Tales of the carnatic legend

The hall at Day Two of the Hyderabad Literary Festival, was jam-packed well before schedule for the session, ‘Tribute to M.S. Subbulakshmi’ by eminent photographer Avinash Pasricha and the grand-niece of the music maestro Gowri Ramnarayan, an author, a professor and a former journalist.   

The Delhi-based photographer, known to have photographed the most famous performing artistes, reminisces, “MS used to be  engrossed in her music and would never pose for photos. There are performers who pose, but that makes it tough to capture the essence. But with her, it was easy.”

Having extensively written about her grand aunt, Gowri recalls, “She was a great listener and would have made a great journalist. In the middle of conversations with high-profile visitors like Nehru ji and Sarojini Naidu, she would also check if their chauffeurs were served tea. Such was her kindness.”

Avinash Pasricha and Gowri Ramnarayan

Coming from a Devadasi community, MS was almost obsessed with the concept of social acceptance and Brahminical values, but eventually turned to empowering herself by serving others. “She fell in love with the freedom fighter, Thiagaraja Sadasivam, while he was married, as they met several times. He also went with her to Mumbai for a concert. She also wanted to escape the Devadasi life, and so ran away from home to take refuge in this man’s house. However, she married him  much later, after the death of his first wife,” explains Gowri.

Though she was widely called “divine” MS, never liked that. “She was human. She worked hard and practised a lot to sing like how she did. Calling her divine almost trivialises her effort.” Gowri adds, “Bujjamma (the little one), as she was fondly called within the family, was aware of her critiques. ‘Nightingale, they call me, do I sing like a bird?’, she used to ask because she felt that those who called her so were not taking into consideration the brain work that went into her music.”

Remembering her relationship with her grand-aunt, Gowri says, “She was kind, humble and patient. Once in a while I would go through her music books and ask her about a certain song. She would tell me what the song meant, sing it for me and teach me.” MS, according to Gowri, lead a very humble childhood. “She once told me that when she was young, they were too poor to even make coffee, so they used to make a similar drink with coriander.”

Revealing an interesting detail about MS, she says, “At home we had a piano  that was used for the shooting of the movie Meera and MS liked to play it during her leisure time. Once, she played it for a visitor and even sang along.” However, Gowri says it was not too difficult to write about MS. “I started writing well before I wrote about her, but as a family member, I had to make sure that my writing was objective.”