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Modified from an earlier blogpost
http://epaper.dnaindia.com/story.aspx?id=49355&boxid=16796&ed_date=2013-7-27&ed_code=820009&ed_page=18

My grandfather ( Who can resist the lure of ancestor worship?)

Triveni, October 1955

A PEARL FROM TAMRAPARNI

By K. V. RAMACHANDRAN

Among our rivers, the Tamraparni is said to be the home of pearls, of a kind considered priceless, in ages when the pearl was greatly prized. Among the human pearls that emerged from its banks was Nammalvar in the remote past, and the late Sri V. Narayanan in the recent past. Nammalvar had to wait for centuries before one who had poetry in his soul and was thus uniquely endowed to interpret him, came along in the person of Narayanan. In the neighbourhood of Tamraparni, is the sacred mountain from which arose the father of Tamil, the sage Agastya. Narayanan resembled Agastya not only by his stature, but also by repeating Agastya’s feat of drinking up the twin oceans of Sanskrit and Tamil. Venkatanatha (Vedanta Desika) who hailed from the banks of the Vegavati, paid his homage to Nammalvar when he named him the Muni and his work the Dramilopanishad and ranked it higher than the Veda; and lest anyone should perversely dispute his opinion, well on to add that “when a puny cloud threatened a pompous downpour over Agastya, who had drunk the sea dry, the river Tamraparni broke into a pearly smile.”¹ Venkatanatha was one of the intrepid defenders of the ‘Divyaprabandha’ and he helped to give the Tamil language its place in our life and culture. But his approach was religious and philosophic. Narayanan, whose approach was artistic, discovered Nammalvar quite independently; and he made his own significant contribution to Tamil letters when he undertook to interpret the Tamil classics, for which his gifts and equipment so eminently fitted him. He loved Tamil and wooed her like a lover. But like the fabled Chakora that subsisted on moonbeams, and Parikshit who took no other food than the ambrosia of Saka’s words, Narayanan drew his nourishment from Valmiki and Nammalvar almost exclusively. One may say that he had dedicated himself to these so wholly, that he outgrew his taste for anything else.

The only son of his father, he married the only daughter of the late Justice P. R. Sundara Iyer, a recollection of which he has preserved in the wistful reverie ‘Ayyarval’s son-in-law’ after he had lost his wife and become ‘visarada’. The saintly lady passed away in 1936, and till then she had taken sole charge of the family and the domestic responsibilities, relieving Narayanan completely and leaving him free to his harem of books and dream-children. At the time, Narayanan was such a stranger in his own house and was so seldom seen, that his children addressed him as ‘Sir’ when he did appear. But when she passed away, he replaced her, playing the role of Tayumanavar (Matrubhuta) so wholly and tenderly that the children never missed the mother, and when they were a little older, he combined the role of father and mother like Siva Ardhanariswara. In the reverie referred to above, he relates how he handed over his marriage invitation to his teacher, who did not even remember his name and who was greatly surprised to learn that his humble pupil had been chosen as the son-in-law of a High Court Judge. One can imagine the young Narayanan, diminutive and demure, with felt cap on big head and a pair of goggly spectacles, chuckling to himself at the teacher’s discomfiture. It was a habit so characteristic of him; he would express the most devastating opinions in a grave and apologetic manner, laughing in his sleeves all the time.

He had already taken his M. A., and M. L., with distinction after a brilliant academic career. He practised law for some time rather perfunctorily. I remember him in his legal garb with watch and chain, turban and brief-bag, appearing in a literary case where a copyright was involved; but I do know Narayanan got far more deeply involved in the labyrinth of Kadambari. His heart belonged to literature and not law. When years later he joined the Tamil Lexicon, he got work that found an outlet for his knowledge of languages. Sri N. Raghunathan justly praises his accurate scholarship and appreciation of the nuances of meaning and overtones of suggestion, that found full play when Narayanan played the role of Dr. Johnson, for a while, at the Lexicon. The Tamil Lexicon was one of the sagas of our time and had a long and chequered history. But that portion of it with which Narayanan was connected, bears the stamp of his genius and learning.

I also remember his depredations of the Hindu office, annexing an enormous booty of miscellaneous books, which he would review with the patience and fortitude of a Job. He loved the dingy old Hindu building of which he had very pleasant memories; one of the reasons why he joined the Indian Express later was perhaps because it was located in that dear old building. But he did not admire the then new sky-scraper of the Hindu, which he considered lofty and American. In those days, I was one of those who considered, early rising immoral. Narayanan, an authority on the ethics and aesthetics of early rising–vide his discourses on Palliyezhuchi–and the sacred month of Marghazhi, was a confirmed early bird. Almost every day Narayanan would arrive on his bicycle and, with an agility worthy of a better cause, clear the stairs at one bound, accompanied by his war-cry ‘C-M’ (an abbreviation of my nickname–Caveman–because I always kept indoors) and be at my bedside, leaving my wife to scamper off as best she could–a heroic attempt on the part of Narayanan to set our crooked habits straight, though not a very successful one. The bicycle was his favourite vehicle and his daily routine (which was of course subject to variations) was to inject Prof. K. Swaminathan with his theory about the text of the Ramayana, because he was his neighbour and nearest to him; then invade Perungulam House at Elliot’s Road and spar with Sri Anantanarayanan, I. C. S., over his father-in-Law’s Ramayana theories and exchange compliments with M. Krishnan who was just winging for the stellar height where he now is; drop in at Prof. Kuppuswami Sastri’s for a sloka or two; hold up Sri N. Raghunathan for at least half an hour before he left for office; and to peep in at the ‘Asrama’ to clear his accounts of the funds of the Sanskrit Academy of which he was the Treasurer. The beach and the evening he reserved for Tamil and friends like Somasundara Desikar, Pundit Rajagopala Iyengar, who edited ‘Ahananooru’, and Sri Vayyapuri Pillai. In between he used to look up his relations, of whom there were quite a number, irrespective of their worldly success and importance, and attend to their wants, as in duty bound.

