Subbulakshmi: The agony behind the ecstasy
| Film-maker and lyricist Gulzar used these words to describe the music of Begum Abida Parveen. But they could as well apply to the glorious majesty of devotion that resides in the spirit of M S Subbulakshmi even better. |
| T J S George's M S: A Life in Music is perhaps one of the first comprehensive books on the most melodious Indian voice ever. |
| And while George is a wonderful writer who manages to hold the reader's attention, whether he is describing nuances of a musical performance or narrating feuds between Subbulakshmi's husband and mother, he devotes a considerable portion of the book to laying down the details of Carnatic music. |
| A substantial part of the first 100-odd pages is spent exclusively on the evolution of Carnatic music and the social fabric that laid the foundations for the rigidly theocratic schools of south Indian music. |
| Readers who want to find out more about the life and persona of MS may feel impatient (like I was) with this, but it is as good a concise explanation of the genre as any. |
| In fact George has been better at drawing a cultural image of pre and post independence south India than he has been in actually fleshing out the diva's persona. |
| Of course, as he is swift to mention in the first line of the Foreword, after spending five years collecting material for the book, he "abandoned the project" owing to the absolute absence of any record of sorts about Subbulakshmi's life and the "fortress erected around her by her husband, Sadasivam". |
| That is why, as one gets into the details of the book, anecdotes and cultural elaborations take pride of place rather than the evolution of the great vocalist. |
| MS's life, as evident from the biography, has been controlled by other people "" and this despite the fact that she was "a lot more mature for her age" and did not want to be 'married off' as was the custom in those days. |
| She was almost like a jewel, that people wanted to possess "" be it her mother, the gritty Shanmugavadivu, who despite the familial burdens and social stigma attached to a devadasi, chiselled her gifted daughter the way she wanted or, her husband Sadasivam, and the man 'who made M S Subbulakshmi', who would answer all questions addressed to the diva by the media, justifying the action as "if you ask a rosebud how it opens into a flower, can it answer?" |
| The inevitable war between mother and husband was also a war between two cities "" Madurai and Madras "" two ideals "" the traditional and the populist "" and two diametrically opposite social segments "" the devadasi and the Tamil Brahmin. |
| The author brings out this conflict beautifully with the tragic note that in her last days MS could have taken better care of the ailing Shanmugavadivu. |
| While the drama in trying to possess Subbulakshmi has all the ingredients of a mainstream pot-boiler, George leads us to believe that MS was largely passive in this extensive tug-of-war and chose to stay with the man who lured her with the prosperity and glamour of filmdom. |
| Whether cinema did provide the diva the impetus to establish herself despite the string of flops is a matter of debate, but it is interesting to note that even someone with a voice as divine as hers played a male part "" Narad "" in a mythological film. |
| But the MS aura was gradually embellished by the extensive political patronage she received from amongst others Gandhi, who requested her to sing Meera bhajans, Sarojini Naidu who said that she "surrendered her 'Nightingale of India' title to her" and Nehru, who delivered the overquoted "who am I a mere Prime Minister before a Queen of Songs". |
| But Subbulakshmi's magic never needed any ratification. The 'Shehnai of the south' as Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan once described her, reached out to listeners who never understood a word of what she was singing. |
| Sadly, George's book does not have many elaborate first-hand accounts of live concerts where M S is said to have moved even the most stoic, mathematically-inclined Tamilian (whose favourite pre-occupation would be to mark complex eleven-beat rhythm patterns) to tears. |
| There are many anecdotes on the Carnatic concert circuit about violinists like Lalgudi Jayaraman, who once matched the lowest octaves of T N Seshagopalan by tuning down the bass string of his Stradivari. |
| It is a pity that George did not reach out to avid listeners and M S disciples to mine out such interesting stuff. |
| Nevertheless, he gives us a detailed insight into Subbulakshmi's 'Bhakti' philosophy, which despite being criticised as being overdone was something that she brought into every south Indian home. |
| What was deeply personal, like her private sadhana, became all-pervasive and the Suprabhatams, or recitational morning prayers, reached out to people on account of their flawless simplicity. |
| What George has also done, and which many MS fanatics might find unpardonable, is the humanisation of the diva. |
| In the appendix to the book, titled 'From MS with love', he published a collage of 20-odd letters from Subbulakshmi to the man she evidently loved dearly "" G N Balasubramanyam. |
| The yearnings of a woman tied to the rigours of discipline, nevertheless, could have been incorporated as a chapter in the book, but as George sums it up, "the letters unveil for us an MS who is all human, and all woman." Her divinity, though, will continue to be her immortal stamp for every future listener. |
| M S A Life In Music |
| T J S George HarperCollins Price: Rs 495 |