Forerunner

One could argue that this is the spot from where Chennai's tryst with regional cuisines really took off. Nair's Mess is older for sure, but tucked away in Triplicane, it catered to a very niche clientele. This location, across the road from the Music Academy was an unorthodox choice by Ravikumar Reddy to set up a non-vegetarian, Andhra-food only restaurant. When it opened on December 14, 1980, the kutcheri season was about to start; it would have been unreasonable to assume that the carnatic music aficionados would make a beeline to eat non-veg food. 

But Amaravathi has thrived. Ravikumar's bet has paid off quite handsomely; Amaravathi has been the font for his firm to open several other specialty restaurants, mainly in the same neighbourhood. Kabul, for the NWF cuisine, Karaikudi for Chettinad stuff and quite a few others. 

Maybe Amaravathi has been un-ambitious by remaining a single-location brand. But maybe because of this, the brand has not been copied by wannabes. So you can be sure that when you get to Amaravathi, you are at the original!

Local music

Despite being one of, if not the oldest extant language in the world, Tamizh has been finding acceptance as a 'musical' language only in the past few decades. Despite evidence going back to the 6th-8th century CE indicating a very robust Tamizh music heritage from Silapathikaram, Divyaprabhandam and similar works, even as staunch a Tamizh poet as Bharatiyar wrote of "Sundara Telunginil paatisathu" (composing songs in melodious Telugu). So it is not a surprise that the classical music scene of the 1930s Madras was made up of overwhelmingly Telugu compositions, with Tamizh songs being relegated to the tukkada (sundries) section. 

Some prominent folks of Madras (and other cities) decided to do something about this. They coalesced the call for pure Tamizh music by setting up the Tamil Isai Sangam in 1943. Raja Sir Annamalai  Chettiar had convened the first Tamil Isai conference in Chidambaram in 1941, and backed efforts for similar conferences in other cities as well. Others who joined him in setting up the Sangam were RK Shunmukham Chettiar, Rao Bahadur VS Thyagaraja Mudaliar of Tiruvarur, Dewan Bahadur CS Ruthnasabapathy Mudaliar of Coimbatore and others from other cities of the Madras Presidency. 

The world of classical music was split; there were singers who were ambivalent about it, such as Musiri and Semmangudi; Kalki Krishnamurthy wrote in favour; TT Krishnamachari Iyengar and TL Venkatarama Iyer backed the Music Academy and Telugu compositions. It was the support of the ladies: singers like DK Pattammal, MS Subbulakshmi and KB Sundarambal supported Tamizh. Over time, the vociferous arguments died down and today, it is perfectly okay for Sanjay Subrahmanyan to do an exclusive "Tamizhum Naanum" event; and when he performs at the Raja Annamalai Mandram, these doors will need to be far larger to allow the audience to go through!

Of course, the Raja Annamalai Mandram has other entrances, too. This is just the one at the front!

Question back

It was unreasonably exciting to be back at an open quiz after... well, quite a while. The Republic Day quiz began in 2002 as something of a counterbalance to the Landmark Quiz, which has morphed into something else, I think. 

And the Quiz did not disappoint. Great questions, great participation, a celebration of the trivial and the esoteric. The school kids - there were quite a lot of them participating - were all enthusiastic to the extent that the Quizmaster had to shush them up every now and then, for fear that they'd give away the answers to the teams on stage. 

Came away feeling that it is time to get back into the quizzing groove. Soon, soon!

 

Thrice-born

It is New Year's Day and I'm going to break with the tradition of posting the 'Photo of the Year'* today; I'm going further, to talk about someone who was not merely a dwijan by heritage, but a trijan (if there is such a term), by having had two re-births his career, one that defined his life. That career was born in 1904-5 when a boy of nine performed at a Srikrishna Temple in Palakkad. As the boy grew to adolescence, the voice that had captivated his listeners must have broken in a way that threatened his singing career; there is little detail on how he got past that setback and was re-born into his singing life. Maybe that was how he developed a resonant voice, so striking that he was on occasion referred to as "bronze-voiced". 

