostly during summer

ranga-ratnam (merry-go-round) and giant-wheel rides etc, all

coming in a small pocket money of ve to ten rupees, which

we used to garner from different sources like grandma and

other uncles as a return for the liberal prostrations, we do

before them.

Having my roots near Thiruvaiyaru, the pilgrimage centre of

carnatic music, had its own advantages. Though I had made

quite a few friends, while at Thillai, I have always remained a

rank-outsider compared to the natives, who seemed to have

acquired two talents very congenitally. One was swimming.

They were so natural at it that I had always felt that if they were

pushed in to the river even in the middle of their sleep, they

would swim back to shore unconsciously. Whenever I was in

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DECEMBER 2010 CHENNAI NAMMA CHENNAI

Thillai, my cousin Sriram would take me to the river

for the morning bath. My usual ritual of bath was to

get two or three steps down into the river and take a

few dips into water until the back of my head got wet

and return to the banks to dry myself up. But once

it so happened that when I got beyond the second

step, the third step went missing and I was just going

deeper and when my feet touched the sands, I was

gasping for breath. It took a few moments for the

people around to realize that I needed to be rescued.

When I was nally pulled out, I saw them looking at

me like a strange creature that couldnt swim.

Another talent that ran in their blood was their air for

carnatic music: humming the kirthans of Thyagaraja

without missing the sangadhis or nding the raga

even before the alapana began or lap-tapping (thala)

to the rhythm of music, all came naturally to them

and they didnt need to attend any special class to

learn all these. During Thyagaraja Utsavam, our

village would throng to Thiruvaiyyaru and I would join

my friends with spring in my steps. Squatting on the

sprawling river-sands in front of the samadhiof Saint

Thyagaraja amidst a spell-bound crowd and listening

to thepancha ratna kirtana, was a very emotionally-

moving experience for me. During the Utsavam those

days, one could see great exponents of carnatic music

coming and participating with utmost dedication and

humility without the least expectation of any reward

or recognition. This would remind me of what my

father used to narrate to me when he would casually

sing a couple of lines from Saint Thyagaraja Nidhi

chala sukama? Ramuni sannidhi seva sugama?The

Saint was summoned by the then king to his court to

sing in praise of him and was offered a lot of wealth in

exchange. The saint, a great devotee of Lord Rama,

stubbornly refused the kings offer, though he was

living in utter poverty. That was when Thyagaraja

sang these lines starting with the rhetorical question,

can mere material wealth bring happiness to man?

Or is it rendering service to Lord Rama?

Insofar as picking the basic threads of music

like telling a raga or humming a kirtana, I have

always remained a novice and my sitting through

the concerts at the utsavam had been of no avail.

But the good fortune of listening to some of the

stalwarts like MSSubbalakshmi, who had dedicated

their lives to music, had taught me what good music

is all about. If I have an authentic taste for good

music, I owe it to the utsavam. All I ask is is there

shraddha in the sound that reverberates on my

tympanums? My intellect fails to nd the answer. I

just close my eyes and listen and if it brings tears in

them, then that is it.

The writer can be contactedatbharath.gopalan

@gmail.com

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