Besides the literary page of the Hindu, he was a prolific contributor to the ‘Everyman’s Review’, ‘Triveni’, ‘Journal of Oriental Research, ‘Vedantakesari’, ‘Bharatamani’, and ‘Silpasree’. He also gave some very valuable talks under the auspices of the Archaeological Society and the Sanskrit Academy. Prof. K. Swaminathan said that “about a dozen associations and two or three dozen journals exploited his goodness and learning”. But Narayanan never considered himself so exploited. Out of his innate goodness, he scattered the gems of his thoughts far and wide to whoever wanted them, and even to those who did not want them. If I may be permitted to say it, the late Prof. P. T. Srinivasa Iyengar, who was himself a very good scholar, was not above borrowing ideas from Narayanan. Narayanan was therefore a scholar sought out by other scholars–the scholars’ scholar, so to say. He gave cheerfully and he gave lavishly without any motive of gain or fame. Equally disinterested was his pursuit of knowledge. He threw himself heart and soul into the functions of the Sanskrit Academy, and was ebullient and beside himself with happiness when scholars of the stature of Pundit Raghava Iyengar, the Elder, were honoured. For Raghava Iyengar whose outlook was very similar to his own, and who was the one man who could understand his own work, he had genuine affection, which he has given expression to in an essay describing a visit to him. Once he sat up a whole night to prepare a Tamil version of ‘Swapna-Vasavadatta’ because the All India Radio wanted it urgently. It can never be said that Narayanan was a recluse who kept to himself; not only did he take considerable interest, but also participated with gusto in contemporary life. He was never idle, but was always reading or writing or discussing literature and art.

In the make-up of Narayanan was an excess of modesty (vreeda) which ripened and mellowed into a saintly humility as he grew older and which completely masked the prodigious range of his attainments. He had so much to say and said so little of it, that I gave him the nickname ‘Iceberg’ which was mostly submerged under water, the top alone being visible and a month before he passed away, in a tragic flash of illumination, he wrote to me that the ice was thawing and on its way to join the ocean. If ever there was a man without trace of vanity, it was Narayanan; he never talked about himself nor allowed others to talk about him. Even the little appreciation he did get appeared to delight him, as though he had partaken of a banquet. Rich in contentment and equipoise, he never seemed to regret the lack of recognition, and went about his work as cheerfully and nonchalantly as ever. He wrote just to disburden himself of some divine discontent and not to canvass for fame and name. He had a genius for friendship and a good assortment of talented friends. He took pleasure in reading poetry with friends; and some poems he was never tired of reading again and again. Needless to say that I learnt a good deal from his readings and conversation.

It was Sri Aurobindo Ghose who thought that the ‘Uttarakanda’ was a late addition and pleaded for its exclusion from the Ramayana, as also the other patent interpolations in the other ‘Kandas’. But it was Narayanan who studied the Ramayana in close detail and tabulated the various species of interpolations that the Poem invited in the course of ages from various agencies. Relying on the Alvar he would quote ‘Uruttezhhli vali Marbil Oru kanai Uruva otti’ and make out that in the Ramayana known to the ALvar, Vali rose against Rama and was quelled by a single arrow. From the beginning of the ‘Aranyakanda’, the theme, according to Narayanan, was the prowess and heroism of Rama which rose in a crescendo and reached its climax in the defeat and destruction of Vali. What a pity that before he could restore the pure gold of the quintessential Valmiki, Narayanan was snatched away! How invaluable would have been his masterpiece on the masterpiece of Valmiki, had he been spared to write it! His favourite passage was Sita’s message to Hanuman, in the course of which she breaks down in a hallucination and addresses Rama in the first person, as though she saw him bodily there. When Narayanan read it, his voice would falter and choke, and tears flow down his cheeks.

            In a moving narrative Narayanan has recounted how his deeply religious father and mother came under the spell of Sarada Devi, wife of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, whom they actually entertained in their house and from whom they took lessons in spiritual discipline. Later Narayanan made a pilgrimage to the village where the lady was, near Calcutta, along with his mother; and there he was fascinated by an image of Rama. The saintly lady, reading his unuttered thoughts, bathed him in the nectar of her eyes and initiated him into the worship of Rama. The incident throws light on Narayanan’s subsequent outlook and development. He was an intimate devotee of Sree Rama; and it was his faith that sustained him in his hour of trial when he lost his wife, and forged a new link between him and the Ramayana. In an early essay, he speaks of the sacred ladies of his harem. As one who understood him, may I take the liberty of unveiling the principal Goddess there–his Bhakti. The other Goddess who was part of him–Modesty–I have already uncovered. In another mood he described “the solitude of star-lit nights on seashore with the billows sweeping over the sand, while the immensity beyond glowed in the phosphorescent curl of the wave where he met infinity face to face”. So this shy young dreamer saw the Pilot face to face even before he had crossed the bar! How tellingly he expresses himself and his exaltation! Delicious are some of his early essays, revelling in the impish perversities of paradox caught from Chesterton, as in his plea for the cult of unintelligibility and his defence of failure, and the one on the folly of wisdom. In the last, he tilts against Tagore whom he had seen at ‘Santiniketan’, Mylapore, decked out all in velvet. In another piece he rewrote the map of the world, replacing the geographical features with the intellectua1 and spiritual creations of the respective regions. One of the most charming was his dissertation on ‘the lamp’ in the course of which he compared the light-house to the “one-eyed Cyclops rolling his big eye round the broad sea at his feet”. All this was excellent writing,–‘angelic’ as Sri K. Chandrasekharan calls it, from a young man just out of college. If Narayanan had stuck to English, he might have achieved distinction as a master of the personal essay. But the lure and challenge of Tamil and Sanskrit proved irresistible and he turned his back on English to seek his fulfillment elsewhere. Such a step was in harmony with our own outlook and tradition, which reckon achievement as something impersonal and work as higher than the man. But it did deprive him of his share of contemporary appreciation to an extent.

