When Kalyani Came Calling

With the passing away of M Balamuralikrishna, Carnatic music lost one of its legends and greatest ambassadors. Aparna Sridhar remembers him.

Dr M. Balamuralikrishna was once rendering an alapanam in Kalyani, that most enchanting of ragas; at once enjoyable and elusive, commonplace, well-known, accessible to early learners, but yielding her full secrets only to the maestro, as a reward for years of diligence – saadhana – and a musical intuition not gifted to many.

As he tells the story, immersed as he was in the full flow of his manodharma, he opened his eyes to spy a beautiful girl walking down the centre aisle of the auditorium, in a glittering saree. To his astonishment, she climbed the stage, and sat down next to him, with a demure smile. He abandoned the kriti he was planning to sing, and instead launched into a spontaneous composition about Kalyani’s beauty. When he finished, he turned to look, and she was not there.

“I asked my pakka vadyam players excitedly, “Did you see her, where did she go?’”

But they did not know. She had been visible only to him. “I felt extremely bad she had gone away.”

It is an entirely believable story. After all, an artist’s muse comes to him or her in many forms. And is it not a fact that they never stay? But then, Balamuralikrishna had a very special relationship to music.

“I don’t know music, music knows me. I am nothing without music. I am an instrument. As long as music wants me I will sing. Music is in everything…..sound and rhythms are life.”

The death of Dr. Mangalampalli Balamuralikrishna on November 22, 2016 at Chennai, has taken away with it a lightness of being and musicality, not usually associated with Indian classical music. When I went to visit Dr. Balamuralikrishna at his two-storeyed house ‘Mahiti’ in Chennai, named after his last daughter, my first glimpse of the Master was him coming down the steps, dressed in a simple white veshti and peering at us through the grill.

Mangalampalli Balamuralikrishna now in his 84th year, remembers his first home in Sankaraguptam, East Godavari District, in Andhra Pradesh. It was a small house, one among only six Brahmin dwellings in that village. His mother Suryakantam died 15 days after his birth, “giving me her music.” Suryakantam was a veena player and the daughter of the eminent composer Pryaga Rangadasa.

Balamuralikrishna is perhaps Carnatic music’s most recounted child prodigy. Like most geniuses he bloomed early, seemingly effortlessly, and was blessed with the brush of the divine. Music needs a medium, and many believe that these gifted children feel a messianic passion. And so, frequently do not feel the burden of expectation.

“I became a big boy very early. I did not play with other children.” It was music which led the way. He gave his first performance by the age of seven and by the age of nine gained recognition, and since then has only known music. Such an intense childhood did not put pressure on him, because he simply did not know anything else. “It’s not that they had put me into a thing which I did not like.” Is there anything to explain the phenomenon of a prodigy? How does one script the rise of an original whose voice has held billions in its spell? How does one explain a child playing not one instrument but twelve instruments without any training?

“I have so many top ranks… composer-conductor, playback singer, nothing I do comes with effort. I don’t try to sing, don’t try and play an instrument, don’t try and do something. Even if it doesn’t come, I am not sorry.” Picasso, the painter, a child prodigy himself, had a similar talent which he described in a newspaper interview, “The several manners I have used in my art must not be considered as an evolution or as steps toward an unknown ideal of painting…. I have never made trials or experiments.”

Like many other great musicians who left the small Indian towns of their past to move to the newly minted music capital of Chennai in search of fame, Balamurali made the long journey between Vijaywada and Chennai often and with great enthusiasm. He had always loved travelling by train and his father Pattabhiramiah, who was the main influence in his life, often took him on train journeys even when there were no concerts. He had made the Vijayawada to Chennai journey so many times that he knew every single station between Vijayawada and Chennai Central.

“Vijaywada…..Guntur……Chirala….Ongole……..Chennai Central” without skipping a beat he recounted about 20 stops. The consummate entertainer hadn’t aged.

His childlike eagerness to please, to hold audiences captive with his charm and wit was unabated even at 84. But what about his music? In a magazine interview given at the age of 35, he had said that if he were vested with supreme powers over the world of music for a day, “I would take firm steps to retire those musicians who, because of their enfeebled faculties can no longer give expression to music with their original powers and brilliance. This step is necessary as much to safeguard the standards of the art as in the interests of the affected musicians.” Does he still hold this view? Fifty years later he said he would never lay down his music. “If I continue like this it’s okay. Continuing itself is more. More people listen to me nowadays. Some people listen for my name and fame. Some people listen to learn, some people listen to understand.”

In his view he has not reneged on his earlier stance. The quality he most admired in a person is ability. Be it musical ability or personal ability. So he sang till the end. His greatest contributions to Carnatic music is having made it popular. He has innovated and experimented while keeping its rich tradition untouched. He has invented ragas which challenge conventions. In his words, “tradition is nothing without ‘edition.”