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Okay, I don't want this to be a music blog exactly. But somehow I can't restrict myself from writing this article.

Dr S Ramanathan(DSR) was perhaps one of the most underrated musicians of Carnatic music. Yeah yeah.. you would have listened to the short and sweet pacy kalpana swaras of GNB or the genius of Madurai Mani Iyer or the drawling voice of Maharajapuram Santhanam. Or even other yester-year greats like Ariyakkudi Ramanujam Iyengar or Semmangudi Srinivasan. But I don't think not many(atleast in this generation) would have listened to DSR as much as they have listened to other vintage musicians.


Image courtesy: www.carnatica.net

Dr S Ramanathan was more a musicologist than a musician. With a PhD in Ethnomusicology from Weslyan University, he looked at Carnatic music from an academic perspective. Now, that should never undermine his talent as an accomplished singer. One thing that captivates me when I listen to him is the inherent sowkyam brimming in the voice. When I was learning the Saranga Varnam (Intha Modi), I wanted to listen a musician's rendition as this has always helped me understand the full beauty of the song and the potential for improvisations present in it. When I hunted for it, I chanced upon the version sung by DSR. And boy, was I surprised. Till then I have never heard much of him but once I started listening, I was hooked.

Here I was listening to a chrono-perfect, paternal comforting voice in repeat mode. A slight detour: Saranga is a janya of Mechakalyaani with M2 like Kalyaani. But the usage of M1 in the sequence r g m r s makes Saranga stand out and it would be apt to say that this is the signature of Saranga. The text book Aarohanam |Avarohanam is
s p m2 p d2 n2 S (You can also sing or play s r2 s p m2 p d2 n2 S)| S n2 d2 p m2 r2 g2 m1 r2 s.

And I started hunting for more songs by DSR. Unfortunately not many were available to listen to online.
Links for a few of them - listen to them..They are absolute gems!

1. Shivkumar's page

2. A Kamas kriti on YouTube

(By the way, I was actually floored after listening to Mandolin Srinivas' Enta Bhagyamu in Saranga. Currently am too bugged to find the link. Will update as soon as I find it).

Adios

I grew up reading Siruvarmalar.
For the uninitiated, Siruvarmalar is a free supplement that comes on Fridays with Dinamalar and it's targeted towards the kids. But I shamelessly agree, even today when I go to my aunt's place, lunch without Siruvarmalar becomes tasteless. During those days the thin magazine used to transport me to another fantasy world - of kings, magic and morality. Simply putting it without getting too sentimental - I loved the book.

This was one of the reasons I pursued Tamil even in my 11th and 12th, but I screwed up finally in 12th board exams which is a different story. But my initiation into Tamil poetry and literature was through this simple magazine. It led me to bookstores searching for more Tamil books and I zeroed in on another series of books called "Rani Comics". It was a comic book which I bought - the main reason being that the price was Rs 2.00 . Today it might be some 5 bucks- but the point is it well satisfies ROI or NPV or whatever analysis you do. The number of pages is around 60-70 and it usually runs stories about heroes on the likes of Tarzan and Batman with busty female leads.

At a later point of time, I started reading another weekly called "Kalkandu" which I stuck on to for long. I even read the crime reporter "Junior Vikatan" but given it's propensity for lecherous and gory crimes and my propensity for reading such news, my mom decided to stop it. I somehow never read Kumudam or Ananda Vikatan or Kungumam beyond taking an eyeful of centerpage blowups - apart from that they were not able to catch my attention. And Kalkandu it was, for a long period of time with lots of tit bits and travel stories of Lena Tamilvanan. Kalkandu comes from the house of "Manimekalai Prasuram", a damn famous Tamil publishing house which publishes books like "Cinema ulagil hero aavathu eppadi?", "kokko munivarin kadhal ragasiyangal", " 30 naatkalil Judo katrukkollungal", "Kundaliniyai ezhuppungal" and other universally well guarded secrets in the price range of 10-30 bucks.Incidentally they also published a lot of science fiction and detective stories.

All these books where somehow restricted to a very very niche set of people who had high flying jobs like doing an audit for sleepworthiness of benches in Valluvarkottam, Sivan Park and other popular vetti officers' hangouts. Then again some guys identified a major business opportunity in parrying to the tastes of the elite masses who claim themselves to be Tamil (Palakkadu, Madurai, Tiruchi, Mylapore or wherever)Iyers and Iyengars but still don't know how to read or write Tamil. Pico Iyer, I'm your fan and all but can't digest the fact that you can't talk Tamil and you can't walk Tamil. So, for all these Anglicized Tams and other lovers of pulp fiction, out came a book called "The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction" which was a translation of all these Tamil thrillers in English.



Nice way to start, I should say and this will bring on more famous works of Tamil to limelight. I love Tamil. But there are people like Skin.Panther and AncientlanguageDrinkSon who go ga-ga over this. The cause is good - these dudes want to save Tamil and propogate it, but the means remain questionable. Guys, let's face it - you stop the encouragement of other languages in Tamil Nadu and you make generations of Tamil people socially handicapped when they go out. And this leads to a species of people called "Ek Gaon Mein.." group which always work in isolation and finds itself allergic to mingle with the rest-of-Indians. And somehow this has ingrained in our DNA and is flagrantly visible for everyone to see. But you know, lots have changed now. And slowly in Tamil Nadu, Mamas and Mamis have started looking beyond Hindu Paper and Narasus coffee. They are allowing their sons and daughters to get married to Sethjis and Sardarjis. They are spending their retired life on round trips of the world.
So the panthers and drunkards of the world - all your motives and moves are outdated by some 20 years. Try something new. You may find some innovative ideas in the stories of Rajesh Kanna and Indra Soundarrajan in the Blaft Anthology.
Adios.