More serious was the second occasion. That bronze voice, now belonging to a seasoned and respected singer, was in full flow at a concert; at the end, its owner realised that he had lost it. And he then had to endure six months of suspense, during which period various remedies were tried; finally, the voice came back - thanks to the intervention of Sri Guruvayoorappan, his favourite deity. That was his third life, the one in which every paisa that he made from his concerts went directly to the Srikrishna Temple at Guruvayoor. It is beyond today's imagination to think of performing the Udayasthamana Puja there (bookings are no longer being taken because the current list runs for about forty years or something) even once, but he was able to do it sixty-one times. 

Much of his recognition came from Madras; it was here, from this house on (then) Palace Road, Santhome, that he taught his disciples. Many of them are famous in their own right - P. Leela, the Jaya-Vijaya twins, TV Gopalakrishnan and KJ Yesudas. It was from the thinnai of this house that their careers began. The house itself was given to him by TG Krishna Iyer, a friend who had composed 155 kritis, collectively known as Lalitha Dasar Krithigal. In October of 1974, he went back to perform at Poozhikunnu Srikrishna Temple at Ottapalam, where he had, 70 years ago, had his debut. After that performance, he just slipped off his mortal coils while performing his sandhyavandanam - going the way he always wished to. Srikrishna was kind to him; and why wouldn't he be, for Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar was as close to a saint as any mortal can ever aspire to be!

*The community of City Daily Photographers celebrates Theme Day every month. Go over to this site to see the best pictures from around the world!

Lining up early

Stepped out of the house at 5:00am today; it is the 89th anniversary of the Music Academy and a few of us were going on a tour of the Academy's many locations before it acquired its own premises - that's the iconic TT Krishnamachari Auditorium on Cathedral Road. That tour had to start from the TTK auditorium and when we got there, we found there was a crowd of about a hundred people waiting. 

Many of them had formed some kind of a line, the chairs lined up from the ticket windows to the entrance doors, and beyond. The rest, about 20, were standing in a group a little apart. We quickly figured out where to go, we were to stand with the group. The rest of the crowd, sitting in line, were waiting for the ticket windows to open so they could try and get tickets for the kacheri of the day. And that was going to be Sanjay Subrahmanyan (we have spoken about him before here and here), the Academy's Sangeeta Kalanidhi of 2015-16.

Of course the line would have gotten longer. Not for the music-loving Chennaiite the long queues formed because of demonetisation. We would rather wait in line for a kacheri ticket, and not be perturbed in the least because we were way behind in the line, and tickets were sold out before we were even close to having our chance. Anyway, the good thing was that there was some 'Academy' coffee being handed out to those waiting for tickets - and I managed to snuck some of that!

Tuck in

A little behind the Music Academy, on TTK Road, this eatery has been a haunt for the displaced Malayalee ever since it opened about 30 years ago. I think it is a slight exaggeration to call it a restaurant, for it is a very basic operation. Tables, chairs, steel plates - maybe a few plain china plates as well - the waiters dressed as they please, no uniforms here, it gets to be about as authentic a Kerala experience as possible.

There are some outfits that try to keep up with their early clientele, growing old - 'evolving', if you will - with them. And then there are others that try to stay young, staying with their original reputation, forever attracting a new generation of patrons. That approach runs the risk of being branded 'downmarket', especially if the new generation considers their offerings too old-fashioned.

Kalpaka has probably got its act down well; their menu is just the standard, solid, regular fare, things that the Malayalee has been used to for maybe a couple of centuries. Aapam, the Kerala porotta, and the Kerala Syrian Beef Fry. These are comfort foods for the non-resident Keralite and there is still a regular inflow of them into the city, keeping Kalpaka in business - and true to its coconut oil roots!

The other one

Set back a little from the road, this is not really an eye-catching property. Forty years ago, when it opened for business, it would probably have been, if only because it was one of the few multi-storeyed buildings on this stretch. It opened in 1975; it seems to have stayed in the '70s even today. The staff are long-timers, and the hotel clock hasn't bothered to keep pace with the hectic life of today. It is therefore something of an anachronism on this stretch. 

