Showing posts with label Vivekananda College. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vivekananda College. Show all posts

Monday, March 31, 2014

Ramu of the home

What was the last statue that you remember as being "erected by an admiring public"? Of the politicians, you would probably say. Here is one that has been around for quite a while - at least 50 years, to hazard a guess - which is not of any political leader. What the public admired in him was "A life dedicated to the cause of education, the service of the poor and the building of the "home"". The name on the pedestal says Ramu. Of course he had a more 'proper' name, but Ramu was enough for the public of the time. 

Ramu was C. Ramaswami Iyengar. Together with his cousin C. Ramanujachariar, they were "Ramu and Ramanuja", the most ardent followers of Swami Vivekananda in Madras. They were on hand to welcome him on his return to Madras in 1897 and they urged him to establish a more permanent presence in the city. And so, Swami Ramakrishnananda came over and together, they started off with a home for orphan children in Mylapore, at Kesavaperumalpuram. The home moved into its current location sometime between 1917 and 1921 and has remained there since.

From those beginnings came about several institutions; among them, Vivekananda College, Ramakrishna Mission Boys' School, Sarada Vidyalaya for Girls. Ramu was around for a while, but by 1926, he was struck with paralysis and so could not take active part in the Mission's work. However, he continued to function as the Secretary of the Home, right until his death in 1932. No wonder that the public admired him, and that they had this statue erected right outside the Home that Ramu helped establish!



Friday, March 21, 2014

The veena house

The house with the green gate caught my attention because of the nameplate. At first glance it looks like any other similar indicator of who the master of the house is. But a second glance showed that the name is not just letters, but a picture as well. And that picture was of a veena inside which was written 'S. Balachandar'. With such clues, there could only be one guess about whose the house was: Sundaram Balachandar, so closely identified with the instrument that he was always Veena Balachandar. 

Unconventional would only begin to describe the man. Maybe that was inherited from his father, who cast his older children as husband and wife in Seetha Kalyanam. The young Balachandar had a part as well, as a musician in Ravana's court. And a musician he was, indeed. Starting with the kanjeera at the age of 5, he learnt a variety of instruments: tabla, mridangam, shehnai and so on, become a full fledged solo artist on the sitar before his teens. All of those faded into the background when he discovered the veena. Spurning a formal course or guru, he taught himself the veena and mastered it within a couple of years. His energy went into the veena as well as several other maverick causes that he associated himself with: trying to prove that there never had been such a ruler as Swati Tirunaal, the impossibility of inventing new ragas, insisting that the Tamil Nadu state award for dancers should be Natya Kalanidhi rather than Sangeetha Kalanidhi and many other such flavour-of-the-season follies. And then there were his movies.  Anadha Naal, which had no songs at all, Avana Ivan, and a few others, where he was scriptwriter, director, music director and any other role that he took a fancy too.

The controversies, more than his interests, drained him so much that he was called away much earlier than his equally talented, if maybe more restrained elder brother. Balachandar died in 1990, at the age of 63. Wonder what he would have made of all the current trends in Carnatic music - he would as likely have been its cheerleader as its opponent!