Wrestling
The milk was at the right heat, comfortingly warm. She added palm sugar and a mere touch of pepper to it. She brought a flask and poured it in. It was needed every time. As soon as the music ebbed away and the applause rang out, he would turn slowly towards her. The way he moved his head was deeply engraved in her mind. A thick neck with folds of skin just beneath the jawline. A thin chain clasped about it. His entire neck drenched in sweat as he finished singing. A red silk shawl just touching his shoulders. A shawl that Kripananda Varrier had once draped about him. He would turn his head towards her and raise his eyebrows just a little. At once she would hand over the tampura to a disciple, and pour the milk from the flask into a silver tumbler. She would say softly, as she held it towards him, “It was wonderful.”
“Mm,” he’d say.
He’d drink the milk. And always, every time, there would be something slightly wrong.
“You could have put in less kalkandu, couldn’t you?” Or, “Should you put in the pepper by the handful?” Or, “Not quite warm enough.” And so on, and so on.
He would grumble in a low murmur. But the sishya would hear, plainly. He’d look at her from the corner of his eye. The expression on her face never changed, though. “Yes,” she’d answer, accepting it all.
As they returned home in the car, he would take her hand gently. He’d mention a particular raaga alaapanai, or a song, swaraprasta-aram, or niravel, and ask, “Did it come off all right, Shenbagam?”
It wasn’t enough just to murmur, “Mm.”
“Was it the way Ayya taught it?” he would keep on at her.
On some days she stayed silent. She’d look out of the window. She’d stare at the streets, the houses, the passers-by.
“Tell me,” he would insist.
At that day’s concert there might have been a small mistake which no one else had noticed. When it was pointed out to him, his face would fall.
“Of course. You’d notice, wouldn’t you? After all, you were Ayya’s favourite sishya, weren’t you,” he’d say, piqued.
His resentment would last until they reached home. Then, at once, his mood would change. He’d play a game of carom with the children. At supper-time he would lap up the garlic-flavoured rasam with relish. Later at night he would caress her gently. He’d take the tampura on his lap and begin to strum it.
“You sing, Princess,” he would say.
He would make her sing the very sequence where he had made a mistake that evening. While she sang, he would moan, “Amma, Amma.” Sometimes, he would hit himself on the head with the tampura. “Don’t kill me di, you wretch,” he’d cry out. Sometimes, he would call out to his father, “Ayya, Ayya.”
Then came that endless pacing to and fro. From one end of the verandah to the other. Sometimes, if she chanced to wake up during the night and open her eyes, he would still be walking up and down on the verandah. Softly, she would walk up behind him and touch him. At once he would reach behind him with his arms and clasp her to him. She would stand there, her face and breasts and shoulder pressed against his back. Sometimes, after a while, he would walk back with her and lie down by her side, holding her close. And at times they would make love. He would put all his efforts into bringing her to a climax, making sure that she was satisfied, asking her again and again. But at other times, he would spread his mat on the verandah and lie there by himself. He would keep on humming the song he asked her to sing. In the morning his army of disciples would turn up. And surround him.
“Anni, Annachchi needs some warm water.” “Anni, Ayya is asking for coffee.” “Anni, some pepper rasam for Annachchi.” The requests came to her continuously. He used his students like a screen behind which he disappeared. If she confronted him directly, he would not look at her. But by the evening, the crowds would melt away. His usual jokes and teasing would begin. This always went on like a kind of game. But a game without a referee. A game without set rules; a game which the players themselves were not aware of playing. A game in which there was neither victory nor defeat. A game in which winners became losers, and losers winners.
Ayya’s portrait hung in the reception room of their house, garlanded. Kadirvel Pillai was “Ayya” to everyone who knew him. He was a performer who came of a long and renowned line of Isai Vellalar, steeped in the knowledge of their art. He used to say that when his mother danced, wearing her diamond eardrops, an addigai studded with rubies about her neck, her eyes touched with collyrium and her lips stained with betel juice, all of Kumbakonam was ravished and entranced. As a boy, he had seen her dancing through the streets, when the deity was taken out in procession. He used to say about that occasion, “I remember that the street was quite wide, Shenbagam. Even today, I can picture Amma in her arakku-red sari and green choli, dancing the navasandi kavuthuvam at the crossroads. Men walked on either side of her, carrying gas-lit lamps on their shoulders. There were such crowds there! And it seemed to me then that as Amma danced along the street, it grew wider and wider.”
