The autobiography of a transgender
Living Smile Vidya
Translated by V Ramnarayan
Price Rs. 100
Buy at www.nhm.in
Chapter 1
Nirvanam
I love the window seat in trains. Stretching my legs, I enjoyed the landscape, the trees and plants, the houses, as they flashed past me outside the window. It was a pleasure much like the first lazy cup of coffee on a holiday.‘Where are you headed?’ The unexpected question woke me from my reverie. I looked up. It was a rozwala, a regular commuter on that train. One look at my ordinary clothes and he must have decided that I did not belong in the sleeper compartment, that I was perhaps a ticketless traveller. You wore the most basic clothes on your way to the operation we call nirvanam. The same applied to jewellery. That’s why I had on the oldest sari I had, a white one with blue flowers on it. My tiny nose stud was all the gold I wore. I must hand it over to Sugandhi Ayah after the operation tomorrow.
‘Baithoon idhar?’
The rozwala was asking if he could sit down beside me. I was pretty sure he thought I didn’t have a ticket. Still, his manner had been polite, so I made room for him by shifting my legs. I went back to looking out of the window.My train reservation from Pune to Cuddapah had been done at the Lonavala station the very day after Nani agreed to send me for my nirvanam. That day, I didn’t go to work—to do my dhandha of begging. The whole thing was surprisingly different from the norm— usually no Nani planned a nirvanam a month in advance, down to the last detail. And no Tirunangai or transgender made advance train reservations to go for the operation.“You have to be discreet in such matters, observe great secrecy.” Sugandhi Ayah was in a plaintive mood, complaining non-stop. “Girls nowadays don’t listen to their elders; they do exactly as they please.” She was constantly comparing and contrasting transgenders of past and present, adding to the pathos by relating some personal experience from her own past.
Sugandhi was the matron for hundreds of doctors. Of massive physique, she wore her salt and pepper hair in a tight bun. The two-rupee-coin sized kumkum bindi on her broad forehead instilled awe in onlookers. Her mouth constantly chewed paan. Her bell-like voice matched her impressive physical appearance. Sugandhi Ayah looked formidable. Satya and I sometimes took the liberty of teasing her, calling her grandma, and she indulgently allowed us. . Today she was taking us and Nagarani, our next door neighbour to our nirvanam.Sarada Nani was an important person in the Pune locality where transgenders lived in substantial numbers. I was one of the chela daughters of one of her chela daughters Aruna Amma. Satya was older, my senior in the transgender group. She was of swarthy complexion, solidly built like Sugandhi Ayah. She had a voice to match, and long, thick hair. She was an excellent cook. She was so senior to me in the group, still her operation was only now about to take place. That my nirvanam was scheduled along with hers was a big step for me. My hair then was still short to tie up in a bun.
Satya did not show as much interest as I did in nirvanam. It wasn’t clear who would accompany her and so I reserved only my train berth. All that was not so important, though—any old ticket would do for Sugandhi Ayah and Satya. They sat on a newspaper they spread near the compartment door and answered the TTE’s queries. Nagarani huddled close to them and they managed to stay there till morning. I got up after a while and joined them. The old woman continued to tell oft-repeated tales of woe from her own life, her trials and tribulations. To all three of us, they assumed new dimensions that evening. As she went on with accounts of nirvanam and its after-effects, we listened in terror. I went to my berth when Ayah was overcome by sleep. Just one more night. Tomorrow would dawn the fruition of my desires, the fulfilment of my dreams. The night was long. I tossed and turned. I woke up and looked around.
The whole train was asleep. Very few were awake—the engine driver, a few policemen on patrol duty, and I.Nirvanam! How long I had waited for it! What humiliation I had suffered! Obsessed with it, I had mortgaged my pride, my anger, my honour—even begged on the streets to achieve that end. How could I sleep now, with my dream about to be fulfilled tomorrow?Morning at last. I welcomed the new day eagerly, with not a trace of fatigue even though I had kept awake all night. I drank a cup of coffee. Sugandhi Ayah had warned me to take only fluids in preparation for the operation.
It was the most important day of my life. Autorickshaws mobbed us as the four of us emerged from the railway station. It was 26th April. “Naganna or Bapanna?’ the hordes of drivers pounced on us with their incessant questioning. We managed to stave off the competing marauders, and negotiating the fare with one of them, got into his autorickshaw. “Ayah, how do they know we are going to one of those doctors?” I asked Sugandhi.“Even the newborns here know our kind come to Cuddapah for the operation,’ Nagarani said.“Right down to the doctor’s name? Tell me Ayah, which doctor are we going to?”There was no reply from Sugandhi Ayah.“Why are you so glum, Ayah?”“Shut up.”I had no option. I kept watching the Telugu film posters.As we got off the autorickshaw, I was filled with happiness that we had arrived in Cuddapah and reached the nursing home.“Hurry up.” All of a sudden, Ayah rushed us in.
