KR RAJAGOPAL

 

A king among openers

When I recently learnt that octogenarian KR Rajagopal‒on  a visit from Bengaluru to receive handsome cash awards from the TNPL and CSK‒was staying at the Crowne Plaza hotel, barely five minutes from my residence, I was eager to call on him before he left the city. As my driver was on leave, however, and my current level of fitness did not allow me to walk or drive to the hotel, I was unfortunately forced to be satisfied with a phone call. Raja was not to be put off. He dropped in at my flat almost immediately after my phone call, with his 24x7 caregiver Chandru in tow. Chandru, a find of Mr N Sankar, Chairman of the Sanmar Group, and my former boss (as he had been Raja's more than fifty years ago), is a product of Udavum Karangal, the well known NGO for destitute children.  Raja, who lost his wife a couple of years ago, lives alone in the erstwhile garden city, as his daughters are settled abroad; Chandru and he seem to take excellent care of each other.

It was an emotional reunion, especially for me, the recipient of Raja's  spontaneous warmth and kindness, and we inevitably relived our cricketing past in the conversation that ensued. I only played against Raja and marvelled at his batting genius from 22 yards a couple of times, but I watched his brilliant batsmanship and wicket keeping quite frequently from the safety of the gallery when he set the Marina on fire with his pyrotechnics. Raja was all praise for some of his seniors in domestic cricket. CD Gopinath came in for special mention. To Raja, it seemed, no batsman of the era was more complete than Gopi, who is now 91 and lives in Coonoor. He remembered two innings in particular˗both for Madras vs. Mysore˗the first a mammoth 234, and the second a hundred made in partnership with fellow centurymaker MK Balakrishnan rescuing Madras from a perilous five down for a paltry score. The first was at Central College, Bangalore, where Gopi cut and drove the likes of Deepak Dasgupta and LT Subbu with panache, and the second at Coimbatore.  Balakrishnan, AG Kripal Singh and his lefthanded brother Milkha Singh were some of the  other batsmen he admired. "Milkha was all class," Raja reminisced. "So was the wrist spinner VV Kumar, a wizard with his leg breaks, googlies and top spinners, all delivered with utmost guile, accuracy and economy, a rare combination." Like others of his era, Raja rates Kumar higher than most contemporary tweakers.

Here is what I wrote on Rajagopal some years ago, and I see no reason to take any of it back today:

 

K R Rajagopal came like a breath of fresh air to Madras cricket from Bangalore, when he joined the star-studded Jolly Rovers team of the 1960s. He quickly established himself as one of the most entertaining batsmen in the state, an opener crowds went miles to watch.

 “Rajagopal was one of the most aggressive opening batsmen around. He played his shots from the word go, shots based on a straight bat, free downswing and follow-through. With his keen eye, swift footwork, perfect balance and steely wrists, all buttressed by a sound technique, he looked for scoring opportunities all the time, and for a few years culminating in the 1967-68 season, he electrified both local and national matches played at Madras.

 In an era of swing bowling, Raja had an equally delightful answer to the outswinger and the inswinger. He cover drove imperiously, but he also played a gorgeous ondrive. He was equally fond of hooking and cutting.

 Raja struck a fine partnership with his teammate and captain Belliappa. Both were openers and wicket keepers, and as state captain, Belliappa was the first choice behind the stumps, though Raja was brilliant in that department. When Raja was a strong contender for a place in the Indian team touring Australia in 1967-1968 after a magnificent domestic season as a batsman, another wicket keeper Indrajitsinhji was preferred to him on the pretext that Raja did not keep for his own state.

 Raja is a simple man. For most of his playing days in Madras (he earlier played for Mysore), he worked at Sankarnagar, Tirunelveli, and took the night train to Madras to play league matches on the morrow for Jolly Rovers, the highly successful team sponsored by his employers. He brought as luggage a ridiculously small bag and went straight to the house of another "Raja", P N Sundaresan, The Hindu's cricket correspondent and the father of his teammate P S Narayanan. On the morning of the match, Raja would jump on to the pillion of Narayanan's Lambretta, tousled hair, stubble on his chin, crumpled shirt and trousers and all, with his cricket shoes wrapped in an old copy of The Hindu.

