Life and times of raga Kalyani

Ponni Arasu lives in Chennai, and doesn’t speak any Kannada, but she surprised a hall full of theatre and music lovers last evening when she presented an hour-long solo performance in the language. Sanchari, a play scripted by Bangalorean singer Sumathi Murthy, tells the story of raga Kalyani. Directed by the well-known Tamil writer A Mangai, it presents a charming if minimalist picture of the life and times of the raga.

Non-musicians may find it difficult to understand how musicians can be dead serious when they say ragas are human, capable of love, hate, anger, and envy. Sumathi takes this raga-as-human premise further and creates a character who talks about her origins (“I was born to many”), her free spirit, and her eternal appeal (she walks away in the last scene singing the current Kannada hit ‘Ninnindale, ninnindale’). We hear representative snatches of the raga from the classical masters (Mogubai Kurdikar, Mallikarjun Mansur, Balamurali) and the movie composers (Madan Mohan, Khayyam, Ilaiyaraja), as Kalyani moves in and out of a reverie.

Ponni danced and acted out the raga’s relationships with great composers such as Amir Khusrau, Sadarang, and Tyagaraja. She pulled off the Kannada dialogue with astonishing ease, although I would have liked the language of Sumathi’s script to have been a little more conversational. Ponni broke off into Tamil when she had to portray the raga’s refusal to be reined in by the musicologist Venkatamakhi, and into Malayalam when she had to portray her relationship with composer-king Swati Tirunal, who it seems loved raga Behag a little more than Kalyani.

Ponni as Kalyani stood on the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan stage, using cloth paintings as props (Srijith Sundaram) and unfurling them to illustrate the changing chapters of her life. Her costumes (Anusha), for the most part, looked like a fashionable mix of the medieval and the contemporary, but she finally slipped into clothes that looked very tinsel, and very urban-contemporary.


Kalyani is called Yaman in Hindustani music. Sumathi’s experience as a khayal singer, and her training under Pandit Ramarao Nayak, must have come in useful in the making of the play. Many in the audience, including distinguished connoisseurs such as Chiranjeevi Singh and Jayant Kaikini, felt the play would have gained from more live singing. Mangai promises to take the play to other parts of Karnataka, and will hopefully incorporate more live singing into the play.



Now, for some nitpicking. Kalyani, for all its beauty, is an overused raga, and although it hasn’t become as hateful as the weepy Shivaranjani (do you remember ‘Tere mere beech mein’ from Ek Duje Ke Liye?), it can certainly put off some listeners (such as myself). I liked the play, but I can’t say I like all compositions I hear in Kalyani. Also, the play could perhaps have a little more action and movement. Thanks, Sangat (Delhi) and Marappachi (Chennai), for making Sanchari possible.

(Sanchari premiered at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bangalore, on Sunday, 27 September 2009)

A rain scene, two films

A friend had an interesting chat status message last night. It said “My bro is a hero.” She told me a wonderful story when I asked her why.

The two were returning home from work when the motorbike they were riding was suddenly caught in the middle of a flooded road. The water got knee-high, and the boy was forced to stop the bike. He jumped off, and wouldn’t let his sister get off into the slush and water. He pushed her all the way to safety while she sat on the pillion.

The rain is said to evoke the most beautiful memories, but for those of us who have to make our way through the dangerously flooded roads of Bangalore, it is a nightmare. But the story I heard from my friend seemed like a heart-warming scene from a master filmmaker. “Shake your brother’s hand on my behalf,” I messaged her.

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Last week, I saw the animation film Up, and a week before that, I happened to catch Kaminey. Up is made by the Americans, and has all the cutesy elements that go into a children’s film, but it is at the same time a simple, mature story about adventure, love, ambition, loss, and grief.

One of the most memorable scenes in the film shows a grumpy old balloon-maker (grumpy because he has lost his beloved, adventure-loving wife) using his skills to take his house flying towards a dream destination in South America. It works as a sweet metaphor for the sprit of escape one can summon up in trying circumstances. The old man is trying to get away from aggressive real-estate developers who want to break his house down, and what better way to do it than simply to fly away!

Another thing about Up. I liked it because of its music. It is pleasant, symphonic, and very warmly European. Some kids dread going to the movies because they find the sound unbearably loud. The one I went with usually refuses to enter a movie hall, and if he is forced to, stuffs his ears with cotton. He sat through Up happily.

But I can’t say the same of Kaminey. Vishal Bhardwaj’s Maqbool, based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth, was a subtle masterpiece, but in Kaminey, he attempts something like a Mumbai masala flick. All very fine, but the close-up and wildly swinging camera angles, supposedly inspired by the Hollywood director Tarantino, left me dizzy.