Many years later, when he went to visit the place, the same crossroads with gutters on either side seemed altogether to have shrunk and narrowed in size. He used to say that without the adornment of Amma’s dance, the street was shown up in all its nakedness.
Ayya’s mother, Kanakambal, went all the way to Chennai to see Gandhi, taking the young boy with her. Crowds had gathered along Chennai beach, wave upon wave. She stood for several hours there, her hands gripping Ayya’s shoulders as he stood in front of her. She didn’t say much on their way home by train. But the next time she danced she wore a plain hand-woven khadi sari. When the temple administrators admonished her for it, she put them in their place, saying, “Ask me which shastra says I must only wear silk! I am not just a street-acrobat, ayya. I’m a woman with sensibility, who eats salt with her food.” Later on, when she came to know Ramamirtham Ammaiyaar well, she went with her to many meetings of the Self Respect Movement. By the time Ayya was ten years old, except for Vakil Govindaraja Mudaliar, the coming and going of other men to their house ceased. Mudaliar was a fine Tamil scholar. During the evenings, he would chant verses from Tevaram and Tirupugazh to different raagams, Ayya sitting beside him. It was then that Ayya’s musical training began, on a regular basis.
Amma’s dance performances became more and more rare and finally ceased altogether, when the law banning the dedication of devadasis to the temple was passed. It didn’t seem, at that time, as if she took much notice of it. She led a busy and cheerful life teaching Ayya the subtler points of music and holding many vigorous discussions with his gurus. Mudaliar, though, would still ask her on some evenings to dance to a particular song, interpreting it through her abhinayam. He had already made his will, arranging for Kanakambal to have whatever she needed by way of land and property. The evening that a messenger came to tell them that Mudaliar had died of heart failure, Kanakambal stood for a while quietly, leaning against a pillar. Their lifestyle did not change. They continued to live in relative comfort. Ayya was perhaps seventeen or eighteen at that time.
Mudaliar and Amma had once taken a photograph of themselves at a studio in Kumbakonam. Mudaliar sat up straight in his chair, his hands spread over its arms on either side. She stood behind him, slightly to one side, her arm just seeming to graze the back of his chair. Her other arm hung by her side. That picture was hung in the left hand corner of the narrow corridor running the length of the main room of their house. Kanakambal did not move it. When her health failed her later, and when she was bed-ridden, her eyes roamed about all the time. It was perhaps the photograph she looked for, Ayya thought, the photograph which she would have glanced at constantly as she went up and down the corridor. But instead she beckoned him and asked him for the box that held her salangai, her dancing bells. As soon as he brought it to her, she lifted the bells and laid them against her side, as one would a baby, stroking them so that they chimed faintly, making a sound as soft as a baby’s whimper. The next morning she died. Ayya spoke about his mother as if he were telling a story. The photograph which Mudaliar and she had taken together hung in his room, still.
When Shenbagam was about five years old, her mother brought her to Ayya. After her father died, her mother had made a living by cooking for several families. Her Amma loved to sing. She always hummed the Bhupalam raagam in the mornings and the Nilambari in the evenings. But life did not afford her the opportunity to study music properly. She never failed to attend a kachcheri at the temple. All Shenbagam’s own memories of those early years were deeply associated with music. When the knife-grinder called out “Knives sharpened” and then laid the knife against the whetstone, its “kr kr” would seem to her to have its own melody and rhythm. She’d call her mother and tell her so. Then, her mother would seat her on a wooden stool, oil her hair, place a chombu of water in her hands, and begin to massage her scalp. She, meanwhile, would paddle her fingers in the water, making a splashing noise, “salak-palak.” Paddling her fingers twice towards herself and four times on the opposite side, she would ask, “Amma, guess what song this is?”
“Who can tell, di?”
“Don’t you know, Amma? It’s ‘Vara vina.’ ”
“Oh, all right.”
“And this? Salak, salak, salak, palak, palak, palak.”