But Hotel Maris has a lot of things going for it. The rooms are still in the '70s sizes, which means the guests have a lot of space going for them. The service is reasonable, even if it is not fast. The food is - well, you may not have too many choices in the hotel itself, but with its location, you can step out, across or round the corner for a wide range of choices. That's the big plus for this hotel - its location. It is convenient for folks wanting to go to the American Consulate for their visa interviews, or for those coming in for the music season, and maybe even for those who come in to Chennai looking to get their daughters into Stella Maris, just about half-a-kilometre away.

But the Maris-es are different. The hotel's website acknowledges its neighbour, but disclaims any inspiration for its name. The college is named for the 'Star of the Seas'; the hotel, on the other hand, has a different reason for the name. It was set up, and continues to be owned by the Maris Group, which has its headquarters in Trichy. And that group was named after its founder, Mariapillai!

Playtime

It took R. (Kalki) Krishnamurthy nearly three-and-a-half years to write it. It originally appeared as a serial in Kalki, the magazine that Krishnamurthy was the editor of. The first instalment was published in November 1950; with that, the popularity of the magazine went up. Readers waited eagerly for the next issue and the print run of the magazine needed to be increased, going on to touch 75,000 soon. Family members scrapped with each other to be the first to read the weekly and over about 200 weeks, the story of Arulmozhivarman, later Raja Raja Chozhan. Mixing fact and imagination, Ponniyin Selvan was a masterpiece, establishing historic fiction as a genre in Tamizh.

To celebrate the golden jubilee of the work, Magic Lantern came up with a stage adaptation of the epic. It had a hugely successful run, but it was limited - by design. For Magic Lantern, it was an ambitious production and one they carried off successfully. It was therefore only natural that when SS International Live wanted to create a landmark event, they turned to Ponniyin Selvan, and of course, to Magic Lantern.

It was an enthralling drama. Compressing 2,400 pages of the work into a near-4-hour show is not easy and there were enough in the audience feeling bad that many incidents had been left out. But for someone who has not yet read the work (yes, English translations are available), it was a grand introduction to a story so much part of the popular lore that it is treated as history itself!

The Trust and the Hall

This building, on TTK Road, is so often referred to as the Narada Gana Sabha that it takes a moment for even the insiders to correct themselves: it is the Sathguru Gnanananda Hall. Narada Gana Sabha is of course the Trust which owns this hall, much the same way that Music Academy owns the TT Krishnamachari Auditorium. 

The Music Academy had also provided space for the Narada Gana Sabha in its early days. Actually not in its earliest days: for the first three years since its founding on February 9, 1958, the Narada Gana Sabha operated from 90, V.M. Street, Mylapore. It was only after that the Music Academy premises were used. From 1961 to 1988, the Music Academy was the home of the Sabha's performances. 

It was in 1988 that this Hall was inaugurated. Why it took 13 years from the laying of the foundation stone in 1975 to its opening in 1988 can only be speculated upon. But ever since, this has been the Narada Gana Sabha for the folks of Chennai!

Theosophy in Triplicane

The words "Theosophical Society" immediately call to mind that lovely 250-acre campus of Huddleston Gardens, on the southern bank of the Adyar river. That is quite fitting, since that campus is indeed the international headquarters of the Theosophical Society. However, there is at least one other place that carries the name, even though it is today a forgotten footnote in the history of the Theosophist movement itself.

This building on Raja Hanumantha Street in Triplicane, is named the "Mani Ayyar Hall", after (Sir - he relinquished the knighthood later) Subramania Iyer, who was one of the Vice Presidents of the Society in the early twentieth century. 'Mani Ayyar' died in 1924, by which time he had had a rift with the Theosophical Society. Therefore, this building was in all likelihood constructed by his followers, who may have styled themselves The Triplicane Theosophical Society, for that is what it says on the facade of this building. 