Narayanan had the capacity to do easily what others found it difficult, and attempt things that no one had attempted before. Like Arjuna he was ambidextrous and could formulate with one hand a new approach to the problems of Federation and throw off a formidable thesis on Ramanuja’s indebtedness to ‘Tiruvoymozhi’ with the other. He could hold forth on the doctrinal differences between Kumarilabhatta and Prabhakara Misra and pile Ossa on Pelion to scale the Upanishads. Among his papers are excellent studies of the early Alvars and expositions of the various facets of the Ramayana and the moods of Subrahmanya Bharati. Essentially a thinker, his approach was fresh and original always.

Take his thesis on ‘Chola Polity’, of unique value to those who wish to read and understand history aright. He begins by criticising the method of reconstructing history from the records of foreign travellers and cross-sections of dynastic lists and lexicons, without taking account of the basic concept and philosophy of life of the people. The Solar Race was the ideal of the Cholas; if Bhagiratha brought down Ganga from heaven, so did Kavera bring down Kaveri; the Cholas were ‘Adityas and Vijayalayas and resembled Vishnu; likewise did the eyes of the Chola Kochenganan tinged red with grace resemble Vishnu’s; if Dasaratha went to help Indra, so did the Chola Muchukunda; Raja raja (a title of Kubera) not only resembled Kubera by his boundless riches, but also by his devotion to Siva; Karikala bore the name of Siva who tore asunder the elephant and did not get his legs burnt to a cinder in an attempt at firewalking. The line in the Chola inscription ‘Kanthalurchchalai kalamaruttaruli’ is responsible for a number of amusing deductions on the part of the professional historians. ‘Kalam’, according to the Tamil dictionary, means a boat or ship or eating vessel; and ‘chalai’ is a road or Oottupurai. One school of historians claim that the Chola smashed a fleet of ships in the harbour of Kandalurchali; the other claims that the Chola broke all the eating vessels in the Oottupurai. This is history indeed with a vengeance! If Mohamed Ghazni smashed images, the noble Raja Raja smashed pots and pans in a hospitable eating house! Narayanan said that the Chola, like Vishnu, got rid of the pest of wicked men (khala) and established Dharma in that region, especially because in the first two lines ‘Thirrumagal polap perunilach chelviyum thanakkeyurimai poondamai Manakkola’ the Chola is said to have made the wide earth, along with Lakshmi, his very own like Vishnu. The word ‘aruli’ denotes an act of grace and the historians, unaware of the poetic approach of the king to his duties, not only miss the significance of the reference, but misread and distort it. What a vista of happy circumstances does the title ‘Sungamthavirthapiran’ of Rajendra, evoke! But it has meant nothing to the historians, because they are not students of literature and fail to read the overtones of the poetic title. Besides, the Vaishnava commentaries of the middle ages represent untapped sources for reconstructing social history, which no historian seems to have utilised. Narayanan concludes, “Every brick in the edifice of history must be truth-moulded and put in proper place with utmost care, or the edifice will tumble down. This is specially so in Chola history, as Chola Polity was suffused with poetry and philosophy which moulded the life of the people of that great epoch.” His incursion into historical research was not unlike the advent of the bull in a China shop. But what a valuable lesson he taught when he said that history, no less than literature, needs men of creative imagination and taste! How one wishes that the research scholars benefit by his suggestion and realign their enquiry from the new angle, however unsweet the taste of his rod.

His note on ‘Tamil Civilisation’ in ‘Triveni’ was a closely reasoned argument. Beginning with a reference to the late R. Swaminatha Iyer’s thesis that the peculiarities of Tamil grammatical form and construction were features common to most prakrits, and that the early Tamil vocabulary bears close affinity to Vedic vocabulary and that of the early prakrits of the Punjab, Narayanan passes on to explain the co-existence of Vedic and Agamic forms of worship in the same community; and after examining certain crucial words, concludes that the evidence only reinforces an identity of culture throughout India–a conclusion on which the new State of India and her policy are based.

His interpretation of the word ‘Sanga’ as the variant of ‘Sanghata’ i. e. Anthology, and his suggestion that many of the poems” of ‘Purananooru’ represented the speeches of characters from old Tamil dramas playing the parts of poets and kings, started a new era in the understanding of Tamil poetry and chronology, and were as sensational in their own way as Prof. Dubreuil’s discoveries in Pallava history. According to him the Sangam Anthologies represented a literary dialect like Sanskrit, that found favour at Royal Courts and was confined to a specific literary group that adhered to a specific set of literary conventions; it was therefore but a segment of the Tamil literature. There must have been and were other groups earlier and later who did not conform to the conventions, or chose themes with which the conventions did not fit in, or chose a different diction altogether. Indeed there was more than one school of literary conventions that flourished side by side when Tamil was a creative language. Narayanan therefore thought that an intensive study of Tamil literature as a whole was more immediately needed than deductions based on a segment of it. I am yet to find a scholar who studied Tamil as Narayanan did, or summed up his findings as neatly and succinctly. Whether it was history or literature, his standard of truth in investigation was very high. Unfortunately for him, the world of Tamil was more bleak and lonely than history; and where he expected a multitude of voices for and against him, he was disconcerted by listening to just one voice and that was his own.

Besides, he had an original explanation for the female icon interposed between Krishna and Balarama in the Puri temple, and he derived Narasimha from the sculptured pillar. His essay on the interplay of arts gives an insight into the inwardness of his knowledge of art. He was the first and only one to interpret the significance of the dances described in ‘Silappadikaram’.

