Tribute to music legend Subbulakshmi, who held Gandhi, Nehru and ustads in thrall
Fortunately, there were major business matters that demanded his attention. Kalki was at the top of that list. Even as editor Krishnamurthi’s novels and commentaries kept the magazine in the public eye, Sadasivam ensured that every issue recorded every triumph of Meera and every concert of MS.
The film had brought in some money and Sadasivam promptly put it to high-profile use. He acquired a property in 1947 in the heart of Madras, which would soon become part of the city’s folklore. It was situated on Dr Guruswamy Mudaliar Road, a leafy spot off the Poonamallee High Road in Chetpet.
The original English owner had turned the area into a scenic retreat and named it Sladen Gardens after himself. It had later been bought by a prominent family from Kerala. It acquired some fame when Mahatma Gandhi stayed there as a guest of Justice Badruddin Tyabji, a prominent nationalist who had become president of the Congress at its Madras session in 1887.
Sadasivam bought the property from the Kerala family and expanded it by acquiring the adjoining Navroji Gardens as well. The compound, now more than two acres in size, was renamed Kalki Gardens. For the next 30 years, Kalki Gardens would attain prominence as the nerve centre of cultural and political activities. It would become a famous Madras landmark and the "command headquarters" from where Sadasivam set out on his various conquering expeditions.
The propitious moment he was waiting for came soon enough. Within months of the establishment of Kalki Gardens, independence dawned on India and everything changed. Those who were considered agitators till then now became wielders of ultimate power in Madras and Delhi. Among those at the very top was C Rajagopalachari.
Within a year he would be named the governor-general of India, the highest ceremonial office in the new nation. For Sadasivam, Rajaji’s eminent presence in Delhi was exhilarating. He and MS revered him as lord and master. In their personal, business and family matters, Rajaji had the last say. With such a patron at the centre of power in Delhi, Sadasivam could aim really high.
What followed was a public relations extravaganza such as the country had rarely seen. It took in North India first and then the United States of America and Europe. It lasted 35 unflagging years and it single-mindedly projected MS as an institution dedicated to but one objective - the welfare of the world.
It was pure Sadasivam. The centrepiece of his campaign in its first phase was a premiere show of Meera in Delhi’s plush Plaza Cinema in November 1947, two years after its release. The celebrations of independence had barely died down and the horrors of Partition had numbed Delhi.
Yet Sadasivam’s political connections as well as his drive ensured that a stream of VIPs attended the show. The newly designated governor-general, Louis Mountbatten, and his wife Edwina, were the chief guests, while the newly appointed prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, took "an enormous interest in this preview", as Sadasivam later recalled.
Actually, Nehru stood by the doorway welcoming guests as though he was the producer of the film. A variety of pictures appeared prominently in the newspapers the next day and for several days thereafter. Some pictures showed Nehru looking admiringly at MS. Others depicted Sarojini Naidu surveying MS with wide-eyed wonder.
There were pictures of Louis and Edwina Mountbatten flanking MS, of Dr Rajendra Prasad felicitating MS, and of Dr S Radhakrishnan complimenting MS. Sadasivam focused on the political leadership because of the high publicity value.
Early in his life, when he was selling khaddar in Bangalore, he had made the acquaintance of Gandhi. He renewed that contact in 1941 when he and MS were on their way to Calcutta for the shooting of Savithri. They broke journey and went to Wardha (now in Maharashtra), where Gandhi was camping.
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| MS Subbulakshmi: The Definitive Biography; Aleph Book Company; Rs 399. |
This time the meeting led to friendship. Someone informed Gandhi that Subbulakshmi was sitting in the audience at the prayer meeting and Gandhi summoned her and asked her to sing. The bhajans she sang at Wardha that evening made Gandhi a lifelong admirer of MS. When the Kasturba Fund benefit concerts were organised, he wrote a "Dear Subbulakshmi" thank-you note to her.