The nursing home was right on the street. Though not a main road, it was a busy street. The cinema theatre across the road displayed a poster of the film, Chandramukhi.The hospital was abuzz with activity. We were herded upstairs through what was evidently a rear portion. A nursing home attendant accompanied us, talking all the while in Telugu to Sugandhi Ayah. She must be a frequent visitor here, I said to myself. The attendant left us in a room. There were three steel cots in that room which had a bathroom next to it, with a solitary bucket. The cot was bare, with no mattress or sheet on it. Many female names were scrawled on the wall, some in ink, others in charcoal. The room seemed to be reserved exclusively for transgenders. Our predecessors in the room had scribbled their names on the wall, presumably because they feared they could die on the operation table. That was their way of ensuring the survival of at least their names after the hazardous operation we called nirvanam. “Write your name on the wall, if you like,” Sugandhi Ayah said.I didn’t feel like doing so. I was certain I would live. Hadn’t I struggled all the while just for that?
I was hungry. Sugandhi alone had eaten since last night. The three of us had obeyed her instructions to fast.“Go to the bathroom now if you must. Once in the operation theatre, your stomach should be completely empty.” Sugandhi Ayah warned us. Nagarani looked scared. I watched Satya. She looked grim as usual. I was all aflutter. “When? When?” The tension was palpable. None of us minded the strange odour in the room. Tension gripped us.We waited for a while. A male attendant came to Sugandhi. He said something to her and went away. We were watching all the while. Ayah then took all three of us downstairs. They took blood from each of us for a blood test in one of the rooms there.“We’ll get the blood test report in half an hour,” Sugandhi Ayah said. “They will do the operation once the report shows you are HIV negative. The operation won’t take more than half an hour.”Would there be no more tests? Wouldn’t they test us for BP, blood sugar? Only AIDS? Nagarani asked, “Why, won’t they operate if we have AIDS?”“Do you see Janaki in the next room? She has AIDS, they say. They collected an extra 2000 rupees from her to do the operation.”
Only after Sugandhi Ayah pointed her out did I see the woman lying there post-operation. I went in and saw her. She was from my own street. Though she had been in Pune for many years, she still retained the flavour of the village, her language had remained unchanged. She had lived in Mumbai and Pune for five years or so, but couldn’t speak a whole sentence in Hindi. I didn’t know her very well, but I had seen her being heckled while walking on the street. It was a rude shock to Satya and me to know she had AIDS. The three of us chattered nervously for a while, anticipating the moment with suspense.“Who’s going first?” Sugandhi Ayah asked. I couldn’t bear it any longer.“I’ll go first Ayah!” I shouted, “Let me go.”Ayah came to a decision. “Satya is your senior, let her go first, you go after her,” she said. No one replied. It was frustrating to know we had to wait longer.“Akka, let me go first Akka, please.”“Ok, go. I don’t mind. Ask the hag.”Sugandhi Ayah was particular about seniority. There was no point in pleading with her.The blood test results were out by then. Ayah handed over the report to each of us, asking us to keep it carefully. Thank God, none of us had AIDS.Speaking in Telugu, a hospital attendant called Satya, asking Nagarani and me to wait. He asked us to change, wearing only skirts, and be ready.Ayah had already got us ready. They took Satya away. “When will the operation be over? How long will it take?” I kept asking Ayah.I wasn’t prepared for the speed of the operation. I expected an operation to take at least an hour, and a vital one like ours at least two hours. In barely twenty minutes, a man and a woman wheeled Satya out. It was all over. Neither attendant looked like a nurse or a hospital worker. You’d think they belonged to some completely unrelated profession.They lifted Satya from the wheelchair (stretcher?), and, spreading a couple of newspapers on a steel cot, dropped her unceremoniously on it. Their unsafe, unhygienic approach made me nervous. There was no time to worry. They whisked me away immediately after dumping Satya on the cot. “Keep repeating the name of the Mother during the operation,” Ayah told me before I entered the operation theatre.
