Dedicated to Dikshitar
KALLIDAIKURICHI MAHADEVA Bhagavatar was a Srividya Upasaka hailing from the Paramapara of Sri Bhaskara Rayar. His devotion to the Goddess and Sri Muthuswami Dikshitar were like his lifeline. He was a prime disciple of Vedanta Bhagavatar, with whom his Gurukulavasam extended to 18 years.
Though he initially learnt a number of kritis of Saint Tyagaraja, from 1934 Dikshitar's compositions became his main preoccupation. Not only did he learn them, but also derived great satisfaction in teaching them to anyone who was interested.
He was one of the few fortunate persons to have copied Dikshitar's kritis from the original palm leaf manuscripts, so that he was the proud owner of the tunes as set by the composer himself. A treasure house of Dikshitar kritis, one of his aims in life was to propagate them, which he did untiringly till the end.
Mahadeva Bhagavatar had taught Dikshitar compostions to several prominent musical personalities like Justice T. L. Venkatarama Iyer, T. Balasaraswathi, V. V. Srivatsa, Vedavalli, Sarojini Kumaraswamy, N. Ramanathan, Prameela Gurumurthy and several others including his son M. Balakrishnan and daughter-in-law Kala Balakrishnan.
He had sung for mridangam vidwan Umayalpuram Sivaraman to train him to accompany for vilamba kala singing, which made it easier for him to play for vidwans like M. D. Ramanathan. Sivaraman had acknowledged his gratitude to Bhagavatar in public fora. Bhagavatar had also taught special Ragam, Tanam, Pallavis to many young aspirants.
Recognition came to him rather late in his life. He was 87 when the Music Academy awarded him the title, `Sangeetha Kala Acharya.' After that a few more honours reached him including those from Narada Gana Sabha and Hamsadhwani.
In 1975, he received the Muthuswami Dikshitar Bicentenary award, and in '77 the Layalavanya award. Just two weeks prior to his passing away at the age of 92, he was honoured by Sri Jayendra Saraswathi Swamigal.
A highly independent man, never wishing to trouble anyone or be a burden even to his own sons, he quietly breathed his last a little after midnight on February 1, 2004.
LAKSHMI VENKATRAMAN
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Entertainment