 (My brother Sivaramakrishnan, the left hander, recalls a ludicrous incident when Raja, playing for the opponents, had to borrow Siva’s trousers after realizing after the toss he had forgotten to pack his flannels. My brother is some six inches taller, so Raja had to use many pins and clips and string as well as sheer willpower to keep his pants on while making a bright half century, adjusting his wardrobe every ball).

 Such was Raja's pre-match preparation, but once he put on his pads and settled down to face the first ball of the innings, the change in him was electric. Slight of build and short in stature, he was a picture of poise as the bowler started his run towards him. Little notice did he give of the daring strokes he would soon play all round the wicket.  Few batsmen in the history of Tamil Nadu cricket have given as much pleasure to so many.”

 

Think Miyazaki (Single Version)

ANNADORAI AND THE BOLTS

 

A Test match at Chepauk is an occasion to catch up with many old friends. In the 20th century, the late S Annadorai was usually among those present, none the worse for his years, climbing the stairs effortlessly, trading old anecdotes with people he watched over as they grew up in cricket. He was his jaunty old self, as full of beans well into his eighties, as he was decades ago, when he would announce the City Colleges or Inter-Association Junior team with a flourish to anxious young cricketers who had gone through the trauma of selection trials. A former joint secretary of the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association, he had been a junior selector and Chairman of the league sub-committee as far back as 1955. A trusted lieutenant of S Sriraman, Annadorai never rose beyond being bridesmaid to occupy the secretary’s chair in the TNCA.

The joke doing the rounds in my playing days was that with Annadorai around as convener of the selection panel, you stood a good chance of being picked if you had an alien-sounding name—Coorgi and Anglo-Indian names were said to be particularly lucky. The moment the official stylishly announced “Monteiro” or “Cariappa”, knowing glances were exchanged among the players assembled. Perhaps those players fully deserved their inclusion, but human nature being what it is, we could never resist the temptation to conclude that there was bias in favour of the exotic. After all, familiarity does breed contempt, doesn’t it?

Annadorai had a long innings in Chennai cricket. He ran a club called City Central League for decades. Hailing from a land owning family in Mannargudi near Kumbakonam, he spent a great deal of his time and money on the promotion of his favourite game, cricket. An outspoken man, he believed in calling a spade a spade, only you might not agree with his definition of a spade. A great believer in young talent, he was also a stern critic of individual players, whom he tried to correct and motivate in his own inimitable style, not always to the liking of the player concerned.

It was through Annadorai’s initiative that the Colts’ tour of Bombay took place on a regular basis. Despite his eccentric views, and his own version of catch practice—India's bowling coach B Arun does a very good imitation of it—the old man was a popular manager, because he took excellent care of the boys and often spent his own money to give us wonderful treats, buying us dinner at top class restaurants, taking us to the movies and so on.

The Colts’ tour was a first rate learning experience for young cricketers from Tamil Nadu, for it afforded them their first exposure to turf wickets and Bombay professionalism for ten days at a stretch. The tour was also without tensions of any sort because the visitors were not expected to win too many matches, as most of the opposition was from the top drawer. Quite possibly because of that, the Colts won more often than lost.

The only jarring if somewhat amusing note was struck by the average age of the team. According to the dictionary, a colt is a young horse, and you would naturally expect the team to consist mainly of teenagers, but as players in the second and third divisions of the Chennai league were eligible for selection, you often found veterans of several summers in the squad. The common joke was that the Colts were in fact “Kezha Bolts”, meaning a Dad’s Army, “kezha” meaning old, and “bolts” added for rhyme.

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BASIL D'OLIVEIRA

He Dared To Dream

V. Ramnarayan

 THE TALL, DARK, MUSCULAR YOUNG MAN who was whacking a cricket ball to all parts of the ground, was exceptionally talented. So were some of his regular playmates. But he was different from the others in one respect. He dreamed of playing in far-off lands, of becoming an international sportsman of the highest calibre. This dream stayed with him for years and years until one day ...