When I started ‘Silpasree’ in 1937 Sri Y. Mahalinga Sastry hoped that even as ‘Sree’ (Lakshmi) chose Narayanan in the primeval Swayamvara, ‘Silpasree’ would choose Narayanan. So she did. During the two years of its existence, it was Narayana who sustained and kept the journal going. He wrote on how to rejuvenate Tamil and prescribed some ‘kayakalpa’ treatment for it. Out of the many fine things he wrote, I would single out the Playlet ‘Natakavataram’ portraying the origin of the drama under the guidance of Bharatamuni, in which Krishna plays the part of Rama, and Rukmini and Satyabhama contend for the part of Sita, as something entirely original.

Towards the end of his career he was attracted by the hymn literature in Sanskrit of which he gave some very readable translations.

I hope I have given an idea of the work Narayanan was doing which called for talent and capacity of a very special kind. It is one thing to have merit and quite another to get it recognised. The latter demands faculties of an entirely different order. No wonder that Narayanan found himself quite alone in his pursuits. He was indeed the stone rejected by the builder, though to us, his friends, it seemed that his place was as the headstone of the temple. If, according to Ibsen, the strongest man was he who was most alone, Narayanan may be said to have achieved that ideal, closely followed as he is in his spiritual isolation by others, among whom I include myself. Did not Cassandra stand most alone, though she spoke nothing but the truth?

Sri N. Raghunathan has said that ink was in Narayanan’s blood; I am Sure that at least some of that ink was of the indelible kind–the kind that survives, unlike that which vanishes. Sri Raghunathan hit him off when he said that literature was his passion and that, once started, his non-stop discourses delighted more prosaic souls by the serenity with which he ignored the importunities of the clock! And who does not share his regret that Narayanan is not here to waste one’s time by his genial buttonholing way? The late K. S. Venkataramani wrote that “in the last five years Narayanan was ripening so perfectly that every hour I spent with him was a great fertiliser to me. In any other society he would have been gratefully used for a higher purpose and honoured and recognised as a dynamic hermit, a Karma Yogi saturated in the culture and traditions of our life”.

We all remember the story of how music was buried in the time of Aurangzeb and how Aurangzeb asked the musicians to bury her deeper. Some ages happen to be uncongenial and unpropitious for certain causes and ideals. The time-spirit had undoubtedly its share in denying collaboration to people like Narayanan. If a complacent and self-sufficient society that had no use for the thinker and dreamer, notwithstanding pious professions to the contrary, kept aloof, no wonder that though Narayanan had plenty to give and gave freely, he did not give of his best. Clearly the society did not deserve it. The infant mortality of journals like ‘Everyman’s Review’ and ‘Silpasree’ and the lifelong martyrdom of ‘Triveni’ are eloquent of a malady for which no treatment has yet been devised. The romance of archaeology ought to tempt people, but at the Society where Narayanan lectured, the audience consisted of about seven people, of whom two must have been the peons waiting in impatience for the speaker to cease, so that they may close the doors the sooner. The following epitaph by Emily Dickinson seems to have a topical appropriateness for the circumstances of our own time and place:

“I died for Beauty, but was scarce

Adjusted in the tomb

When one who died for Truth was lain

In an adjoining room.

“He questioned softly why I failed

‘For Beauty,’ I replied.

‘And I for Truth; the two are one,

We brethren are,’ he said.

“And so as kinsmen met anight

We talked between the rooms

Until the moss had reached our lips

And covered up our names.”

To us his friends, however precious the pearl-like hours spent with him, the recollection of them is but a poor substitute for the real pearl of peerless sheen–the pearl from Tamraparni–irretrievably lost six years ago.

“Oh for the touch of a vanished hand

And the sound of a voice that is still!”

¹ That is to say, the river with its myriad pearls seemed to laugh at those who, with a little knowledge of Sanskrit, looked down upon Tamil.

The story of the Press in Tamil Nadu

(A new series)

by V Ramnarayan

Probably born in Calcutta in the 1780s, Indian newspaper publishing spread to Madras and Bombay soon, within a decade or so. By 1800 several dozen English newspapers were being published, catering mainly to the British. The Armenian monthly, Azdarar, published in Madras in 1794, making Madras the birthplace of Armenian journalism, was the first non-English journal.

Language journalism probably had its origins in 1818, with Digdarsana, a bilingual English/ Bengali newspaper published by the Serampore Baptist Mission. The Bombay Samachar first came out in 1922 in Gujarati and English. It is published today as Mumbai Samachar, the oldest continuously published paper in India and one of the oldest in the world.

Issues from 1829 of the Kulasa-i-akhbar-i-lateef, handwritten in Persian and read daily to Emperor Akbar Shah II  can be seen in the Red Fort Museum in Delhi.

Eventually papers came to be published in all the languages of the subcontinent as well as Dutch, French and Portuguese.

Journalism in Madras

The Government Gazette was established in Madras 1831. The St George Gazette, whose first issue appeared in 1832, the various military orders, the Queen’s orders and other such official publications were printed by The Madras Asylum Press, originally meant for the children of ex-soldiers and officers  to learn printing as a craft.

ENGLISH JOURNALISM

Of all the newspapers published in Tamil Nadu, The Hindu (1878) is surpassed in circulation only by the Tamil newspapers Dinakaran and Dina Thanthi. It is one of three English language dailies from Chennai, the Tamil Nadu capital. The New Indian Express and the Deccan Chronicle are the other two.

As KP Viswanatha Iyer, Assistant Editor, The Hindu, writing in the Madras Tercentenary Commemoration Volume, 1939, says, newspapers in the city “had their origin in the needs of the small but growing European Colony of the Presidency.” In “the first century of the city’s life, it had no newspapers,” yet to be born even in England.