“I don’t know, go on with you.” Amma would rub her head hard. “ ‘Orumaiyudane ninadu,’ Amma. Can’t you tell?”
Amma would burst out laughing.
Everyone in town knew about Ayya’s music and his character. One day, Shenbagam’s mother took courage in her hands and brought the child to him. Ayya came out and sat down on the thinnai in the verandah, and asked her, “What is it, amma?’
“You must teach this girl music.”
“It won’t work out, amma. Send the child to school. Let her study there and make her way. Music means hard work. You have to give up your life to it. Impossible for her to do, amma.”
Ayya went away inside.
Amma didn’t leave, though. She kept on standing there. When he came out, two and a half hours later, Ayya was taken aback.
“Haven’t you gone yet? What is this, amma?”
“Please teach her music. Let her stay with you here. Let her be like your own daughter.”
Ayya looked at Shenbagam. She could still remember the clothes she was wearing that day. A checked, green cotton paavaadai with a black border. And a yellow blouse with puffed sleeves. Amma had combed her hair back, and then taken a bunch to one side, tied it with a ribbon and encircled it with flowers. No chappals on her feet. She stood with her legs planted firmly apart, and stared back at Ayya.
“Let’s see, sing me a song,” he demanded.
Amma had primed her well before bringing her. At that time, Ayya had written and set to music a song in which Sita, as a young girl, asks who, in reality, are her parents. It was a moving, melodious song in Anandabhairavi, beginning, “Bhumi yen thaai endraal…If the earth is my mother…” Ayya himself had sung it in the temple, twice. She sang that song as she stood there, her arms folded. Looking straight ahead, she sang, making no movement at all with her body. Ayya was silent for a moment after she finished. Then he said, very tenderly, “Come here.”
She went up to him swiftly. He lifted her up and sat her next to him on the thinnai. He stroked her head. Then he looked up at her mother. Before he had finished speaking to Amma, she was fast asleep, her head on his lap.
He used often to talk about it, later on. “You put your head on my lap and fell asleep, as if you had somehow arrived at the very place to which you were destined to come.”
After that began the unending music practice. Ayya’s son Shanmugam was four years older than she was. She was made to sing with him. Within two months her mother went away to Delhi to cook for a south Indian family. She sent money regularly from there. She came to visit her once a year. She’d ask Shenbagam to sing to her, then. And she lived until the time of Shenbagam’s own first kachcheri. In every other way, she grew up as if she were Ayya’s daughter; and Ayya’s wife became her mother. Nagammal had a fine knowledge of Tamil literature. So one could say that she learnt music from Ayya and literature from Nagammal.
Ayya needed his drink, a whole bottle of it, every evening. He would sit down to it either with his musical friends, or by himself. It was during those sessions that he told his stories, passed on gossip, tried out the latest lyrics. It was at such a time, too, that he spoke about his mother.
But it was with Shanmugam that all her singing, her talking, her quarrelling, and her peacemaking took place. Shanmugam tended to be rather lazy. He took his daily practice very casually. He was offhand at lessons, as if to say, “My Ayya’s music is mine by right; who else can claim it?” He seemed to be under the impression that his father’s talents had already entered him through his very blood, and without any effort on his part. So he never exerted himself. When she and the other pupils woke up at four in the morning and began their voice-improving exercises, Shanmugam never joined them. And as if to prove that such disciplines were not necessary to it, his voice flowed abundantly, like a clear stream.
Ayya began to teach her to play the vina, since she needed to learn to play an instrument as well as to sing. He never allowed her to do such kitchen chores as chopping vegetables or cleaning vessels. He said her fingers would become worn out. If Nagammal was ever unwell, he never expected his own pupils to do the household chores. He managed everything himself, with the help of Shanmugam. She was never allowed to do anything other than to lay the banana leaves for meals, and to bring drinking water. He looked after her fingers to that extent.
“She is going to become really lazy,” Shanmugam would grumble. “Why don’t I start learning to play the vina as well? Then I won’t have to do any of these chores either, will I?”
“Why do you try to compete with her, da?” Ayya would ask him.
