My grandmother Lalitha Bai was an accomplished veena player. She had learnt under her teacher Ranganatha Bhagavathar at Salem. Her father Setty S.N.Padmanabha Chetty ( Founder : Gopala Padma Vilas - Estd : 1916 ) of Salem was a scholarly businessman who was known for his successful business practices. He was known as SNP ( 1893 - 1973 ) and was married to Parvathavardhini Thayar of Karur. The couple were blessed with Ramanathan, Vitto Bai, Lalitha Bai and Subhadra.
My grandmother Lalitha Bai was an accomplished veena player. She had learnt under her teacher Ranganatha Bhagavathar at Salem. Her father Setty S.N.Padmanabha Chetty ( Founder : Gopala Padma Vilas - Estd : 1916 ) of Salem was a scholarly businessman who was known for his successful business practices. He was known as SNP ( 1893 - 1973 ) and was married to Parvathavardhini Thayar of Karur. The couple were blessed with Ramanathan, Vitto Bai, Lalitha Bai and Subhadra.
My great grand father was a lover of music. I have heard my grand mother telling me about his bhajans and his old tambura is still preserved by us at home. He was keen to get his daughters trained in music under a good teacher. They began their musical sojourn under the extremely talented Duraiswamy Iyengar. The master had belonged to the Guru Sishya Parampara of Thyagaraja. Grandmother used to tell us that the teachers of the yonder era used to write the notes with the aid of a pencil and the students had to write on the same script with a pen. She learnt singing from Duraiswamy Iyengar and on gaining a bit of proficiency Ranganatha Bhagavathar became her veena teacher. The spic and span household in the Bazaar Street in Salem housed a number of veenas. SNP had purchased one veena for each daughter and one edhir veena for the teacher. The veenas were later given to the daughters after they moved over post marriage. Each of them had been carefully tested and purchased with the help of Ranganatha Bhagavathar.
Chennakrishniah of Salem had been an eminent citizen and Ranganatha Bhagavathar had come to Salem in order to teach his daughter Rajalakshmi and her sister. He stayed back and began to teach a number of people in Salem. The master used to insist that his students practice independently . My great grandfather used to get his kids to play the veena and observe their development. He had been a great motivator for his kids. Great grand mother had also been a great support. The veena tuition notebook belonging to my grandmother is with us and it throws a lot of insight on the subject. Details of dates, classes , songs and fees paid are found in the notebook. The brown paper wrapper was done by granny herself and she had lived by the dictum which was similar to that of her father - A place for everything and everything in its place.
The notebook has 25/10/1937 as the first date on record and it goes until the year 1941. The swaram or notes were written in one colour and the song or sahityam in another colour. Granny got married to my grandfather Krishnan in 1942 and moved over to Coimbatore. The veena and her note book moved along with her. Her father had made a nice rosewood case for holding the veena. Granny used to play every evening in front of God. She used to begin with Vatapi Ganapathim by Muthuswamy Dikshithar. I have seen her sing the song and play notes simultaneously in both our Vysial Street and Trichy Road residences. Her father in law P.A.Raju Chettiar and mother in law Rajalakshmi used to enjoy her music. The first two daughters in laws Lalitha and Indrani Viswanathan used to play the same song in different pitches at the same time.
Grandmother continued to learn under Ranganatha Bhagavathar during her summer stays at Salem. She used to spend a lot of time with her parents at the time of child birth and her teacher used to teach her even during her advanced stage of pregnancy. The movie Meera was released at the time when my father was born and granny was supposed to go to Salem for delivery. Those were times when the theatres had just the evening and night shows. That is the reason for the evening show being known as the first show. My great grand parents had a special matinee show for my grandmother at the family owned Raja Theatres in order to make sure that she would not miss the musical movie.