The earliest newspapers of Madras were The Government Gazette, the Madras Gazette and the Madras Courier, all weeklies. They covered mainly news of the social life of the community. They also carried extracts from European newspapers, especially reports of parliamentary proceedings. The news was often hopelessly out of date, thanks to the erratic steamer service between Europe and India. The months between October and December were particularly slack periods.

Modern journalism of Madras was a byproduct of politics, political newspapers coming to be established towards the mid-nineteenth century, with The Spectator (1836), The Madras Times (1860) and The Madras Mail (1867) all established with a view to promoting European interests in the presidency. The Madras Times, which,  had a stormy existence before it was absorbed by The Mail, represented the European trader, the planter and the small merchant. The Madras Mail was aristocratic, supported by Europeans in the services and captains of commerce. It was modelled on the serious newspapers of England, ‘and under the Lawsons and Mr. Henry Beauchamp, reflected the mind of the European intellectual.’

The Madras Courier, established on 12 October 1785 and edited by Richard Johnson, was the first newspaper from Madras, while Maasa Dina Sarithai (1812), published by Gnanaprakasam, was the first Tamil magazine to be published in Madras, and perhaps the first periodical to be brought out in any Indian language, even before the Bengal Gazette (1816) published in English by Gangadhar Bhattacharjee, and the bilingual Dik Darshan (1818) in English and Bengali.

William Urquhart, the founder of The Madras Courier started it as an advertising half sheet in large types, known as the Commercial Circulator, in Stringer Street. Its young editor C H Clay, a clerk to the Chief Justice and Court Sealer, made it famous.

The first competition to the Courier came in 1793, in the form of the short-lived new publication, the Hircarrah, edited by a former Courier editor, Hugh Boyd. The Government Gazette—which from 1800 onwards was printed at the first Government Press—and the Madras Gazette (both 1795) were followed in 1836 by The Spectator—first published by D Ouchterlony and later by C Sooboo Moodely and
C M Pereira from the Spectator Press.

Started as a weekly, The Spectator became a daily in 1850, only to be taken over by the Madras Times (1835), the first paper from Madras to establish a strong journalistic tradition. The Madras Times, located in Broadway, benefited substantially from the cable link with England established in the year of its launch. A father and son pair called Gantz took over the paper in 1859. The paper went back to its 1835 beginnings as a biweekly, but appears to have had a chequered career till it began thriving under Charles Lawson and Henry Cornish in the 1860s. When they quit after a proprietor-editor dispute, the Madras Mail was born. Late in the 19^th century the Times grew in power under the editorship of George Romilly. 

(TO BE CONTINUED)

My column in DNA

http://epaper.dnaindia.com/story.aspx?id=44828&boxid=16572&ed_date=2013-5-04&ed_code=820009&ed_page=10

A 21st century essayist

Foreword to KN Rao's 'A Mosaic of Human Thought'

I first came across Prof. K N Rao’s writing in a column he wrote for the city portal Chennai Online on the trees of Madras. Little did I know at the time that I would one day be involved in an editorial capacity in publishing a book on the subject by the professor. Not only is he an expert on trees, in Chennai and elsewhere, and botany at large, but also the archetypal polymath we do not come across nowadays. They don’t make them like that anymore!

During the course of that interaction, I came to develop a comfortably warm relationship with Prof. Rao, a friendship between two people interested in literature and the arts. He is more than twenty years my senior, but more energetic than many of my age. I was at the time responsible for Indian Writing, an imprint of New Horizon Media, which was then publishing Indian, notably Tamil, literature in translation into English. He was a great supporter of our initiative and bought every title we brought out. Not only did he read all of them, he also commended us for the great trouble we took to maintain quality. He was probably more hurt and disappointed than we were when some of our efforts did not measure up to our own standard. He took the liberty of scolding us when he thought poorly of our choice of works to translate.

Over the last few years, I have come to know the many facets of Mr Rao’s creativity. He has written several short stories in Telugu, which I have not read as I do not know the language, but his writings in English have been delightfully varied. William Shakespeare is a particular favourite of his, as we can gather from a number of essays included in this volume. In a chapter entitled Wit and Wisdom of Shakespeare, Prof. Rao refers to the chair in which he lounged and spent the “happiest hours of my otherwise drab and long life.”  “And thank God, I chose to read the bard without the help of Verity, Arden and such others,” he continues, a tribute to not only his excellent taste in literature but also his superior intellect. “The Shakespeare bug bit me in the early fifties of the last century. Play after play, I devoured, refusing to seek outside help.” 

Prof. Rao is no ordinary devourer, though. He draws parallels between literature and life, literature and philosophy, literature and nature, so on and so forth. For instance, quoting Nerissa from Merchant of Venice (The ancient saying is no hersy/ Hanging and wiving goes by destiny), he finds resonances with the Hindu doctrine of Karma.

Or take the pathetic plea of the much-maligned merchant of Venice, “I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions…If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If we poison us, do we not die?” Rao says, “This has been the plight of Dalits in our own land, for centuries. Now after millennia, they speak the language of Shylock.” They “eke out their livelihood by manual scavenging, cleaning the cesspools, going down into the drains braving poisonous gas…”  

While on his Shakespearean journey, Prof. Rao is in his element when he compares “the noblest Roman of them all”, Brutus with the politician of today, of whom he says: “Do such men have a chance of succeeding? More often than not, men with ideas of cleansing politics are likely to meet the fate of Brutus. This Brutus had had the satisfaction of dying for his cause. It is more likely a modern day Brutus will end up as a Cassius.”