When Ayya wasn’t looking, Shanmugam would give her a knock on the head. Or he’d pull her plait when she was singing, and make her lose her concentration. It was a great game for him to watch her face all twisted up as she wept. All the same, it was he who climbed up the mango tree to pluck the fruit, who brought green cucumbers from the garden, who stole jaggery and coconut from the kitchen during the afternoon when Nagammal was asleep. All for her.
She was somewhat scared on the day she came of age. She went and stood by a window in one of the rooms at the back of the house, all alone. She was aware of a heaviness in her thighs. Would they isolate her for three whole days? Would she be allowed to sing? To touch her vina? To read the books in Ayya’s room?
She also remembered her mother who was somewhere far away, in Delhi. Amma had spoken to her about all this on her last visit. She had left a cotton half-sari with Nagammal before she went away, a sandalwood-coloured one, with a print of purple flowers. The same one that she wore now as she stood there. But she must sing! She must play the vina! She must take the fat books in Ayya’s room and place them on her lap like kittens, and riffle through their pages.
Ayya came there after a while. She started to cry when he walked straight up to her and laid her head against his chest saying, “My dear Princess.” Heaven knew how he intuited her state of mind. “You are anxious, aren’t you, whether you can sing, or play the vina, or touch books?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Silly girl! What connection is there between this and all that? Who told you to come and stand here all by yourself? Anyone may touch books or the vina whenever they please. Come out now.” He took her hand and led her out of the room. He spoke to Nagammal, who was busy at her work, “Nagu, don’t tell her to keep away from the others. You know I don’t like that sort of thing.”
“Of course,” said Nagamma, smiling at her. “I didn’t tell her. She went away by herself. She wouldn’t come out, however much I asked her.”
He spread out a jamukaalam in the front room and handed her the tampura. He summoned Shanmugam and all his other pupils. They sang together as usual. They also noticed she was wearing a half-sari. And so this event too flowed into all the other events of her life, causing no sudden rupture.
When Ayya chose her out of all his other pupils to sing with him at a kachcheri for the first time, there was some resentment on Shanmugam’s part. He accompanied them to the concert, but he did not sing. He assumed that Ayya had arranged it that way, deliberately. Just two days earlier, someone had come from elsewhere, one afternoon, to invite Ayya to give a performance. Shanmugam had invited him to sit on the thinnai, and then disappeared inside and forgotten all about him. When Ayya emerged two hours later, the gentleman was still sitting there. Seeing Ayya, he greeted him respectfully, and mentioned that he was very thirsty. As soon as Ayya realized that he had been waiting for two hours, he stormed inside and shouted out, “Shenbagam!”
Shenbagam, who had been sitting in Ayya’s room, looking at some books with Shanmugam, heard the anger in Ayya’s voice and came out.
“Did you call me, Ayya?”
“What is this, amma, do you just ask a man to sit down in the thinnai and forget about everything else? He’s come all this way in the midday heat. Shouldn’t you ask him whether he wants anything to eat or drink? What were you so busy about, in there?”
Shanmugam came out then, and said, “It was I who asked him to sit down, Ayya. I’m afraid I forgot about him. It didn’t strike me that it was going to be an important kachcheri. Judging from his clothes, I’d say you are not likely to get more than half a coconut out of it.”
Ayya took the towel off his shoulder and flung it at him. He went inside and brought out a chombu of water and a platter of fruit and snacks. He placed it on the thinnai, saying, “You must forgive me. My son forgot to tell me you were here.” He agreed to sing at the kachcheri.
After the man had left, Ayya came inside and said to Shanmugam, “A musician ought never to be arrogant, da.” Shanmugam didn’t reply. He merely looked at Shenbagam, raised his eyebrows and curled his lips.
