The Story Of Ms subba lakshmi

February 14, 2004

Sai Ram

"Humble Pranam's at the lotus feet"

Brothers& Sisters

You all might be knowing Our beloved Swami mentions

about MS Subbalakshmi's Devotic music".I found this

story about her and sharing with you how Bhakti music

changed her life.

The man behind MS

Tyagaraja Sadasivam entered M S Subbulakshmi’s life in

June 1936. He was then almost 34 and she was almost

20. Four tumultuous years followed — years marked by

strife, recriminations, bitter quarrels between Madras

and Madurai, scandals, police cases and tensions of

all kinds. Then they got married in 1940 and lived

happily ever after for 57 eventful years until

Sadasivam’s death in 1997 at the age of 95. Never did

a couple fill each other’s life as completely as

Sadasivam and MS did. Never did another husband

visualise, orchestrate and control his wife’s career

as decisively as Sadasivam did. Never did a man

transform a woman’s life as totally as Sadasivam

transformed MS’s. Without Sadasivam, MS might just

have been a face in the crowd, a great voice among

several great voices. With him, she became the ‘queen

of music’, a title bestowed upon her by Jawaharlal

Nehru. If MS made melody, Sadasivam made MS. If music

was MS’s career, MS became Sadasivam’s career. Never

did a husband and wife owe more to each other than

Sadasivam and MS did.

Never, for that matter, were two people more different

from each other. Sadasivam was activity personified.

MS was passivity incarnate. Sadasivam was all about

domination and being in charge. MS was all about

submission and being taken care of. Sadasivam was a

man of the world, alive to all its stratagems,

challenges and opportunities. MS was a babe in the

woods, unable even to see the shadows around her.

Sadasivam knew precisely what he wanted and precisely

how to get it. MS knew nothing about anything beyond

her music and its concomitant offshoots and derivates.

Sadasivam was always seeking. MS was always content.

Sadasivam possessed a powerful will and always managed

to bend others to that will. MS rarely revealed a will

of her own and always seemed to enjoy bending.

Sadasivam’s temper could go wild. MS was never known

to lose hers. Sadasivam was all command. MS was all

obedience. This was a couple whose uncanny

complementarity proved yet again how opposite poles

attracted.

According to some sources, and confirmed by subsequent

developments, Sadasivam fell for Subbulakshmi at their

very first meeting. He could hardly be blamed. At 20,

MS had flowered into a beautiful young lady. The

fullness of her youth was accentuated by her luminous

eyes and her lustrous hair. She had a presence

overriding her obvious simplicity. Indeed, her beauty

was enhanced by the air of innocence that surrounded

her like a protective halo. Sadasivam was a commanding

presence himself. He was tall and broad-shouldered and

extraordinarily handsome in his prime. He too had

certain qualities that enhanced his personality, for

example, the air of self-assurance he exuded. He

believed and made others believe that there was

nothing he could not do or get done. Perhaps

Subbulakshmi instinctively felt the need for an older

and experienced man on whom she could depend. Perhaps

Sadasivam’s instincts to take charge of things were

activated by the sight of so tender a bud so evidently

in need of a guiding hand.

It was not as if either of them sat down and analysed

their mutual needs and instincts. At first sight, the

scenario could only have depicted a handsome man and a

beautiful girl paying attention to each other. But

clearly something clicked somewhere and the

advertisement manager did not stop with one interview

with the singer he was planning to feature in his

magazine. A few more meetings took place for working

out the finer points of the Vikatan’s special feature.

The interviews were completed and the feature was

published, but the meetings continued. Sadasivam soon

became a daily visitor, spending time with her on one

pretext or another. He would run errands for her,

organise her programmes, arrange things for her, give

her his opinion on men and matters and generally play

man Friday. Clearly, he had become a diligent suitor.

She started work on her first film in 1936 and

continued to be involved with cinema for almost a

decade. The first two films, Sevasadanam and

Shakuntalai, would constitute one phase in which she

would remain essentially a classical singer and have

Sadasivam directing her from the sidelines. After the

completion of Shakuntalai, she would get married to

Sadasivam and settle down to a life pattern whose

radical import she herself perhaps did not appreciate.

She would act in two more films, Savithri and Meera,

and then in a reshot — not dubbed — Hindi Meera,

making up the second phase of her cinematic career.

This phase was different from the earlier one, because

now Sadasivam was in the centre of all activities,

officially, formally and categorically, calculating

every move to achieve the goals he had precisely

chalked out in his mind. With four films completed

(five if the Hindi Meera was also counted), MS would

bid goodbye to cinema because Sadasivam so decided.

She would devote the rest of her life to becoming a

singer-saint because Sadasivam so decided. In the

process, she would also develop a new persona,

shedding all traces of Shanmugavadivu’s heritage. That

too was decreed and arranged by Sadasivam.

The first phase was difficult both for MS, because she

was feeling her way around in unfamiliar territory,

and for Sadasivam, because he was not in full command.