It was no operation theatre, I realised as soon as I entered the tiny room. It was like going into a slaughterhouse. “Mata, mata, mata,” I repeated to myself. In the room was a solitary cot. A masked doctor stood by its side. His eyes were those of an old man. Two more people, a man and a woman, filled the minuscule room. There was no way another person could enter.I wanted to talk to the doctor, but the environment silenced me. They removed my skirt and made me lie down on the cot, and helped me overcome my embarrassment. They made me curl into the embryonic posture, and gave me a spinal injection. It hurt. I lay down straight and was given glucose drips through a vein in my right arm. I was able to cooperate with the staff as Senbagam who had undergone the surgery a few months ago had given me a detailed account of the various steps. She had warned me that the spinal shot would anaesthetise me below the waist, so I was quite brave.Only when the surgeon made the first incision on my abdomen with his scalpel did I realise I hadn’t quite lost sensation altogether. Another spinal injection followed my screams of pain. The pain subsided but did not disappear. I couldn’t move my hands and legs, but I felt the movements of the surgeon’s knife and my pain quite clearly. I cursed and swore. “I can’t bear the pain, let me go,” I screamed at them constantly. I wanted to run away. I wanted to kill the doctor and his helper. Desperate with pain, I repeatedly called out to Mata following Ayah’s advice, reaching a crescendo screaming, “maaaaa…aaataaa.” As the operation reached its climax, the pain rose to unbearable heights—as if someone was digging deep into my innards with a long rod and removing my intestines.Yes, what I saw in that instant was death. They had removed that part of me over which I had shed silent tears of rejection from the time I could remember. I saw that my penis and my testicles had been excised.I was sutured and applied medication after that. I could feel all that very distinctly and bear the pain.
Ah! Nirvanam. The ultimate peace!My operation took all of twenty minutes. They put me on a stretcher, writhing in pain, and carried me down a ramp accompanied by violent jerks, causing new pains and aches. They dumped me on a newspaper-covered steel cot just as they had dropped Satya. In the bed next to me, I could hear Satya crying and moaning. Even though I was in great pain, I was able to bear it. Soon, to my surprise, Satya began to sob uncontrollably. Was it really Satya crying, unable to bear her pain? She had been an elder sister to me in Pune at the place where we had sought refuge. She was a strong person. Thrashed by Nani after an occasional drunken bout, she used to lie down absolutely still and quiet. I couldn’t believe that she was crying in pain now. Or that I was able to stand the pain better.Inside, I was at peace. It was a huge relief. I was now a woman. Mine was a woman’s body. Its shape would be what my heart wanted, yearned for. This pain would obliterate all my earlier pains. I wanted to thank everyone, cry out loud to the doctor, his assistants, Sugandhi Ayah, express my gratitude to them to my heart’s content. I couldn’t move my lips or open my mouth.I thanked them silently. “Thank you for removing my maleness from my body, thank you for making my body a female body. My life is fulfilled. If I die now, I’ll lose nothing. I can sleep in peace,” I told myself.The intensity of the pain grew with the hours. My abdomen seemed to be afire. I couldn’t move my arms and legs. The pain was unbearable, however hard I tried to bear it.
Amma, Amma, I have become a woman. I am not Saravanan any more. I am Vidya. A complete Vidya. A whole woman. Where are you, Amma? Can’t you come to me by some miracle, at least for a moment? Please hold my hand, Amma. My heart seems to be breaking into smithereens. Radha, please Radha, I am no longer your brother, Radha. I am your sister now, your sister. Come to me, Radha. Chithi, Manju, Prabha, Appa… Look at me Appa, look at my dissected body. This is a mere body. Can you see that I can bear all this pain? I can take any amount of pain, Appa. Look at me Appa. Look at me as a woman. Accept me as a girl, Appa.Only I could hear my screams.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Style and grammar
After the wonderful party for the print department on 14 April, I wondered if I should share some of my thoughts on writing with all of you. Here is what I have to say.
Good writing
My most disappointing failure as a teacher has been my inability to convince my students of the importance of good writing.
Style is great but so is grammar.
The best writers among my students have style, a certain way with words.
Unfortunately, not a single student seems to be interested in crafting perfect sentences, in paying close attention to detail, in rigorous self-criticism.
Perfect writing demands thinking long and hard on the subject you are writing on.
An orderly mind produces uncluttered writing, and that is half the battle won in communicating your thoughts.
Arrange your ideas in a logical, sensible order that facilitates the proper building up of a story.
Pay attention to spelling, punctuation, tense, beginnings and endings, transitions.
Time after time, I find students more interested in making a page than in writing well. Little attention is paid to the need for good editing, for peeling away at unnecessary, redundant adjectives and adverbs.
The tendency to dismiss the textbook prescriptions of powerful verbs as just so much theory prevents you from becoming better writers, willy-nilly acquiring better vocabularies.
I know I sound harshly critical.
Some of my colleagues think differently.
A couple of them told me they did not agree with me, they found the students to be very good writers.
I wanted to tell them, “Maybe they are, but my standards are higher.”
As it so often happens, I let the opportunity for brilliant repartee pass.
But the truth is, my standards are higher.
And that can only help students, at least in the long run.
I’ll be thrilled if even one of you begins to exercise greater rigour over his or her writing.
If one of you decides to be a perfectionist.
Good writing
My most disappointing failure as a teacher has been my inability to convince my students of the importance of good writing.