It was for that very kachcheri that Ayya chose Shenbagam, out of all his pupils, to accompany him. He made her sing together with him, and at the end of the programme, he asked her to sing a couple of kirtanai on her own. The concert took place in a small village. They had just completed laying a main road, and it was in celebration of this that the concert was held. Apart from the microphone, and the small lights surrounding them, there was no other evidence of electricity being used there. None of the lamps shed a garish light. If anyone stood up and walked away carrying a battery-operated torch, its circle of light entrapped a few white shirts, or brightly coloured saris and cholis, or the cheeks of babies pressed against thighs, as they lay fast asleep. Between the audience and the performers on stage, a bridge was established within the very first minutes. Crossing it again and again, the two could touch each other. When Ayya had finished, there was no applause at all. Then, an old gentleman came forward and said, “Ayya, we have sat here this evening, spellbound by your music. I am now in my eightieth year. I have no idea whether there is such a thing as another birth or not. But if there should be such a thing, then I pray that I should be born a child in your household. I want to go on listening to your music.” Then, having learnt about Ayya’s usual ways, he held out a bottle towards him. Ayya did not refuse it. But from the presentation platter that held his fee, he took only the half coconut, saying, “Please buy some sweets with this money, and give them to those children who never cried or made any trouble tonight.”
That night, as their bullock cart went slowly along the road that wound its way among fields and woods, Ayya said, “Shanmugam, don’t think I asked Shenbagam to sing tonight in order to punish you in any way. There is no connection at all between this and what happened the other day. Shenbagam has outstripped the rest of you and gone a long distance ahead. She has worked that hard.”
After that Shanmugam began to practise fiercely, like a demon.
Ayya began to make arrangements for Shenbagam’s arangetram, her first public performance. It was held at a school in their town, on a modest scale, without much flourish. He did not forget to invite her mother. But Shenbagam had a secret that would take Ayya by surprise at the arangetram. She had composed a varnam describing a peacock dancing amidst a dense forest, set it to music as a raagamalikai; and she sang this in place of the usual invocation to Vinayakar. It contained her own signature in the line, “Kadirvel Nagamiruvar magal Shenbagam manam magizha…That the heart of Shenbagam, daughter of Kadirvel and the two Nagams, may rejoice.” As soon as they returned home, Shanmugam asked, “Isn’t it a sign of arrogance, Ayya, to sing without praying to Vinayakar?”
“No, da. Hers is the pride of knowledge. You need that too, da,” said Ayya.
Amma deeply appreciated that special signature and its reference. Her name was Nagavalli. When Shenbagam invoked the two Nagams, she bound herself to her mother once again. It was as if it made up for all those years of cooking in other people’s houses. But she wasn’t there for Shenbagam’s next kachcheri.
Shenbagam was invited to give at least five or six kachcheris in a year. Meanwhile, Shanmugam too began by singing together with Ayya, and then went on to take the stage alone and to give his own solo concerts.
One couldn’t say at what instant exactly the deep bond between them became established. Perhaps, without their ever realizing it, it had been burgeoning deep within them. When Ayya spoke to her about getting married, she never said a word. “You mustn’t marry a man who will stop you from giving performances,” he said. “He must respect your music.” Neither did she reply when he asked her whether he should look for a bridegroom from her own community, or what he should do. Shanmugam intercepted her in the corridor as she came away from this conversation.
“Shenbagam, how can you even think of looking for a bridegroom elsewhere? You’ve got to marry me.”
An intense happiness rose up within her. Quickly she went up to him and held him tightly. She stroked his bare chest with her face.
When they told Ayya about their wishes, he did not reply to them immediately. Nagammal, however, hugged her with joy. Then Ayya said to Shanmugam, “Why don’t you let it be for a couple of years? What’s the hurry?”
“Now that it’s been decided, why should we put it off?” Shanmugam asked in his turn.
“Let her grow up a bit,” Ayya said.
For a couple of days, Shanmugam and she went around with long faces. After that Ayya agreed to fix their wedding date. Then two months passed as they touched and learnt each other, astonished and delighted each other. They were overwhelmed by their joy, wave upon wave. Not a single new song was practised. During the third month, she had an invitation to do a kachcheri in a different town. After she had accepted by telegram, she decided on her programme, and then sat down with Ayya to discuss it. He suggested a few changes. He promised to teach her a couple of new pieces.
While they were eating, Ayya told Shanmugam about the new pieces, and suggested they learn them together. Immediately Shanmugam asked, “Is Shenbagam going to give concerts?”
“What do you mean? What else is she going to do? Cook?” Ayya asked sharply.
“No, Ayya. But why should she go rushing about everywhere? Let her sing as much as she wants to, at home. These concerts will only exhaust her. Leave me to do the running around. Let her rest at home.”
