Chennai: On a day when Chennai’s celebrated Carnatic musician T.M. Krishna was crowned with the prestigious Magsaysay Award, his wife Sangeetha looked humility personified, even as friends and fans poured in at her Alwarpet house to congratulate. She terms the relationship between them as two persons travelling together. Cutting short a clichéd question on what it feels to be the woman behind such a successful celebrity, she says, “In a way, I am not behind Krishna.
Instead, I travel along with him, in his numerous journeys experimenting with music”. What started as a lovely camaraderie at Youth Association for Classical Music soon bloomed into love and later marriage. A practitioner of Carnatic music for the last 30 years, Sangeetha says, “Our marriage was scandalous as I was older by six years. It shocked the conservative Brahmin society”.
Two decades have gone by since starting their musical journey together. Without mincing words Sangeetha says, “There are always the usual fights and arguments but the most beautiful thing is that we are still great friends. He listens to me and I think that is what any spouse wishes from her partner”.
Although she appreciates his guts to take on the ‘system’ and the ‘traditionalists’, Sangeetha confesses she had her own doubts when he declared rebellion. The critics did not weaken Krishna but only made him stronger. And when he drew flak announcing he would not sing at the ticketed Margazhi kutcheries, she stood by him because she agreed with his mission to take the art out to the larger society—more for the sake of the art than for just the people.
“Somewhere down the line, I realised what he is doing is right, because I saw the art was suffering and the society crumbling. The Urur-Olcott Kuppam Vizha was a great learning experience to me, because it helped me to understand a lot of art forms that had remained unknown to me. For the first time in life, I listened to parakottu and it was incredible”, she recalls.
While appreciating his parenting skills and terming him “a proactive father” she speaks of the “lovely manner” in which he deals with their daughters Arya (16) and Aanantha (13). She does not have much regard for Krishna’s culinary skills, though. “He makes rasam and sambar occasionally, when at home. He loves homemade Enna Kathirikkai Curry, eats a lot of Thai food outside”, she laughs. And then, turning a bit serious, she says, “Krishna is a very loud and short-tempered man at home but then, he is fast learning to step out of his comfort zones”.
“I love his views on music, that it has no barriers whereas only people have barriers erected all around them”, says Sangeetha and after a long pause, sums it all up: “Krishna’s has been a very long journey, it still is”.
