Limpid Voice

The children absorbed music from the air around them. Vadiva would play the veena while Kunja sang, and Sakti drummed along. "He was very good on the mridangam," M.S. would say with pride. After his death her voice trembled, "Now I have none to call my own." Bedridden at 87, her mind slipping into unconsciousness, "Anna!" was the name she called out in yearning, along with Amma and Appa. She had returned to her childhood world. The family just about managed to survive. Kunjamma knew only coriander coffee and country jaggery, and grew up always checking to see if others had enough before helping herself to anything. But the home was rich in music. The nadaswaram players on temple processions would stop by Shanmukhavadivu's home and play their best. Mother made music, while musician visitors sang and played instruments from gottuvadyam to jalatarangam. They invariably asked Kunjamma to sing, and blessed her. Being asked to sign another piece or a cryptic "You must come up well," meant high praise. Some of them even taught her a song or two. Devotion to god, respect for elders, self-effacement and humility were part of her home culture. Her fawnlike timidity was her own. She was never to lose it. Did the child know she was gifted? Beautiful? "Mother was a woman of few words. I remember how irksome she found it when she spread my thick, curly hair over the washing stone and cleaned it with shikai and water. We didn't talk about talent. We were simply told to practise." Singing came to little Kunja as leaves to trees, bees to flowers. Her concentration was phenomenal, it gave her perfect sruti alignment, and raga fidelity. There was nothing else to think about except music. She heard the temple nadaswaram, a few concerts, the neighbour's radio (they didn't have one), and folk song from street beggars. Singing was as inevitable and essential as breathing. Listening to the tambura was rapture. Schooling was given up after a beating by a teacher, which aggravated her whooping cough. To the family's amusement, an old mendicant pilgrim took upon himself the task of teaching Kunjamma the grantha script, as also Sanskrit shlokas. Formal music lesson began with Srinivasa Iyengar, whose sudden death was a shock to the child. (Years later, she was to be similarly disheartened by the demise of doyen Mazhavarayanendal Subbarama Bhagavatar, who had started training her in pallavi singing). By this time Kunjamma had already begun to sing with her mother's veena on the stage. This happened as a matter of course, without fuss and fanfare. the impossibly high-pitched Khamboji in "Marakatavadivu" released her voice on the gramophone `plate'. In course of time, concert notices announced "Miss Shanmugavadivoo" as accompanist to "Miss Subbalakshmi of Madura." However, Kunjamma began to draw people's attention with her limpid voice, winsome expression, and childlike demeanour. What warmed her heart, and boosted her confidence — never high — was encouragement from senior musicians. The irascible laya maestro Dakshinamurthy Pillai not only asked her to sing for a family wedding, but praised her pure voice and emotive approach in public, before a galaxy of musician guests. Veenai Dhanammal was another to express cryptic approval when Shanmukhavadivu took her daughter to see the redoubtable old lady in `pattinam' (Madras).