Ayya continued to eat without saying a word. Later, when she went into his room with his drinking water, he spoke to her brusquely. “Go on, go on. Run your household. Have your babies.”
She stood there quietly. Her eyes filled.
“Why are you crying, wretched girl?”
“Will you teach me the new pieces?”
“We’ll begin tomorrow. Go on,” he said, without anger.
He never stopped teaching until he died. The outside world claimed that Shanmugam was the true heir to his music. Awards, degrees, presentation shawls, and citations kept on coming to him. The days when he and Shenbagam sang together gradually faded away. Along with the concerts came the pomp and show of success. Shanmugam entered the huge world of acolytes and sycophants as well as of true artists. Shenbagam lived with him. She stood close by him. From where she sat behind him, she handed him his milk. But somewhere, at a place invisible to the eye, they continued to be as wrestlers, locked in their struggle.
“Anni, could you give me some hot milk, please, with turmeric powder in it?” asked Somu, the sishya, coming into the kitchen.
“Why, aren’t you feeling well?”
“I coughed a couple of times, Anni.”
The bangles were still on his wrists.
It happened about three years earlier. While Shanmugam was away from home, Somu pestered her to teach him the varnam she had composed, and Shenbagam did so. He sang it at a small function a little later, citing her as the composer. By chance, a famous vidwan happened to be in the audience. He had made it an unswerving rule that no woman should be on stage with him while he performed. Apparently he had ridiculed the boy later, saying, “What is this, appa, you’ve started to take lessons from a woman, have you? Do one thing. Get a couple of bangles for your wrists.”
“Bangles won’t be a problem, Anna. Look, I can get a pair straight away,” Somu replied. And he went off in haste to the jewellery shop and returned, wearing a pair of silver bangles. Later, Shanmugam scolded him for showing up the vidwan in that way. But Somu refused to remove the bangles.
As Somu was drinking his milk, another pupil came in haste to tell them that Rangasami had arrived. Within the next instant, Rangasami himself walked right inside the house.
“Shenbagamma, a terrible mistake has happened,” he said in consternation.
Shenbagam came out of the kitchen into the main room asking, “Why, what’s the matter?” She invited him to sit down, and sat down herself.
“I’ve been out of town for a whole month. I fixed Shanmugam Anna’s concert date, and then went away. I asked the man working under me to arrange for the orchestra. He’s somewhat new to all this and doesn’t understand all the conventions. Not realizing what he was doing…he’s gone and engaged women artists…Both the violinist and ghatam player are ladies. What shall we do?”
“When it comes to music, what does it matter whether the artist is a man or a woman, sir? In our Ayya’s family, the women played all manner of instruments, mridangam, kanjira, everything. Even in those days, when they used to say that it was not necessary for women to sing raagam, taanam, and pallavi, the women of his lineage would sing raagams, and even go on to swarams. This is our Ayya’s son. He won’t say anything. Please go ahead.” With these words of comfort, she sent him away.
Meanwhile Somu stood by, fingering his silver bangles. Shanmugam climbed on to the stage, his brocaded shawl glittering, greeted the audience, and sat down. A look of surprise crept across his face as his eyes swept over the accompanying artists on either side of him. By this time, Rangasami began to introduce the musicians.
Shanmugam began his first song, and paused for a moment at the point where Somu could join in with him. But just then Somu appeared to be looking elsewhere and not paying attention. A second time, Shanmugam contrived to pause, creating an opportune moment for Somu to join in; but the boy did not seem to notice. A split second later Shenbagam leaned towards the mike in front of Somu, repeated the line that Shanmugam had just sung, and joined in with the melody. Her eyes blazed into his, as Shanmugam turned towards her, startled. Her entire face was illuminated as she smiled. A huge applause rang out from the audience. Shanmugam looked at her as if he had been caught in a tight hold and wrestled to the ground at a totally unexpected moment. In an instant, Somu took away the tampura from her hands and moved the mike in front of her. Shenbagam led into the next line herself.
Perhaps Shanmugam was perspiring in spite of the air-conditioning in the room. He removed the shawl that was draped around his shoulders, laid it aside, and began to sing with Shenbagam.