Vishal is a very innovative music composer, and I was excited with the way he handled the score (especially the qawwali) in Maqbool. In Kaminey, his music sounded so painful. Why did I like Up’s soundtrack more than Kaminey’s? Was it bad cinema sound or bad music? Or, to return to an old debate, was it the digital bombardment of synths as against the warmth of natural instruments?

A faceless Carla Bruni

The showers on Thursday evening (17 September 2009) coincided with the inauguration of 'Moment, Intercepted', a painting exhibition featuring B Devaraj and M S Prakash Babu.

Prakash's work as a cartoonist and illustrator is regularly seen in the Times of India, Bangalore, but not many know about his painterly side. He is also an independent film-maker, and has produced and directed some quirky short films.

This painting exhibition, his first in 11 years, focuses on formal situations, such as ministers meeting, soldiers marching, and 'first ladies' watching ceremonial parades, all of which he says he has tried to satirise.

Prakash portrays political photo-ops in conservative brush strokes, the irony coming through only in what he chooses to leave out.
In the painting of the wives of the Indian and French premiers, Prakash keeps a little of Gursharan Kaur's face and almost fully crops out the face of the glamorous Carla Bruni.

When he paints two ambassadors talking, he only shows their gesturing hands and a slightly less anonymous scribe.

Although Prakash thinks of himself as a satirist, his work hints at a fascination for the formal and the understated, qualities not so overwhelmingly important in satire. His entire show is done in muted colours.

You won't find Picasso- or Dali-like exaggeration in his lines, but you may catch some stylistic inspiration from Cezanne, and perhaps Rembrandt. Prakash's idiom is a gently self-conscious realism.

Devaraj's work is more stark. He forgoes colours, and plays in black and white to create monk-like figures, sitting in the midst of religiously loaded metaphors such as conches, sea shells, and nails.

His gentle-faced characters use the sacred as a shield against the harshness of the world, and their own inner demons. They are tormented, but not bereft of hope.

Prakash Babu was mortified when I asked him to pose for a photograph in front of one of his paintings. "I'm not that sort," he protested, as though we were asking him to pose as the MiD DAY mate. Prakash can be stubbornly reticent, and fervently abstract.

His talented actress-wife Bhavani happily stood against one of his paintings, and we bring you a very informal phone picture as a souvenir from the event.

Both Devaraj (b 1966) and Prakash (b 1968) hail from Karnataka, and have held exhibitions across the country.

Their show, curated by Giridhar Khasnis, is on at Time and Space Gallery on Lavelle Road.

Four early exits

Four young people I knew died recently. One was famous, the second was well known in artistic circles (and on the threshold of wider fame), and the third was too busy enjoying life to bother about fame, or even good health. The fourth was as unlucky as the other three, although she didn’t belong in the same class.

Raju Ananthaswamy had acquired a well-deserved reputation as a star singer and composer. I first saw him when he was a schoolboy, and even at that young age, he could sing with amazing sweetness. As he grew up, he performed on stage and TV, becoming a big name in Kannada music. He had his inconsistencies, but I haven’t heard another sugama sangeeta singer who could compose such complicated stuff and pull it off on stage so effortlessly. He had been in and out of hospital with a liver problem, and suddenly, one day, news broke on TV that he had died. He was just 39.

Raghav Shreyas was more intellectual, but hardly the stuffy sort. He was a classically trained mridangam player, and was simultaneously drawn to experimental music. He read widely, and wrote insightful art reviews for The Hindu. His passion was black and white photography. We were friends, but for a long time I didn’t know much about his versatile background. One day, he showed me prints of photographs he had taken of Bangalore’s Central Jail, parts of which had already been demolished. I was stunned by the artistry of what he had clicked. A little after that, he developed a tumour in his brain. His mother Vasanthi bravely helped him fight it, and it looked like he had almost come back, but he was suddenly gone one day. He was in his 30s.


Four or five days before she died, 26-year-old Navneet Wasu, sometime colleague at MiD DAY, mailed me an angry response to an article I had written. I had ridiculed actor Ambarish for smoking and gambling away through his term as information minister. It wasn’t so much about his smoking and gambling as about his irresponsibility in frittering away the opportunity to do something for his artiste fraternity. Navneet, who loved junk food and hated anything green on her plate, asked me bluntly, “What’s wrong with smoking?” Nothing, I replied.

I don’t know if cigarettes had any connection at all with their early passing, but I often think about my friends, and I’m not so sure I will say ‘Nothing’ the next time someone asks me that question.

The fourth to die this past year, Kasturi, was illiterate, and had a heart valve problem. The smiling, good-natured domestic help exerted herself to earn money to get her drunkard brother treated at a deaddiction clinic. She died at 24.