MS was also hemmed in by the unaccustomed pressures of

film work from one side and, from the other, the

persistent efforts of the Madurai group to disrupt her

life. Guarded attentively by Sadasivam and

Subramanyam, she proceeded with the shooting. Emoting

before the cameras turned out to be more vexatious

than she had imagined. Her natural form of expression

was music; any other made her uncomfortable. Nothing

in her life so far had prepared her for acting. There

were no actors within her circle of close

acquaintances. S D Subbulakshmi, her mother’s friend

from Madurai, was the only film celebrity she knew. S

D turned out to be a source of strength and

encouragement. Many years later she would reminisce

that it took MS ‘a great deal of time and a lot of

coaching from me and K Subramanyam to learn the

rudiments of acting.’ MS was never at ease while

acting, pointed out S D. ‘She would worry about

everything from having to wear make-up to whether she

had delivered her lines correctly. She needed constant

support to bolster her confidence.’

Subbulakshmi’s marriage to Sadasivam was a fulfilment

for her and a challenge to him. ‘My ambition,’ MS once

confided, ‘was to get married and bring up children.’

Here was her opportunity to move towards that goal.

For Sadasivam, however, the situation was vastly

different. At 38, he was already entering middle age

and the fact stood out in comparison with his bride.

At 24, MS appeared to be the very reason for

Kalidasa’s question in his Abbijnana Shakuntalam:

‘When the bright sun blazes bright, can darkness show

its face?’ Old men marrying young girls was common in

those days, but it was a practice that invited social

opprobrium as Sevasadanam had demonstrated,

tear-jerkingly. Sadasivam was definitely not as old as

the man in Sevasadanam. Nevertheless, the possibility

of malicious comparisons between the role MS portrayed

on the screen and her real life was daunting.

The caste divide was another potential invitation for

disparagement. Well-to-do Brahmin men establishing a

chinna veedu, literally ‘small house’, with a devadasi

‘wife’ was an accepted practice. But, in this case,

the Brahmin actually married the girl, thereby raising

embarrassing questions about his earlier Brahmin wife.

In the business circles in which Sadasivam moved he

could already hear the criticism. The religious and

political leaders whose patronage Sadasivam valued

were reproachful too. Only C Rajagopalachari and a

handful of his friends extended timely support. Now

Sadasivam had to figure out how he could use this

support to blunt the edge of criticism. In the end, he

succeeded remarkably, helped as much by the grace of

MS’s personality as by efforts of his own.

Ironically, the greatest international music coup

scored by Sadasivam also turned out to be

aesthetically the sorriest spectacle. The UN concert

in 1966 was unique in many ways, and MS would have

excelled herself if she had been left to her musical

self. But perhaps the sheer grandeur of the occasion

proved too exciting to Sadasivam and his associates.

With a view to gilding the lily, they went to town

with the idea of MS singing an English hymn at the UN.

According to Sadasivam, the idea originated from

General K M Cariappa. The good soldier must have meant

well, but Sadasivam should have considered the

practical problems and politely sidelined the idea.

Instead, he became overenthusiastic. He sought

Rajaji’s approval as usual, and Rajaji approved. In

fact, Rajaji himself composed the hymn. The lyrics

were set to music by Handel Manuel, the best known

star of Western music in Madras. He also tutored MS on

how to sing the hymn. But even Manuel’s professional

touch could do little to ease the discomfort MS felt

with singing in English. The curiosity value of the

event persuaded the Indian press to give generous

column space to it, but the aftershocks in the UN’s

corridors were something else. As a report in

Mylapore’s own Sruti magazine (October 1986) put it,

‘it was sad to see MS and Radha stand up and recite

the Rajaji hymn like school girls’. The report quoted

an unnamed New York rasika as saying ‘many Indians

hung their heads in shame at what India’s Queen of

Song had been put up to do.’

The UN disappointment notwithstanding, the rest of the

US tour was a great success. An ostensible purpose was

to raise funds for Hindu temples in New York and

Pittsburgh. When a record crowd gathered at the

Colgate University (Hamilton, New York) for MS’s first

concert in the US, Sadasivam turned visibly

sentimental before a group of helpers, associates and

colleagues. Shaking with emotion, he told them: ‘This

is something I have been dreaming for long, putting

her on the world stage. My biggest ambition is

fulfilled.’

He could draw satisfaction also from the uncanny

effect MS had on ordinary Americans. At the time of

the UN concert, the couple stayed at the apartment of

an executive of the Esso oil company, another Mylapore

networker. After lunch one day MS began singing for

the small gathering of friends who had assembled in

the apartment. To their dismay, repair works in the

adjoining apartment provided a steady accompaniment of

unmusical sounds such as hammer knocks and metal

sawing. The apartment owner was embarrassed but said

he was helpless. MS alone seemed unconcerned and went

on singing. A few minutes later, the repair noises

suddenly ceased and two helmeted American handy men

appeared at the apartment door. ‘Can’t understand the

thing,’ they said, ‘but it’s very touching. May we

listen?’ That was perhaps MS’s finest hour in America.

All things considered, there was a touch of managerial

brilliance in Sadasivam’s decision to withdraw MS from

cinema despite the adverse financial implications of

such a step and to put her on the path of Meera-like

bhakti music. At the age of 29, without the

distractions of cinema, MS could look forward to a

lifetime of purposeful music. The right decision at

the right time allowed MS to reclaim her natural

terrain. Her post-Meera persona was secured against

any possibility of impairment. Quite simply, such a

persona positioned her to become, on the basis of her

charity tours and the steady underpinning of bhakti

music, a recipient of reverence. Bhakti was the main

plank that supported MS’s life in music.

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February 14, 2004

SAIRAM

Thank you so much for sharing that wonderful life story. It is very interesting

and inspiring.