Style is great but so is grammar.
The best writers among my students have style, a certain way with words.
Unfortunately, not a single student seems to be interested in crafting perfect sentences, in paying close attention to detail, in rigorous self-criticism.
Perfect writing demands thinking long and hard on the subject you are writing on.
An orderly mind produces uncluttered writing, and that is half the battle won in communicating your thoughts.
Arrange your ideas in a logical, sensible order that facilitates the proper building up of a story.
Pay attention to spelling, punctuation, tense, beginnings and endings, transitions.
Time after time, I find students more interested in making a page than in writing well. Little attention is paid to the need for good editing, for peeling away at unnecessary, redundant adjectives and adverbs.
The tendency to dismiss the textbook prescriptions of powerful verbs as just so much theory prevents you from becoming better writers, willy-nilly acquiring better vocabularies.
I know I sound harshly critical.
Some of my colleagues think differently.
A couple of them told me they did not agree with me, they found the students to be very good writers.
I wanted to tell them, “Maybe they are, but my standards are higher.”
As it so often happens, I let the opportunity for brilliant repartee pass.
But the truth is, my standards are higher.
And that can only help students, at least in the long run.
I’ll be thrilled if even one of you begins to exercise greater rigour over his or her writing.
If one of you decides to be a perfectionist.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Tamil theatre? Are you joking?
From the Sruti archives
Watching the Madras Players’ production, Mercy, at the Museum Theatre, Badal Sircar’s Evam Indrajit performed by a young theatre group at the Sivagami Pethachi Auditorium, Magic Lantern’s shows at the Alliance Francaise, or the stylized, dedicated theatre of Na Muthuswami’s Koothuppattarai at varied venues big and small, you cannot help recollecting your earliest experiences of the stage in the Madras of your childhood.
Being the son of a bank officer with membership in the Rasika Ranjani Sabha, Mylapore, in the fifties and sixties meant that you ended up being the sole regular user of the season ticket, as said officer was seldom able to leave said bank at a decent hour. The entertainment consisted mainly of Carnatic music but there was also a monthly dose of amateur theatre. If your earliest ideas of classical music were fashioned by the voices and instruments of the stalwarts and starlets of the day—Ariyakudi, Semmangudi, Madurai Mani, Maharajapuram, GNB, MS, MLV, Pattammal, Palghat Mani, Lalgudi, Krishnan and many more—Tamil drama offered considerable variety too.
Dramatisations of the novels and novellas of Devan such as Mister Vedantam, Tuppariyum Sambu or Kalyaniyin Kanavan were popular hits. A Tamil version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, in which the lead roles were played by the towering Dr C G Seshadri, was so frightening that the walk home afterwards from the Alwarpet bus stop to home on Murrays Gate Road was a nightmare. ‘If I get it’ by YGP was a thriller all the way with never a dull moment, at least to an impressionable pre-teen fan. Unforgettable was Koothapiran or N V Natarajan, his real name, and though there were many plays he directed and acted in, one particular performance stood out. ‘Aravamudan Asada’ featured a tufted young man who turns out to be wiser than all the other protagonists; naturally they believe that he is a simpleton, because he is not well versed in their ‘modern’ ways, only to realise his greatness in the climactic scene.
The great dramas of the period were staged by the TKS brothers, with T K Shanmugham and T K Bhagavati playing major roles in all their lavish spectacles. Shanmugham was so convincing as Avvaiyar that when the wonderful K B Sundarambal played the sage-poetess on the screen, it was initially disappointing to note the role taken away from TKS. The eponymous ‘Kappalottiya Tamizhan’ and ‘Veerapandia Kattabomman’ were both runaway successes and both eventually had Sivaji Ganesan essay the star roles in his inimitable style on screen.
Another veteran theatre personality was S V Sahasranamam whose Seva Stage was a highly respected troupe. ‘Policekaran Magal’ and ‘Nawab Narkali’ were among their evergreen hits, some of which were later filmed successfully. R S Manohar specialized in special effects and gigantic sets as much as unconventional perspectives on well known myths and epics. His plays had Manohar in roles such as Ravana in ‘Lankeswaran’, ‘Sukracharya’ and ‘Naganandi’.
The stage décor was predictably theatrical in most of these productions, with palaces, streets and temples painted on scene-specific drop-down-roll-up backdrops. Comic relief was mandatory and actors like Sarangapani, Sivathanu and Sambandam drew the most laughs. The sixties also brought to the fore such larger than life theatre personalities as United Amateur Artistes’ YGP, whose son Mahendra is still going strong on stage and in films, and K Balachander.