It was in English but he signed it in Tamil, "Mo. Ka. Kanthi", for Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. For his birthday in 1947 (October 2), Gandhi wanted MS to come to Delhi and sing in particular Hari Tuma Haro Jan Ki Peer, a melodious Meera bhajan.
MS could only send a specially made recording of it through a family courier. A few months later, following the news of Gandhi’s assassination (on January 30, 1948), All India Radio broadcast that MS recording as its mourning homage.
"For nearly a year thereafter," wrote Sadasivam, "she could not even attempt to sing Hari Tuma Haro...”’ The steady cementing of friendship with Gandhi was only one aspect of Sadasivam’s building up of MS. After Meera all leading lights of the political galaxy received his unbounded attention. In Nehru’s case, Sadasivam’s persuasions were not really necessary; the prime minister happily succumbed to MS’s charms.
From the time he met her at the Meera premiere in Delhi in 1947, Nehru remained an unwavering admirer. At three public concerts where MS sang for charitable causes, Nehru was the chief guest. On all the three occasions he repeated his overquoted "Who-am-I-a-mere-Prime-Minister-before-a-Queen-of-Songs" compliment.
When he said it for the first time, in 1949, at an MS benefit performance for the Madrasi Education Association in Delhi, it sounded gracious and spontaneous. He must have liked its quotability himself, for he repeated it in 1953, again in Delhi, and for a third time in 1956 at the Music Academy in Madras.
By then the weariness of repetition had turned the compliment into a cliché. But Nehru’s interest in MS was steady. Even when historical policy resolutions were being debated at the Congress session in Avadi, near Madras, in 1955, Nehru would sometimes be missing from the venue as he went visiting MS.
That year, the Sadasivams were the prime minister’s house guests at Teen Murti House in Delhi for ten days. They had gone to the capital for a concert to raise funds for the Kamala Nehru Memorial Hospital. Sadasivam had difficulty finding adequate words to describe the "exquisite courtesy and the wonderful hospitality we received from him and his dear daughter Shrimati Indira Gandhi".
Incumbents of the Rashtrapati Bhavan, too, continued to be within Sadasivam’s reach. When Rajaji was governor-general, the majestic mansion was often a field headquarters for Sadasivam. Dr Rajendra Prasad, who became the first president of the republic, was no less fond of MS. On two occasions, when he heard that she was in Delhi, he invited her over to the Rashtrapati Bhavan for private concerts.
Sadasivam recalled later that these "were quiet recitals for the Rashtrapati and members of his household and Subbulakshmi sang to the accompaniment of only a tambura". So it was with everyone who was anyone in Delhi. When Govind Ballabh Pant, the powerful chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, listened to MS he declared that he had rediscovered his lost soul.
Sarojini Naidu said proudly that she had surrendered her "Nightingale of India" title to MS. Fortunately, neither MS nor Sadasivam had heard the story of Sarojini Naidu being introduced to a South African audience by a local leader who pronounced the title as the "Naughty Girl of India". The poetess was unstinting in her praise of the singer in the introduction to Meera and thereafter.
Encomiums came also from an array of eminent persons such as Dr Radhakrishnan, CD Deshmukh, GD Birla, Ramnath Goenka, Prince Philip, Lord Harewood, Pope Paul and Mother Teresa. There was another group of eminent people, beyond the political spectrum, that attracted Sadasivam’s close attention.
This group comprised the great ustads of Hindustani music. Interaction with these musical legends was critically important to Sadasivam’s plans to have MS recognised as an Indian, as distinct from a South Indian, musical eminence. Consequently, both of them never missed an opportunity to visit the maestros of the north.
Rather quickly, MS developed enough interest and even expertise in the paraphernalia of Hindustani culture and music to identify her own heroes.
While Bismillah Khan, Ravi Shankar and Alla Rakha - the three pre-eminent musicians associated, respectively, with the shehnai, sitar and tabla - were artistes with whom she developed a distinct rapport, Alladiya Khan and Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, a vocalist with a grand voice, were her idols. Alladiya Khan was a ripe 90 when the Sadasivams called on him.
(Reprinted with publisher's permission.)