 That would be going ahead of our story. Basil D'Oliveira, our hero, was a Cape Coloured: the other three major racial groups in South Africa during the old days of apartheid were white, African and Indian. Only the whites were allowed to play on the beautifully manicured cricket grounds in cities such as Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban. Young Basil and his friends had to walk ten miles from their homes in Signal Hill, Cape Town where they lived in segregated coloured communities, to a vast open ground where they played their matches. Some 25 teams shared the rocky, boulder filled grounds, and it was possible while you were preparing to hold a brilliant catch to be knocked down by a ball from a match being played behind you.

 Unlike their white counterparts who played on immaculate turf pitches, Basil and his friends played on matting wickets. On the morning of a match, they walked the ten miles to their ground, rolled and watered the wicket, and nailed the matting on the mud wicket after it rolled out into a hard cake 22 yards long. They then placed boulders on the matting to keep it down while they went to change into their cricket clothes.

 The boys received no coaching. They practised on the streets near home, sometimes getting jailed for that as it was against the law to play on the road. Such small inconveniences rarely deterred them from pursuing their passion for cricket - and football. D'Oliveira learnt to play fast bowling by successfully fending off tennis balls --delivered from ridiculously close quarters - which constantly whistled past his ears. This prepared him for the vicious bounce of the matting surfaces on which some of their matches were played.

Whenever he could, Basil went to Newlands, the Test stadium in Cape Town, to watch Test matches played by white South Africans against visiting white teams. He would clean his father's pigeon loft to earn the shilling he needed for a Test match ticket, sit in a segregated enclosure and watch "gods like Peter May, Denis Compton, Colin Cowdrey, Neil Adcock and Hugh Tayfield". Though he was never bitter about being debarred from playing at Newlands because of the colour of his skin, he always supported the visiting team ‑‑ "after all, they weren't denying me the chance to play in
such a magnificent stadium" .

 By the time Basil stepped into his twenties, he was quite a force to reckon with in non-European cricket in South Africa. By 1960, he had played all the levels of cricket open to a Cape Coloured. And that included home and away games against Kenya. He once scored 225 in 70 minutes! On another occasion he scored 46 runs in an eight-ball over! As if to prove that he could bowl a bit too, he once took nine wickets for two runs with his off breaks!

 By now, D'Oliveira was quite obsessed with playing cricket in England and making a name for himself there. In 1958, he began a correspondence with John Arlott, the famous BBC radio commentator. "English cricket and John Arlott had always been synonymous to me. I ... hung on every word of Mr Arlott whenever I heard his radio commentaries in Cape Town. His voice and the words he spoke convinced me that he was a nice and compassionate man, so I started writing to him, asking him if there was any chance at all of playing cricket for a living in England," D'Oliveira said.

 Arlott had no illusions about the young South African's chances of being accepted as a professional cricketer in England on the strength of his deeds in non-European cricket in South Africa, but he replied to him regularly. Eventually, impressed by his correspondent's cricket statistics, and the modesty, politeness and persistence of his letters, he circulated the astonishing figures among club secretaries only to be met with indifference. "Those runs were scored on very good wickets against unknown opposition," they would say, but the wickets he took were, according to them, obtained on surfaces that favoured bowlers!

 By January 1960, D'Oliveira had all but shot his bolt. He married his childhood sweetheart Naomi after putting off marriage for so long because cricket would leave him little time for his family. He was already thirty though his age remained a mystery for years - birth certificates were unheard of in his circles.

 Hardly a month later, Arlott wrote to him again, this time to inform him that he had secured him a contract to play as a professional for a club called Middleton in the Central Lancashire league. John Kay, a Manchester journalist, had persuaded the club on the strength of Arlott's ecommendation, to hire D'Oliveira to take the place of the fearsome West Indies fast bowler Roy Gilchrist who was returning home.

 The contract was for just one year and the money offered was only £ 450 out of which he would have to pay £ 200 for his fare. How could D'Oliveria live on the remaining      £ 250 for a whole season? That too with Naomi now pregnant?

 "Bas, you'll never forgive yourself if you give up now," Naomi said.

 "Don't worry, Bas, we'll get you there," assured Damoo 'Benny' Bansda, an Indian friend, "and don't worry about Naomi, my family will take care of her." He, D'Oliveria's brother-in-law Frank Brache and another friend, Ishmeal Adams, formed a committee to raise funds. White cricketers like Peter Van der Merwe, a future South Africa captain, and Gerald Innes played in fund-raising matches along with coloured cricketers unmindful of the law. Innes joined Benny and Co. in walking round the ground at these matches with buckets in which they collected coins and notes. They raised £ 450 in just over a month.