In Balachander’s Ragini Recreations flourished such future stars of the screen as Sundarrajan and Nagesh. Sundarrajan’s stirring performance as Major Chandrakanth prefixed the title of the army officer permanently to his screen name and the brilliant comedian Nagesh’s ‘Server Sundaram’, adapted for cinema, became an all-time classic, Viveka Fine Arts’. ‘Cho’ Ramaswamy’s plays, a complete departure from the prevailing genre of ‘social’ drama, lampooned the political classes and their corrupt way of life that was increasingly pervading Indian society.
A later development was the growth of light drawing room comedies of the strictly Madras variety, the handiwork of natural humorists not distinguished by hidden depths or subtlety. ‘Kathadi’ Ramamurthi, S V Shekher, and Crazy Mohan belong to this category, made even more fluffy in recent times by the likes of Bosskey. (This is by no means an exhaustive list of theatre groups in Chennai--I am aware there have been many, many more sincere practitioners over the decades).
When Poornam Viswanathan, originally famous for his work on radio and the play, ‘Under Secretary’, moved from Delhi to Madras, he found a superb outlet for his acting ability in the productions of Kala Nilayam, in which along with committed amateur artistes of the calibre of Chandrasekhar (of the musically talented Sikkil family) and others, he was able to take part in such super hits as Savi’s ‘Washingtonil Tirumanam’ and Marina’s ‘Tanikkudithanam’ and ‘Oor Vambu’. Viswanathan later formed his own group to stage some excellent works of serious content, mainly plays by Sujatha, such as ‘Kadavul Vandar.’
Indira Parthasarathi’s ‘Nandan Kathai’, ‘Aurangzeb’and ‘Ramanujar’ are again serious works, which like Poornam’s earlier efforts, lack support from sponsors and audiences alike, a sad commentary on the prevalent theatre culture of Tamil Nadu. Theatre of the old Nawab Rajamanickam or Boys Club kind is still reputedly alive and kicking all over the state, besides terukootu and other forms of folk theatre, but urban Tamil Nadu has the reputation of not supporting or enjoying serious Tamil theatre any more. The lure of cinema and television is blamed for the lack of an informed, interested audience for plays other than the joke-a-second or slapstick variety. The huge crowds that Magic Lantern’s ‘Ponniyin Selvan’ drew a few years ago at the YMCA Open Air theatre, however, suggested that the blame for the situation did not lie with the audiences alone.
Watching the Madras Players’ production, Mercy, at the Museum Theatre, Badal Sircar’s Evam Indrajit performed by a young theatre group at the Sivagami Pethachi Auditorium, Magic Lantern’s shows at the Alliance Francaise, or the stylized, dedicated theatre of Na Muthuswami’s Koothuppattarai at varied venues big and small, you cannot help recollecting your earliest experiences of the stage in the Madras of your childhood.
Being the son of a bank officer with membership in the Rasika Ranjani Sabha, Mylapore, in the fifties and sixties meant that you ended up being the sole regular user of the season ticket, as said officer was seldom able to leave said bank at a decent hour. The entertainment consisted mainly of Carnatic music but there was also a monthly dose of amateur theatre. If your earliest ideas of classical music were fashioned by the voices and instruments of the stalwarts and starlets of the day—Ariyakudi, Semmangudi, Madurai Mani, Maharajapuram, GNB, MS, MLV, Pattammal, Palghat Mani, Lalgudi, Krishnan and many more—Tamil drama offered considerable variety too.
Dramatisations of the novels and novellas of Devan such as Mister Vedantam, Tuppariyum Sambu or Kalyaniyin Kanavan were popular hits. A Tamil version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, in which the lead roles were played by the towering Dr C G Seshadri, was so frightening that the walk home afterwards from the Alwarpet bus stop to home on Murrays Gate Road was a nightmare. ‘If I get it’ by YGP was a thriller all the way with never a dull moment, at least to an impressionable pre-teen fan. Unforgettable was Koothapiran or N V Natarajan, his real name, and though there were many plays he directed and acted in, one particular performance stood out. ‘Aravamudan Asada’ featured a tufted young man who turns out to be wiser than all the other protagonists; naturally they believe that he is a simpleton, because he is not well versed in their ‘modern’ ways, only to realise his greatness in the climactic scene.
The great dramas of the period were staged by the TKS brothers, with T K Shanmugham and T K Bhagavati playing major roles in all their lavish spectacles. Shanmugham was so convincing as Avvaiyar that when the wonderful K B Sundarambal played the sage-poetess on the screen, it was initially disappointing to note the role taken away from TKS. The eponymous ‘Kappalottiya Tamizhan’ and ‘Veerapandia Kattabomman’ were both runaway successes and both eventually had Sivaji Ganesan essay the star roles in his inimitable style on screen.
