VOICE OF THE VEENA
S BALACHANDER
Copyright Vikram Sampath 2012
Published in 2012
in RAIN TREE by Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd.
7/16, Ansari Road, Daryaganj,
New Delhi 110 002
Sales Centres:
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eISBN: 9788129133793
All rights reserved.
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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Printed in India by
Replika Press Pvt Ltd
310-311 EPIP Kundli
Haryana 131028
For Smt Shantha Balachander, without whose unflinching
support and strong conviction that this story needs to be told,
this book would not be a reality!
CONTENTS
I like to keep my plans in suspense. But I am very sure about one thing. Future music historians should have a good word to say about me. Whatever I do, I will have that in the back of my mind.
Balachander
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book would have been impossible but for the unstinting support of Smt Shantha Balachander. Be it in ferreting out obscure information about her husband or coordinating interviews with several people in Chennai, Shantha Mami was always willing to help in every possible way. My sincere thanks are also due to Mr SBS Raman for his valuable inputs, and to Mrs Dharma Raman. A special word of thanks to Baradwaj Raman who assiduously photographed and emailed me the pages of those gigantic albums for my reference.
I am deeply indebted to my guru, Dr Jayanthi Kumaresh, who has been the inspiration and guiding light for this project and a sounding board during my moments of doubt, dilemma and despair! Thanks are also due to Mr Darshan of Product Reach Pvt Ltd for producing the delightful CD of S Balachanders music that accompanies this book.
I am extremely grateful to the following people (in no particular order) for their cooperation and the valuable time they spared for my interviews with them:
Vidwan Dr TV Gopalakrishnan, Vidwan Vellore Ramabadran, Vidushi Padmavathi Ananthagoplan, Vidwan Prof TR Subramaniam, Smt Saroja Ramamrutham, Smt Gayathri Narayanan, Mr Raghunathan of HMV, Mr Murali Vijayaraghavan, Mr Ramamurthy, Mr Sandhyavandhanam Muni Rao, Mr Film News Anandan, Mr Saravanan of AVM Films, Mr Cho Ramaswamy, Smt VR Thilagam, Smt Kutty Padmini, Mr N Krishnaswamy, Mr VS Raghavan, Mr Raghavendran, Mr Mukta Srinivasan, Smt SN Lakshmi and Smt Lakshmi Vishwanathan.
I am also thankful to the Madras Music Academy, the Roja Muthiah Library and the Hindu Archives for permission to use archival material. A special word of thanks to Smt Sukanya and Sruti magazine for the immense help provided by them so readily.
I offer my humble regards to all my gurus and mentors in music, who have shown me the beauty of this art in various forms: Vidwan DV Nagaraj, Vidwan Srivatsa DS, Vidushi Dr Bombay Jayashri Ramnath, Vidwan Akella Mallikarjuna Sharma and Vidushi Dr Jayanthi Kumaresh.
I am deeply grateful to the Wissenschaftskolleg Zu Berlin (The Institute for Advanced Study) in Berlin that offered me a Visiting Fellowship for the year 2010-11. The intellectually charged atmosphere at Wiko, the ever helpful staff and library there and the hours of solitude in the enchanting woods of Grunewald in Berlin not only helped me find a semblance of inner peace but also helped in crystallising my thoughts and putting them down on paper. I, perhaps, owe my gratitude to Wiko not just for this book, but several others that might come out in the next few years the seeds of all of which were planted in the course of my Berlin stay!
Sincere thanks are due also to my editor Keerti Ramachandra for her suggestions and advice while editing the manuscript.
I am also thankful to my publishers Rupa Publications and Mr RK Mehra for reposing their faith in me. A special word of thanks to Kausalya Saptharishi of Rupa Publications and her team. Thanks also to my friend, Suanshu Khurana, for stepping in during times of dire need, including the naming of this book!
None of my efforts would have materialised without the unflinching support that I got from my ever-loving and encouraging parents. It requires patience and determination of another kind to see and allow ones son tread a path of obsessive indulgence!
But my most respectful tribute and obeisance are due unto my spiritual guru, Shri Shirdi Sai Baba, and the Divine Grace, without which not a single letter or word could have been written.
PREFACE
y introduction to S Balachander was through a patriotic song I watched on Doordarshan as a young boy. The song was Baje Sargam and was supposed to be a tribute to the nation from the maestros of Indian classical music and dance. Towards the end of the promo came an ageing, bald gentleman sitting bathed in the light of the setting sun, dressed in a golden-hued silk kurta and red shawl; plucking at the strings of the ornate instrument he was playing, and looking up at the heavens, as if seeking validation from the gods above for the melody he was creating. I knew enough to recognise the divine instrument as the veena, carried by Saraswati, the goddess of learning and music, and the emotion on the face of the vainika, the veena artiste, to be one of utter ecstasy. And it fascinated me. He seemed so completely at one with his veena and with the music he was able to coax out of it.
Sadly, I never got an opportunity to hear him play live since he passed away when I was still too young to start attending concerts. But my acquaintance with him was revisited years later when I saw his smiling visage peering down at me from the wall at my music teacher Dr Jayanthi Kumareshs home. She had been his student for a brief while and revered him greatly. She ended almost every class with a reference to her guru, either in the form of stories and anecdotes about him, or through discussions on how SB Mama had touched her life, as he had of many others in myriad ways. In the course of one long Saturday afternoon when our class extended as it usually did! to a prolonged discussion on music and ethics, Jayanthi Akka showed me a speech that Balachander had made at Bombays Sur Singar Samsad, on 4 June 1989. The clarity of thought and the passion with which he articulated his views was striking. At the end of the speech he had said something very poignant and pertinent:
Among many other Rasikas who rush up to the stage to congratulate you, some of the millionaires too equally eagerly come to give you a hearty handshake. And quite often, what do they tell you then I wish I were a musician like you, to serve the musical gods as you do, to lead a peaceful life as you, to enrich and promote our great heritage as you do, and to make so many souls around the world happy as you do! In a small innocent way, they are jealous of not you, but the art in you. It is then they confess that at an early age they did try to learn music, but did not and could not pursue it. They feel sad that they could not take it up more seriously if the thousands of rasikas, who may be poor and unknown, pay you deep respect and even obeisance publicly, it is the art in you that they are prostrating before. You are just an agent receiving it. If you are feted and feasted wherever you go all around the globe, it is the art in you that is winning you all such favours. If you are written about, reviewed about, in the print media, it is again the art in you that is being analyzed or extolled, and you are just being instrumental to that cause!