It is difficult to imagine now, but this building once hosted the annual conference of the Music Academy. The first conference of the Music Academy was in the Senate House, in 1929 and the next year, the conference moved a little further inland, to the Mani Ayyar hall!

Hosting the Academy

It is not the oldest of the music sabhas in the city, but it ranks among the top 3 in that category. For quite a long time, the Sri Parthasarathy Swamy Sabha was the lone ranger; from the time it was founded in 1900, until the Music Academy came into being in 1928, there was no other sabha in Madras. 

The Music Academy's founding - in the wake of a resolution by the All India Congress Committee - led to a mini-rash of similar institutions coming up. Of the ones that followed, only two continue to be active: the Indian Fine Arts Society and the Rasika Ranjani Sabha. The latter, established in 1929 in Mylapore, seems to have enjoyed better facilities in the early days. It had its own concert hall on Sundareswarar Swamy Street. The concert hall was most likely named after the street, and Sundareswarar Hall hosted many of the prominent musicians of the day. In 1958, the Sundareswarar Hall was renovated and the new venue served the RR Sabha for over half-a-century. The current renovation - which should be completed soon (if it hasn't been already), will hopefully see the hall continue to use its current name.

Because that's a name that has hosted the Music Academy itself - before the Academy got its current premises, it conducted its annual conferences at different venues: and among them the Sundareswarar Hall was an early choice!

A picture of the trinity

Everybody knows of the Trinity. No, not the ones of religion, but those of Carnatic music. And if you know of them, I'll bet that even as you read this, you will be seeing them sitting together, Dikshitar with his veena, Thyagarajar and Syama Sastri with their tamburus, the former facing us and the latter showing us his left profile. I'm sure I've won the bet, for that's how most of us, especially those who haven't read up on Carnatic music to any great extent, have known of this trinity. Even on the (separate) postage stamps released to honour these individuals, the images of Muthuswami Dikshitar and Syama Sastri are exactly the same as you'd see on the pictures of the Trinity.

So why is Thyagaraja different? Part of the reason could be due to the growing influence of a versatile gentleman named Rajam. In 1961, when Thyagaraja's stamp was released, he was around 42 years old; while he was well-respected for his music and his art, the latter hadn't reached that stage of universal recognition where everyone knows the painting but has no clue as to the artist! By 1976, when Dikshitar was accorded the honour of a postage stamp, the image was the one that Rajam was also basing his work upon, for that meant quick recognition. In 1985, when the stamp on Syama Sastri was being prepared, Rajam's painting was used as the basis for the stamp (but credit was apparently not given). The story goes that an unknown artist had begun work on a portrait of Sastri, but could only complete it till the neck before composer's death. It was Rajam who gave it a body and, in the 1940s, brought together the three greats when the Music Academy commissioned him to paint the Trinity.

Since then, Rajam has made literally hundreds of the Trinity paintings; last week, when some of us had a chance to visit him at home, he showed us a pile of the same paintings that he was working on, among others. As he sketched an outline for us, it was indeed an honour to see the image of the Trinity coming into shape before our eyes!

The patriarch

Founded in 1928, The Music Academy was conceptualized as an institution to promote the study, practice and performance of Carnatic music around the area of its birth. The idea arose at the All India Music Conference of 1927. Now the All India Music Conference itself began as a sideshow of the Indian National Congress' annual sessions, so when it was Chennai's turn to host the Congress session, S.Sathyamurthy wanted the Music Conference also to be conducted with it. At the end of the Conference, one of the resolutions that were passed was a request to "organise a Music Academy in Madras for the purpose of improving and encouraging Indian Music and to consider the various problems concerning the theory and practice of Indian Music". Probably this was the influence of a paper presented by Mr. Ramachandran, titled "The Need for an Academy of Music".