My father K.Govindarajulu was the first child and granny wanted him to learn music. She took the help of Ranganatha Bhagavathar to get a cute little veena and tambura for him. It was got but somehow he never learnt how to play veena from a teachert. He learnt the guitar, mandolin, jalatharangam and violin. He could however play the veena and the harmonium. Father was a born musician like his mother. He was immensely talented. Granny had taken the help of her teacher Ranganatha Bhagavathar once again in order to get the Jalatharangam set from Bengaluru over sixty years ago. He had gone to the garden city specifically and got porcelain bowls after checking on them. My father could just use a plain bowl ( even without water ) and use just a soup spoon for playing the Jalatharangam. My mother Aravindakumari was also from Salem. Granny wanted her to learn veena and she enlisted the support of Ranganatha Bhagavathar for the same. My mother moved to Salem at the time of my birth for a few months. Ranganatha Bhagavathar used to teach her music with the veena until the time of my birth. My mother stopped her veena practices thereafter but her notebook is well preserved.
Nirmala, my aunt and others learnt how to play the veena. Granny would involve herself with the purchase of the veenas. Radha Venkatesan was one of the veena teachers who used to come home. Granny used to spend a lot of time with her and it used to give her great joy to discuss about Carnatic music. She told us that if you sing or play the instrument well, the Ragadevatha would be happily present on the spot. However one was not supposed to upset the Ragadevatha. She used to play the Ragams, Megharanjani and Amruthavarshini at times of scarce rainfall. My uncle Shankar used to love her rendering of Nagumomu on the veena. Granny used to talk about Annamacharya, Purandaradasa, Thyagaraja and his Ramabhakthi , Muthuswamy Dikhshitar and his veena, the tala speciality of Syama Sastri and his devotion to Bangaru Kamakshi. Her notebook and books had pictures of Veenai Dhanammal. Granny had a number of recorded spools of music. Veena Balachander, Chitti Babu were part of her everyday chat with all of us. She literally lived and breathed music.
" I remember my sister in law playing the records repeatedly in order to make notes. She would write the swaram, talam and the name of the ragam. I used to love to listen to her playing the ' band ' on her veena with effortless ease. She used all the strings and frets for playing it. I remember waiting in front of her in order to listen to her playing the ' band ' on her veena. This was seventy years ago, " recalls her brother in law Damotharan. She used to show an arathi to her veena every Friday. Our residence used to have a big display of musical instruments and books at the time of the Saraswathi Pooja. Granny and others used to play the veena on Vijayadasami. I remember her waiting for reading the music related columns in the Deepawali Malars published by Kalki, Kalaimagal and Amudhasurabhi. She simply loved watching the Thiruvaiyaru Thyagaraja Aradhana year on year and her wish had been to play and sing along with the musicians in front of the icon of the Saint composer.
I was just going through her veena notebooks. Could see the notes connected to Viribhoni, Parathpara. I was reminded of her talking about Swathi Thirunal, Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavathar, Subbudu, Harikesanallur Muthiah Bhagavathar, G.N.Balasubramaniam , M.L.Vasanthakumari, M.S. Subbhulakshmi and Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer. She used to play songs composed by Bhadrachala Ramadas and regale us with stories connected with his Ramabhakthi. The compositions of Uthukaadu Venkatakavi and Bharathiar were always in her thought. I got married to Sujatha and she had also learnt under Radha Venkatesan. Granny used to enjoy listening to my wife playing the veena and used to happily offer a few tips.
Granny used to change the strings in the veena and set the sruthi with ease. She would teach others her methods and people used to reach out to her in order to pick up some of her techniques. Granny used to often talk about Kalpanaswaram. I would often think that she would have made a great vainika had she been given a platform. She used to tell us about Thanjavur Raghunatha Nayak and his innovations connected with the veena.
My aunt Nimmakka ( Nirmala ) had taken granny's veena out at the time of the Saraswathi Pooja. I was instantly drawn towards for I was reminded of my beloved granny. On just touching the strings and strumming them I could feel that her veena had a soul filled with music.