Rising above challenges
RANJANI GOVIND
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Musician Gayatri Sankaran's career has been a saga of grit and determination.
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PROUD MOMENT: Gayatri Sankaran receiving the Role Model Award from President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam in New Delhi. Subbulakshmi Jagadeesan, Minister of State (SJ&E) and Secretary (SJ&E), is at the centre . Photo: Shanker Chakravarty.
``When President Abdul Kalam asked me to sing two lines from Tyagaraja's `Entaro Mahanubhavulu" just after he handed over the Role Model Award (instituted by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment) in New Delhi on World Disabled Day, last December, I thought it was the culmination of 30 years of public singing. So I didn't know how to react when I was informed last week that I was conferred Padma Sri," says the jubilant Carnatic musician, Gayatri Sankaran. Continuing with her experience on that occasion in New Delhi, Gayathri says, ``The next day when I met the President at Rashtrapathi Bhavan on his invitation, I was overwhelmed when he asked me to sing the whole Sriraga Pancharatna. He also joined me now and then."
Tower of strength
``It is in such incidents and gestures that I actually `see' good human values, benevolence and kind-heartedness around me. I don't feel visually challenged, it's bright and sunny," she adds recalling how the President enquired about her accounts of grit and toil in reaching this stage. She attributes her success to her husband Sankaran who has been a tower of strength.
Draped in a resplendent silk sari and sitting amidst tamburas, violins, sruti boxes and a hoard of cassettes at her Tiruvanmiyur residence where she conducts music classes for about 100 students during weekends, this Staff Artist of AIR (vocalist and violinist) looks excited. ``I just came back after a National Programme recording at Doordarshan," she explains.
Born in Karur, Gayatri started learning music at the age of three from her mother. Her father, a sugar consultant, was shifted to Kakinada. Having lost her mother at the age of three, and with a few years of basic lessons from Allamaraju Someshwara Rao, Gayatri came to Chennai with her brother's family only to be taken by Rukmini Devi, founder of Kalakshetra, as a student.
``Rukmini madam waived off the entire fees for my tenure of diploma and post-graduate diploma where I took up vocal and violin study," she says. Later she went on to get a degree in arts and a post-graduate diploma in Braille in which she can handle Sanskrit, Tamil and English. Her favourites are M.S. and M. Balamuralikrishna.
Dream come true
Singing Purandaradasa's ``Jagadodharana" to demonstrate how she manages the three octaves with ease, Gayatri says her dream of learning music under Lalgudi Jayaraman came true when the maestro accepted her as a disciple in 1998. ``This was a very crucial turning point in my life," she saysIt is not sight that is required to gauge the audience response, insists Gayathri. ``It is the divine magnifying force that music establishes from the mind and heart that should reflect the reactions," she says.
Gayatri has performed in more than 800 concerts that include her trips to London and Canada last year. What she cherishes most is her singing for a full-length dance programme at the Music Academy from Alarippu to Tillana for the Clarke School of Deaf and Dumb Children. She was moved to find the children synchronising rhythm and melody with astute observation of her lip movements.
Gayatri is pursuing her doctorate on ``Stylistic analysis of Kallidaikurichi Vedantha Bhagavatar."
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