Another veteran theatre personality was S V Sahasranamam whose Seva Stage was a highly respected troupe. ‘Policekaran Magal’ and ‘Nawab Narkali’ were among their evergreen hits, some of which were later filmed successfully. R S Manohar specialized in special effects and gigantic sets as much as unconventional perspectives on well known myths and epics. His plays had Manohar in roles such as Ravana in ‘Lankeswaran’, ‘Sukracharya’ and ‘Naganandi’.
The stage décor was predictably theatrical in most of these productions, with palaces, streets and temples painted on scene-specific drop-down-roll-up backdrops. Comic relief was mandatory and actors like Sarangapani, Sivathanu and Sambandam drew the most laughs. The sixties also brought to the fore such larger than life theatre personalities as United Amateur Artistes’ YGP, whose son Mahendra is still going strong on stage and in films, and K Balachander.
In Balachander’s Ragini Recreations flourished such future stars of the screen as Sundarrajan and Nagesh. Sundarrajan’s stirring performance as Major Chandrakanth prefixed the title of the army officer permanently to his screen name and the brilliant comedian Nagesh’s ‘Server Sundaram’, adapted for cinema, became an all-time classic, Viveka Fine Arts’. ‘Cho’ Ramaswamy’s plays, a complete departure from the prevailing genre of ‘social’ drama, lampooned the political classes and their corrupt way of life that was increasingly pervading Indian society.
A later development was the growth of light drawing room comedies of the strictly Madras variety, the handiwork of natural humorists not distinguished by hidden depths or subtlety. ‘Kathadi’ Ramamurthi, S V Shekher, and Crazy Mohan belong to this category, made even more fluffy in recent times by the likes of Bosskey. (This is by no means an exhaustive list of theatre groups in Chennai--I am aware there have been many, many more sincere practitioners over the decades).
When Poornam Viswanathan, originally famous for his work on radio and the play, ‘Under Secretary’, moved from Delhi to Madras, he found a superb outlet for his acting ability in the productions of Kala Nilayam, in which along with committed amateur artistes of the calibre of Chandrasekhar (of the musically talented Sikkil family) and others, he was able to take part in such super hits as Savi’s ‘Washingtonil Tirumanam’ and Marina’s ‘Tanikkudithanam’ and ‘Oor Vambu’. Viswanathan later formed his own group to stage some excellent works of serious content, mainly plays by Sujatha, such as ‘Kadavul Vandar.’
Indira Parthasarathi’s ‘Nandan Kathai’, ‘Aurangzeb’and ‘Ramanujar’ are again serious works, which like Poornam’s earlier efforts, lack support from sponsors and audiences alike, a sad commentary on the prevalent theatre culture of Tamil Nadu. Theatre of the old Nawab Rajamanickam or Boys Club kind is still reputedly alive and kicking all over the state, besides terukootu and other forms of folk theatre, but urban Tamil Nadu has the reputation of not supporting or enjoying serious Tamil theatre any more. The lure of cinema and television is blamed for the lack of an informed, interested audience for plays other than the joke-a-second or slapstick variety. The huge crowds that Magic Lantern’s ‘Ponniyin Selvan’ drew a few years ago at the YMCA Open Air theatre, however, suggested that the blame for the situation did not lie with the audiences alone.
Rafi at Buharis
MOHAMMED RAFI'S golden voice had been amplified beyond the limits of human tolerance. However, the turbanned, white-uniformed, middle aged waiter managed to make himself heard over the din of the jukebox, croaking "Yeh mera prem patra padhkar", while serving our table our 14th cup of tea for the afternoon.
To that bunch of truant undergraduates, to hang out at Marina Buharis was posh and to attend classes passe. Singularly lacking in a sense of history, we hadn't for a moment regretted passing up the chance to drink in the classroom atmosphere of Presidency College once made famous by the likes of Dr. S. Radhakrishnan and Sir C. V. Raman. We had slipped away ignoring the stern eye of the Powell statue that stood staring disapprovingly in the corridor. In our callow youth, we had failed to recognise the pre-eminent stature of our principal, the botanist, Dr. B. G. L. Swamy, who wandered around in oversized khaki shorts, cloth bag slung over his shoulder, communing with the varied plant life of our college. We did not know enough to know that the head of our English department, Professor Ramaswami, was someone special, or that Dr. Pai of the Chemistry department was a worthy successor to Dr. Govindachari of international fame.
There was one class that polyglot collection of young men rarely missed. It was not love of our national language that bound us to our Victorian benches but the happy circumstance that brought the best looking girls in the college to our Hindi class. A most entertaining time was had by all except the poor lecturer, with the tubby Gourang Kodical making funny noises without moving a single facial muscle and the giant Naushad engaging the teacher in a deeply philosophical dialogue only remotely connected to the curriculum.
