It is part of an annual ritual for music teachers and students to celebrate Thyagaraja Aradhana by gathering to sing and play songs by Thyagaraja, ending off with the Pancharatna kritis, which are considered the crowning achievements of the composer. This year also happens to be the 160th anniversary and we had a celebration at the temple earlier this month with different groups taking turns to perform. Now some Chinese university student who is interested in learning more about Indian culture witnessed the event and asked me later: was that a music competition? I laughed, feeling very amused. Why do people think that whenever different arts groups come together, it means competition? I replied that it's nothing like that actually, we had different Indian groups there but everybody was just coming to pay tribute to this great South Indian composer who has been honoured as a saint.

Well you can't blame people for not being in the know, especially if they are from another culture. Anyway most people around us would be more into movie songs than classical music; it is a sign of our time that even temple musicians can be heard playing movie songs at weddings - appadi podu podu podu and stuff like that. So I bet a majority of people would never have heard the song Jagadanandakaraka if not for the movie Anniyan - where incidentally Sudha Ragunathan is seen in a cameo singing this first song of the Pancharatna kritis. Purists would probably frown at the scene, where you see the movie actress planting herself in the temple crowd pretending to be singing behind the maestro. It also happens to be the very movie where you hear some nonsense pop ditty about coffee and capuccino. I shall not comment on those songs in the movie then. But I must confess I do enjoy the story of the movie itself, for after all it features probably the most patriotic serial killer in Tamil movie history since Kamal Hassan's Indian. Sometimes you really feel the society needs a superhero like that to punish people for being corrupt, selfish and inconsiderate. The movie is also very clever as it virtually portrays India as a case of schizophrenia, part bureaucrat, part trendy wannabe, and part pious, God-fearing devotee - taken together as a person, he would simple not be able to come to terms with himself.

Anyway, let's go back to Saint Thyagaraja. He has been described as a bhakta of Lord Rama. He wrote songs almost exculsively about Rama (with my limited knowledge, I am familiar with just one nice exception of a song - Shiva Shiva in Raga Pantuvarali). He has apparently written many songs about visions of Rama. Jagadanandakaraka is well-known for containing 108 names of Rama. Now a thought just struck me the other day when I was reflecting on the significance of Thyagaraja Aradhana as a spiritual experience for a music student and as a social event. Thyagaraja was a bhakta who had visions of Rama in various aspects, referred to in his compositions. Great singers and musicians recount such visions as they interpret works by composers like Thyagaraja, and they invoke Thyagaraja. The music artistes among us look forward to a darsana of these musical celebrities, while music students like us must look up to our teachers first. Meantime most people are virtually deaf to classical music. When you think about it, the bulk of people in the world are just so insignificant and so far away from divinity. But that's just one way of perceiving it of course. Actually, anybody can attempt to reach out to divinity in his or her own way, whether through the arts or through good deeds like helping the less fortunate. I have an impression that some people think of bhakti in terms of just performing rituals of worship and singing and chanting of names of deities. But that has to be just a narrow understanding. Incidentally, I remembering read some analysis in the internet highlighting that Thyagaraja's love for Rama also meant an admiration of Rama's positive attributes and virtues such as courage, qualities which we as individuals can also emulate. Wasn't Gandhi himself, who uttered He Ram to the last day of his life, inspired by Rama's courage and adherence of satya and dharma? Perhaps a God-fearing devotee and an art practitioner, a peace-lover and a fighter, can indeed be one person, and it's not going schizo!