Prof. Rao’s explorations of Shakespeare lead him to an analysis of the motivations and psychology of three murderers from Othello, Macbeth and Hamlet.  “Othello had the makings of a murderer in him: Iago was merely the stage director for the action,” he observes. Macbeth “was at first a murderer by instigation, through suggestion next and finally a callous, cruel and wanton bloodbather.” “Hamlet’s murders were the fruition of the workings of a highly cultivated mind through its conscious and subconscious moorings,” he says, drawing clear distinctions between the three protagonists

While on the subject of Shakespeare, Prof. Rao is really in his element when he carries out “a brief botanical survey of Shakespeare.” He takes us on a tour-de-force of the many-splendoured vegetation that abounds in the Bard’s plays, starting from acorn cups and burr to the willow and yew trees of Much Ado about Nothing, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and Titus and Andronicus.”

The essay, “Harbingers of Indian awakening” provides proof if proof is needed of Prof. Rao’s expansive range of interests that cover far greater ground than nature or literature. A man of science, one who swears by science, Rao does not fail to acknowledge the role played by two outstanding spiritual gurus in Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Swami Vivekananda. He says, “All leaders from Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Mahatma Gandhi and Subhash Chandra Bose and Rajaji downwards agree that the political struggle they launched had gained substance, thanks to this great work of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. Their memory will forever be enshrined in the Indian consciousness.”

In ‘Three great men of Athens”, Prof. Rao writes with awe about Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Unsurprisingly he says no other city has nurtured such great sons through the millennia. Socrates was so fond of truth that he questioned the wisdom of the wise.  He resisted unjust commands at the risk of his life. “One might say that Socrates was the father of definitions. But it required great courage to pursue his path.”

In another chapter, Rao tries to grapple with the problem of what is or is not truth. He calls it the most elusive element of things in human experience. It is elusive because it stems from the perception of an event, implying understanding of an observation. “Obviously, what appears as truth to one may appear quite differently to another.” He goes on to claim that the truth of science is not the truth of socio-ethical colour. “Rather, it is a bundle of facts, every one of which is incontrovertibly demonstrated as true by observation and experiment.”            Yet, Rao refuses to dismiss the truth as experienced by Ramakrishna and Vivekananda.

Rao, the compassionate human being and Rao the man of science seem to coexist without much conflict. In the chapter “On Death”, Prof. Rao is able to speak of the devastating personal tragedy of his son’s death in an accident as well as the continuity of creation, of species, including the human race. If after that terrible loss, he could console his wife by narrating a story of Buddha to demonstrate the inescapable fact of death, he could also marvel at the “wonderful mix of mortality and immortality” that began in a group of green algae called Volvocales.”

Death need not be bemoaned, he goes on to conclude. “It is a mechanism which made possible senescence and consequently organs with a lesser degree of efficiency of vegetative functioning die out. The mortal coils of the individual are shed so that the immortality of the species is ensured.” And the last sentence of the book says it all. “”. Whichever way one looks at the question, the thought of God has to reign our minds: maybe not a personal God, but a principle which is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent.”

I often meet Prof. Rao at events connected with books or the performing arts. I have invariably been struck by his youthful joie-de-vivre and positive outlook. And though he often has a good laugh at his own frailty and mortality, maybe because he does so, he fills me with inspiration and hope for the morrow. That he has brought out this volume at such an advanced stage of his life is proof of his immortal spirit.

V RAMNARAYAN

10 July 2009

Chennai

‘What do they know of music?

(First published in SAMAHIT, the Natya Kala Conference souvenir, 2012)

The day after Priya Govind and Akhila Ramnarayan asked me to write on cricket and music—unfortunately not as separate topics, and therefore complicating my life no end—came a telephone call from Carnatic vocalist Unnikrishnan, a call that straightaway lightened my burden considerably. As many of you know, Unni is a good sportsman who continues to play recreational tennis but also someone whose cricket is of a very decent standard. His phone call had nothing to do with either cricket or music, but my thoughts immediately went back to the time some years ago when our paths in these two fields intersected. Unni and I played some cricket and less tennis together. He is of course much younger than I, so much younger that I have also played cricket with his father Radhakrishnan, who, besides being a qualified Ayurvedic physician, was a pretty useful batsman in the 1950s and 60s, even into the seventies.

To cut a long story short, Unni’s quite promising cricket career started when mine was already over, though I continued to play from memory, to enjoy the perverse pleasure of competing with men half my age. By the time we first played against each other, I for Alwarpet CC and he for Madras CC, I had heard him on the concert platform, starting with a recital at the wedding reception of a fellow cricketer. I still remember the pride with which Radha informed me that the singer of the evening was his son, and the resemblance I noticed in the early Unni voice to that of Yesudas. Later, by a strange quirk of fate, I was invited to first play for and later captain the Parry’s Recreation Club when well into my 40s, though I had nothing to do with the Parry group. Unni, a business management graduate, was by then a management trainee in the company, and a leading member of the cricket team. During one of our matches, I told Unni how much I enjoyed listening to his first film song (a fairly straightforward rendering of Venkata Kavi’s Alai payude in a Malayalam film). Unni’s response was quietly modest: “I’ve sung some 50 film songs already, Ram.”

My most memorable Unnikrishnan experience was to follow in about a year’s time after this episode. I had organized a chamber concert of his at home (the second or third such occasion) one Sunday, when we cam e to know that the programme was clashing with a league game for Parry. As captain, I could not relieve Unni from the match, nor did he, as a competitive sportsman, want any such privilege. I toyed with the idea of postponing the concert, but too many people had already accepted our invitation with great anticipation, as Unni was at the very peak of his popularity. Domestic discord was a serious possibility even a probability if I did anything so foolish as to call off the performance. To complicate matters more, it turned out Unni had a wedding concert at Nagercoil the previous night.