The Hindi class also drew our seniors like a magnet. Eager to be introduced to the statuesque JJ - full name withheld - they would bribe us with Charminar and imitation coffee in our prehistoric canteen. Alas, the object of their affections left soon to join medical college.
Our idyll was shattered by the anti-Hindi agitation. Before it spread like wildfire to force the prolonged closure of schools and colleges all over the State, it first targeted the Hindi class.
The extended vacation that followed brought together a strange assortment of unemployed youth that met everyday at the Kutcheri Road residence of G. S. Krishnan, then a student of Vivekananda College. The gang that met to play a variety of indoor games from carrom and rummy to Literature and Scrabble, included Venkataraghavan, on the verge of playing for India, and fellow cricketers Ramji, Venu, Jaggu, Suri, Sivaraman and occasional guest Ram Ramesh who had just joined Indian Overseas Bank. The evenings were spent playing badminton or discussing Indian cricket threadbare at Vivekananda College.
College cricket was soon to follow. We had a few university cricketers and a number of enthusiastic unknowns, who thankfully were no respecters of big names and therefore managed to spring a few surprises against fancied opponents. "Alley" Sridhar who was living proof that not all left handers are necessarily graceful, hit the ball mighty hard and fielded and threw like a man possessed. N. Ram would go to sleep at the crease and suddenly burst into a flurry of sledgehammer blows. V. V. Rajamani, handsome and athletic, was a past master at mind games, somehow fooling the opponent into believing that his gentle medium pace held hidden dangers. An all rounder, he taught me more about off spin than any coach. P. S. Ramesh, our resident "poi bowler" bowled tiny offbreaks and legbreaks with the same action and grip, a la Ajantha Mendis, when he was not sending in "well-flighted" throws from the deep. S. V. Suryanarayanan breezed in to make the ball wobble, a song on his lips and his unruly hair pointing like a radar device, and played dinky little shots just out of reach of exasperated fielders. Bhaskar and Vidyasagar, Ravi and Prem, Shashi and Bala, all made valuable contributions from time to time and before we knew it, we were in the final of the A.M. Jain College Gold Cup, only to lose to the formidable Engineering College team. The champions had Venkat, Satvinder Singh, Rajendran, Manohar and identical twins Lakshmanan and Ramachandran.
Academically, the high point of my first year in college was getting caught offguard by the English professor Mr. Seshadri, when he spotted me in his class towards the end of third term, my onerous cricket duties for the season behind me. Apparently curious to find out if the first time visitor to his classroom knew anything of the subject, he asked a fairly straightforward question on The Grammarian's Funeral. When I concocted a rather involved but vague reply, he was more amused than angry. "That, dear stranger, is an original insight, but entirely inappropriate," he shot back at me.
To that bunch of truant undergraduates, to hang out at Marina Buharis was posh and to attend classes passe. Singularly lacking in a sense of history, we hadn't for a moment regretted passing up the chance to drink in the classroom atmosphere of Presidency College once made famous by the likes of Dr. S. Radhakrishnan and Sir C. V. Raman. We had slipped away ignoring the stern eye of the Powell statue that stood staring disapprovingly in the corridor. In our callow youth, we had failed to recognise the pre-eminent stature of our principal, the botanist, Dr. B. G. L. Swamy, who wandered around in oversized khaki shorts, cloth bag slung over his shoulder, communing with the varied plant life of our college. We did not know enough to know that the head of our English department, Professor Ramaswami, was someone special, or that Dr. Pai of the Chemistry department was a worthy successor to Dr. Govindachari of international fame.
There was one class that polyglot collection of young men rarely missed. It was not love of our national language that bound us to our Victorian benches but the happy circumstance that brought the best looking girls in the college to our Hindi class. A most entertaining time was had by all except the poor lecturer, with the tubby Gourang Kodical making funny noises without moving a single facial muscle and the giant Naushad engaging the teacher in a deeply philosophical dialogue only remotely connected to the curriculum.
The Hindi class also drew our seniors like a magnet. Eager to be introduced to the statuesque JJ - full name withheld - they would bribe us with Charminar and imitation coffee in our prehistoric canteen. Alas, the object of their affections left soon to join medical college.
Our idyll was shattered by the anti-Hindi agitation. Before it spread like wildfire to force the prolonged closure of schools and colleges all over the State, it first targeted the Hindi class.
The extended vacation that followed brought together a strange assortment of unemployed youth that met everyday at the Kutcheri Road residence of G. S. Krishnan, then a student of Vivekananda College. The gang that met to play a variety of indoor games from carrom and rummy to Literature and Scrabble, included Venkataraghavan, on the verge of playing for India, and fellow cricketers Ramji, Venu, Jaggu, Suri, Sivaraman and occasional guest Ram Ramesh who had just joined Indian Overseas Bank. The evenings were spent playing badminton or discussing Indian cricket threadbare at Vivekananda College.