Formally, The Music Academy came into being on August 18, 1928, when it was inaugurated by CP Ramaswamy Aiyer. Dr. U.Rama Rau was its Founder-President and so, the office of the Academy began functioning out of his dispensary at 323, Thambu Chetty Street. Mandated to hold annual music conferences and other music conferences whenever convenient, the newly formed academy always struggled to find suitable venues. The first few conferences (annual or otherwise) were held at various parts of Chennai: behind the Ripon Building; at 'Funnels', on General Patters Road, at Woodlands, Royapettah, at the University's Senate House and even at Dr. Rama Rau's dispensary. Tired of such itinerant conferences, TT Krishnamachari and Kasturi Srinivasan worked hard to come up with this permanent complex for the Academy, and are remembered through the names of the auditoria in the complex.

Somewhat surprisingly, it took seven years fom the time the foundation stone was laid by Jawaharlal Nehru to the day when Sri Jayachamaraja Wodeyar declared it open. Thankfully, the time taken seems to have been worth it!

The landmark event

There is a story about how James Daly, a theatre owner in Dublin went around one night scrawling the word 'Quiz?' on several walls of the city. By the next day, many people had seen this word and understood that it indicated some kind of test of knowledge; thus did Daly win on a bet that he could, overnight, introduce a new word into English! I'm not sure if this story is entirely true; if it were proven to be false, one reason could be that Daly scrawled the word not on the walls of Dublin, but on those of Madras.

Where else can you hope to find over 2000 people gathering on a holiday afternoon to do nothing other than answer 40 questions (ranging from "Other than India, which two countries celebrate their Independence Day on August 15?" to "What would you find right on top of the Wimbledon Men's Singles Trophy?"). A large majority of them do it despite knowing that to be one of the 8 teams qualifying for the finals typically needs a score upwards of 30. That's the charm of the Landmark Quiz: they make you believe that you are only 2 points away from qualifying for the finals and then leave you knowing just that little more than when you started the quiz, though you would have ended scoring only 13 points! And therefore you come back the next year, because you know that if it is August 15, it must be the Landmark Quiz in Chennai.

This is the 15th consecutive year of the Quiz; in that time it has grown to be India's largest open quiz, attracting teams from nearby cities. It has also moved and includes a Bangalore and a Pune edition too, with the top teams from these cities fighting it out in the National Finals (begun this year). Of course, that was won by a team from Chennai, who had qualified after travelling to Bangalore and winning the quiz there - with such a record, how can any other city claim to be the quiz capital of India?

And the road widens

"Alright, gentlemen, we need some space. So we're just gonna smash in your walls, level the ground, roll it over with some tar and let the public have a less congested passage through this junction." I am sure that's not how it was phrased, but on three sides of the Radhakrishnan Salai - TTK Road junction, businesses (and the Music Academy) have had their limits redefined, rather arbitrarily. The fourth side, with the Good Shepherd Church had a slightly wider stretch of road beside it anyway and so was spared the agony - for now.

Some of the businesses have been slow to re-build their boundary walls; or maybe they were waiting for the road laying to get done. It was a strange sight at peak hours, to see a bank of parked vehicles right next to a stream of them trying everything they can to get ahead - thankfully, it did not flood the banks!

A meeting

A 'General Council Meeting' of any political party is an excuse for the party's functionaries (and their assorted wannabies and hangers-on) from all over to descend on to the host city. While the functionaries themselves may be actually doing some party work, the entourage is let loose to enjoy themselves around the city. And some of them believe that the success of their visit is directly proportional to the inconvenience that the city is put to - at such times, sanity rarely raises its voice.

Preparations for the meeting include putting up party flags, buntings, vinyl cutouts, posters, coloured lights and anything else that the local unit can think up. Thankfully, I did not get stuck due to such a meeting of the DMK (the party ruling the state of Tamil Nadu, of which Chennai is the capital) that happened on Monday. Managed to take this photo of the preparations a day ahead - the Music Academy flyover on Radhakrishnan Salai being lined with party flags!

Am away from Chennai for a few days - will back on Sunday, after a short visit to Dubai. But will keep this going, hopefully without having to resort to 'Schedule Post' option