The match was at distant Pallavaram, at the English Electric ground, which proved to be a small mercy, as Unni was able to get off the district bus (after travelling all night) very near the ground. I lost the toss, and the good soldier he was, Unni fielded in the hot sun with the rest of the team. He was dependable no. 3 batsman, perhaps our highest run-getter that year, but I asked him to open the innings—a role to which he was not a complete stranger—so that he could go home early and rest after his batting. Unfortunately, Unni was dismissed for zero or thereabouts, but simply refused to go home, waiting for us to complete the match in the evening. We happened to win the match, so we all went home in a happy frame of mind, but poor Unni had to go all the way to his Royapettah home, shower, change and come to my Kottivakkam home on the East Coast Road. We started the concert half an hour late, but it was a superb performance by Mr. Dependable.

Unni was not quite the first professional classical musician to have played competitive cricket I personally knew. That honour went to the late Ravi Kichlu of the Hindustani vocal duo the Kichlu Brothers. Ravi often entertained me with snatches of alap standing next to me in the slips on the maidan of Calcutta. We were both playing for Rajasthan Club in the 1969-70 league season. But I almost forgot wicket keeper Sivakumar my Mylapore Recreation Club teammate, mridanga vidwan, son of DK Pattammal and father of Nithyashree Mahadevan.

At the national level, I knew or knew of a few musically inclined cricketers. The great Vijay Manjrekar was a good singer and so is his son Sanjay. Padmakar Shivalkar was another Bombay player who gave vocal performances on stage. Some of us have heard Bapu Nadkarni do a more than passable imitation of KL Saigal. The late ML Jaisimha, under whose captaincy I played for Hyderabad in the Ranji Trophy, had an impressive voice with which he belted out popular songs. He brought the roof down at a restaurant at Bangkok back in 1978 when the house orchestra handed him the microphone and he gave a few lusty samples of his Frank Sinatra repertoire and Louis Armstrong’s When the Saints Go Marching in.

Also seated at the same table was an accomplished vocalist in Shanti Hiranand, disciple and biographer of Begum Akhtar and sister-in-law of former India captain GS Ramchand. Mr & Mrs Ramchand were the gracious hosts that evening and Jaisimha, Murtuza Ali Baig and I the lucky guests during a Hyderabad Blues cricket tour (Thailand has some cricket and on our way back from Australia, we played a game at The Royal Bangkok Sports Club). We even got Ms Hiranand to sing a song for us.

Jai was the life and soul of the party during cocktails after my brother V Sivaramakrishnan’s benefit match, which was between two teams of star-studded veteran India players of the past. He completely replaced the band of the evening at the Connemara that night. My own personal highlight was to be part of an improbable trio of MLJ, Sunil Gavaskar and I. Only cacophony resulted, but nobody in the audience seemed to mind.

Jaisimha’s friend and teammate MAK ‘Tiger’ Pataudi, whose last season for Hyderabad in the Ranji Trophy was my first, had a keen ear for music, and could play the tabla, according to some of his close associates. I had this habit of whistling constantly in the dressing room, and Tiger caught me whistling a song from the film Jahan Ara—which had some exquisite music by Madan Mohan—and gave a stentorian interpretation of Phir wohi shaam in sharp contrast to Talat Mahmood’s dulcet tones. Another verse he was fond of bellowing in a voice that threatened to shatter the windows went Gulshan, gulshan, shola-e-gul ki. I was intrigued and curious to know the rest of the song, but I had to wait for quite sometime before I solved the mystery. It turned out, of course, to be the opening line of a gentle, romantic Mehdi Hassan ghazal, the first I was to hear from that master of the genre.

The ubiquitous two-in-one dominated the recreational needs of the cricketers of the 1970s, and thanks to the great leg-spinner BS Chandrasekhar, the Hindi film songs of Mukesh were the most popular choice of a whole generation of cricketers. Chandra must have been all of 18 or 19 when he first heard a Mukesh song wafting in out of transistor radios in the crowd during a match. ‘Tu kahe agar’ I believe was the song to cast a spell on him, and he actually mistook Mukesh’s voice for KL Saigal’s. That Chandra became a diehard fan and later a close friend of Mukesh is part of the cricket lore of the period.

If the reader is left wondering why I chose this topic or what my credentials for the task of writing on it are, let me explain. I was an active, sometimes semi-professional cricketer for some 30 years, and have been writing on music and editing a magazine on performing arts during the last decade or so. People sometimes ask me to explain how a cricketer like me took to writing on the arts, and I sometimes tell them that I was dropped on my head as a child—which sometimes causes startled, incredulous responses. The real answer is that if you were born in the Madras of the 1940s in a middle-class brahmin family (even if you are a bad brahmin like me), chances are that you grew up in the midst of much music and much cricket. This is probably still true of most households that come from similar backgrounds. Add to that a love of language and you can end up writing on both music and cricket, as I did after failing at several other vocations!

There have been a few—though all too few—great writers through history whose gaze focused on these two great arts and sciences. You may raise an eyebrow or two at my inclusion of cricket in the category of art and science, but you would then be indirectly doing that to possibly the first writer to excel at both—Sir Neville Cardus, who described the batting of Sir Garfield Sobers thus: His immense power is lightened by a rhythm which has in it as little obvious propulsion as a movement of music by Mozart.” Yehudi Menuhin once said, Cardus “reminds us that there is an understanding of the heart as well of the mind… in Neville Cardus, the artist has an ally”.

According to writer, broadcaster and biographer Robin Daniels, Cardus believed in the power of great art to change lives from within. “Genius is a miracle to be revered whether in fashion or not,” Cardus said, and he did revere genius in cricket as well as music. Daniels also said that Cardus fought the good fight for Gustav Mahler when the composer was largely unknown. He rated him as a great critic “because he combines deep feeling and imagination with an eye that saw symbolically”.