College cricket was soon to follow. We had a few university cricketers and a number of enthusiastic unknowns, who thankfully were no respecters of big names and therefore managed to spring a few surprises against fancied opponents. "Alley" Sridhar who was living proof that not all left handers are necessarily graceful, hit the ball mighty hard and fielded and threw like a man possessed. N. Ram would go to sleep at the crease and suddenly burst into a flurry of sledgehammer blows. V. V. Rajamani, handsome and athletic, was a past master at mind games, somehow fooling the opponent into believing that his gentle medium pace held hidden dangers. An all rounder, he taught me more about off spin than any coach. P. S. Ramesh, our resident "poi bowler" bowled tiny offbreaks and legbreaks with the same action and grip, a la Ajantha Mendis, when he was not sending in "well-flighted" throws from the deep. S. V. Suryanarayanan breezed in to make the ball wobble, a song on his lips and his unruly hair pointing like a radar device, and played dinky little shots just out of reach of exasperated fielders. Bhaskar and Vidyasagar, Ravi and Prem, Shashi and Bala, all made valuable contributions from time to time and before we knew it, we were in the final of the A.M. Jain College Gold Cup, only to lose to the formidable Engineering College team. The champions had Venkat, Satvinder Singh, Rajendran, Manohar and identical twins Lakshmanan and Ramachandran.
Academically, the high point of my first year in college was getting caught offguard by the English professor Mr. Seshadri, when he spotted me in his class towards the end of third term, my onerous cricket duties for the season behind me. Apparently curious to find out if the first time visitor to his classroom knew anything of the subject, he asked a fairly straightforward question on The Grammarian's Funeral. When I concocted a rather involved but vague reply, he was more amused than angry. "That, dear stranger, is an original insight, but entirely inappropriate," he shot back at me.
November Fest
Chennai Online
November 2005
As though the Chennai music season needed padding up, ‘The Hindu’ has added to its considerable repertoire with the introduction of a new programme entitled ‘The Friday Review November Fest’, with dazzling jugalbandis to herald the more orthodox fare that will soon follow.
As I ignore a light drizzle and set out on my morning walk, I see an intrepid muffler-clad warrior braving the bitter cold of November
I immediately experience the familiar goosebumps of the seasoned concert-goer of the
In the evening, I am driving homewards and as we cross the Adyar bridge and turn into Besant Avenue, I ask my companion if the annual convention of the Theosophical Society is still the big event it used to be - one of the high points of the year for young residents of south Madras, because it was a time you could hang out with members of the opposite sex from different parts of the world - and the answer is in the affirmative. I wonder if the convention is any longer a big draw with our youngsters who have enough else on their plate - unless of course they happen to be precocious theosophists in the making.
We soon enter Kalakshetra Colony, the residential enclave that once belonged to Rukmini Devi's Kalakshetra, prime real estate the institution sold to the lucky residents of the area, choosing to locate the college of fine arts in the area further south with its profusion of lotus ponds and coconut palms, its relative proximity to the local cemeteries notwithstanding. The ponds have dried up but Kalakshetra is in the heart of thick woods lovingly nurtured by some of its founder’s closest aides after it moved here from Adyar in the sixties.
Another legacy Rukmini Devi has left behind, the annual Art Festival at the Kerala-style auditorium in Tiruvanmiyur, is round the corner, and soon scenes from the Ramayana will unfold before a mesmerised audience, though old-timers will rue the passing of the good old days and the stalwarts of the past.
It’s early days yet for the migratory birds from all over the world to gather at the Vedanthangal bird sanctuary but it’s the time of the year overseas Indians swoop down on
NRIs are not the only strange birds the season brings to
Many great artistes of the past have passed on and we shall miss them sorely, and I don’t mean the big stars of Carnatic music and dance alone. Many solid performers, composers and teachers who were an integral part of the music scene have left us. We’ll miss them.
But this is no occasion for grief. It is celebration time. The usual excitement of anticipation catches up with you. The young tyros you watched make their spectacular debuts a couple of decades ago are today masters of their art, occupying centrestage where once was an earlier generation of stars. The sensational teenager who took
As always, there will be some variations of the theme, for those who seek a change from the standard cutcheri fare. That brilliant Carnatic violinist Sriram Parasuram will also perform Hindustani-Carnatic vocal jugalbandis with wife Anuradha Sriram. O S Arun will sing Tamil ghazals. A number of percussion ensembles will thrill lovers of rhythm, led by such laya wizards as Karaikudi Mani, Vinayakram, Tiruvarur Bhaktavatsalam and Karthick. For those harking back to the past, there will be at least one four-hour vocal concert - by Malladi Brothers.
For now, let’s feast on The Hindu Friday Review’s November Fest.
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