Cardus was knowns to exaggerate, even accused of writing on matches and concerts he did not attend, but he brought literature to cricket writing as much as to music criticism. “To go to a cricket match for nothing but cricket is as though a man were to go into an inn for nothing but drink,” he said

He described CB Fry, the great English all rounder, as “a national gallery and a theatre and a forum”. Of the inimitable KS Ranjitsinhji, the Jam Saheb of Nawanagar, he said “he never played a Christian stroke in his life”, in praise of his delightfully unorthodox ways.

One of the most remarkable personalities of English cricket was the radio commentator John Arlott, the man responsible for Cape Coloured cricketer Basil D’Oliveira’s entry into English cricket and eventual ascent to world fame. Arlott had an unconvetional voice for BBC, "a sound like Uncle Tom Cobleigh reading Neville Cardus to faraway natives", according to Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, his drinking buddy.

Arlott was a most unusual all rounder whose career included stints as a policeman, in a mental hospital, as a wine-taster, poet and hymnist, and above all a humanist of the best kind. He was the epitome of the ultimate cricket person whose breadth of vision extended far beyond the boundary.

In more recent times, John Inverarity, former Test cricketer and chairman of selectors for Australia has such impeccable academic and artistic credentials that the John Inverarity Music and Drama Centre in the city of Perth has been named after him in honour of his sterling contributions. (A side story is that he was once recalled after being bowled by Greg Chappell, because the umpire realised the ball had hit a sparrow on its way to the batsman. Unfortunately the sparrow, did not live to watch the rest of the match).

Tony Lewis, the last cricketer to captain England on his Test debut, and an ace rugby player, was also an accomplished violinist (he was once a member of the Welsh Youth Orchestra). He later distinguished himself as a man of letters and a broadcaster who came to be known as ‘the face of BBC’.

Did not CLR James, the West Indian author of Beyond a Boundary say, “What do they know of cricket, who only cricket know?”s

And indeed may we ask, ‘What do they know of music, who only music know?”

When raags become ragas

First published in The Hindu

Charukeshi, Kirvani, Hansdhwani… (note the spellings). We heard them all this season or in the months leading up to it. So did we listen to Sohni, (Hindustani) Todi, Hindol, Durga, even Shudh Sohni. In case you are wondering if a constellation of Hindustani musicians crashlanded in Chennai, we heard all these ragas in Carnatic music concerts. Some of these north Indian avatars of ragas have been masquerading as Carnatic ragas in cutcheris of recent vintage—as Charukesi, Keeravani, Hamsadhwani, Hamsanandi, Suddhasaveri, Vasanta and so on. Not to mention Kafi, Patdeep, Behag, Bairagi, Brindavani Sarang, Madhmat Sarang and Shudh Sarang, besides the notoriously popular Ahir Bhairav, Kedar, Madhuvanti and Bhairavi, with or without Carnatic monikers.

The crowning glory was achieved by Yaman, that staple offering of Hindustani musicians visiting Chennai, when one southern star made it the piece-de-resistance of an epic journey of winding, gliding twists and turns through three octaves.  Kalyani was however the raga announced.

Jugalbandis and fusion concerts may be popular among a section of our audiences, but others—no doubt hidebound in their views—find that these concerts are ill rehearsed, and offer no new music. New music can only emerge from the collaboration of masters of their genres who have also worked hard at learning another, these critics say. Their usual tired joke is that fusion concerts produce more confusion than fusion. The idea of presenting Hindustani ragas in Carnatic concerts is therefore perhaps an attempt to avoid the fusion tag, yet appeal to a youthful audience.

I do not refer to the bhajans, thumris or abhangs that dot the tukkada section of the concert, but main or “sub-main” ragas being presented in typically Hindustani style, deficient in, even shorn of, the gamakas and azhuttam so typical of their orthodox delineation. 

Vowels and consonants of undoubtedly north Indian origin sometimes replace the standard tadarina, cooing or exploding forth from the vocal chords of our futuristic tyros accoutred in flashy kurtas and splendid saris with blazing earware to match. Some even adopt the typical Hindustani opening sally in deep mandra sthayi tones, as well as ultra fast taans during raga alapana.

On their way out are stern countenances or unseemly gesticulations on stage, demonstrating the next aspect of the makeover cutcheris seem to be undergoing. In their place are bright smiles to ostentatiously demonstrate the extent of enjoyment of one another’s music on stage, and carefully choreographed mudras and arm-stretches to pinpoint the note struck or emotion emoted—just in case you missed it in the listening. Beatific smiles and bheshes, sabhashes and bale-s (a friend swears he actually heard the exclamation ‘kya baat hai!’ on the stage in a recent concert) in praise are not just reserved for accompanists but also bestowed on your singing or instrumental partner, sometimes in mid-phrase or sangati. This can create new sounds for the rasika to mull over, on top of the confusion created by mridangam, ghatam/ khanjira and morsing. 

The whole effect is one of bonhomie, a convivial jam session among friends, calculated to win applause every three minutes, standing ovations after every two kritis and a thunderous mega-ovation at the end of the concert. Fortunately, the habit among some rock musicians and fusion bands of demanding applause from the audience (“Don’t be shy, give us a big hand!”) has so far not caught on in Carnatic music.

One welcome development has been the general reluctance to burst into applause when the vocalist touches a dramatic high note. (I remember a Hindustani pair of vocalists a few years ago pleading with listeners to defer applause to the end of an item, as during a piece it interfered with their manodharma). Recently a Carnatic vocalist so interrupted signalled a silent appeal to stop, followed by a eyes-closed namaste to his listeners. They immediately acceded to his request, even sportingly laughing at themselves. Polite courtesy seems to work better than a show of annoyance. 

Returning to the original theme, Chennai audiences have this year also had to suffer Hindustani musicians trying their hand at Carnatic compositions. The popular cry as a result has been “Give us Hindustani ragas in Carnatic concerts any day!”