 Tom Reddick, a former Nottinghamshire player who had coached in Lancashire, gave D'Oliveira advice on how to cope with the poor light, soft turf wickets and wet conditions that he would encounter in the league. He didn't have the heart to tell him that he hardly stood a chance of making the transition to the new, vastly different conditions.

 On the flight to London, D'Oliveira could not sleep. It was only the second flight of his life and it was a marathon journey. John Kay was there to receive him at London airport on a cold, damp April morning. "When we landed, I stumbled down the steps, trying to adjust to the kind of gloom and dampness I'd never experienced and wondering why there were so many photographers clicking away at the passengers," D'Oliveira recalls. They were there to photograph Middleton's strange new import from the "dark continent". Soon he was whisked away to a television interview which he barely survived with his elementary knowledge of English and his surprise at being treated as an equal by whites.

 Soon, with the help of Kay and Arlott ("You look just like a Pakistani, Basil"), D'Oliveira settled down at Middleton. There he was greeted like a long, lost brother by his club officials. And they were all white! He was warmly welcomed by his landlord Clarence Lord and his wife Mary. English conditions nearly undid D'Oliveira. In his first five matches, he totalled 25 runs! He practised and practised but to no avail. Senior professional Eric Price shared a few precious secrets with him. "Wait and relax," he said, "the weather will get better and the wickets harder. Till then, you've got to wait for the ball to come to you and work it away off the backfoot."

 Soon D'Oliveira overcame his initial depression and began to adjust to his new surroundings. The runs started flowing and at the end of the season, he finished at the top of the averages, even ahead of the West Indian great, Garfield Sobers.

 Basil D'Oliveira, the Cape Coloured from Signal Hill, Cape Town, went on to become a British citizen and an England Test player in 1966, barely two years after being signed by Worcestershire to represent it in the county championship, thanks to the efforts of the county captain Tom Graveney, one of England's great batsmen. It was a proud moment for D'Oliveira to walk out as a member of the England team along with Graveney, Cowdrey the England captain, Ken Barrington, and other players whom he had once admired from afar. He went on to play 44 Test matches with considerable distinction during the next six years.

 Ironically, England's tour of South Africa in the summer of 1968 was called off, as D'Oliveira was not allowed to play by the host country because he was coloured and England refused to drop him from the team.

 Based on D'Oliveira's autobiography, Time to Declare

 

 

 

 

 

THE PRINCE OF BANSWADA

 

            And My Tryst With William Bourne

PR Man Singh, then secretary of the Hyderabad Cricket Association, gave me my first break courtesy P Krishnamurti's hardsell, when I was an unknown. He picked me in the Hindustan Breweries XI in the Gold Cup, but I got switched on the day of the match to the opponents State Bank of India, my employers.

It was a great experience to bowl my first ball in that match to Rohan Kanhai and impress my captain Hanumant Singh, who taught me more about my own craft than any off spinner ever did.

 ‘Chhotu there wants you to go and bowl in his nets,’ the man I had watched lead India from afar told me, his face an impassive mask, completely oblivious to the shattering impact of his words. He was the Nawab of Indian cricket, Mansur Ali Khan, and until the previous moment, my captain for the next three days. I had been catapulted from the Hyderabad league to what was beginning to assume international dimensions, a first round match in the Moin-ud-Dowla Gold Cup, between Hindustan Breweries XI and State Bank of India. I, a lowly reserve player in the local SBI team, had been picked for the star-studded Breweries XI which had Pataudi (captain), Rohan Kanhai, Budhi Kunderan, Gopal Bose, Anura Tennekoon, David Heyn, Duleep Mendis,  P Krishnamurti, Kailash Gattani, DR Doshi,  Venkat Sundaram, and WA Bourne. For that singular honour, I owed a huge debt of gratitude to my senior in the bank’s local team, Indian wicket keeper P Krishnamurti, who had recommended my name to selector P R Man Singh.

But now, my dreams of turning out for an international eleven came crashing down as I learnt from Chhotu, aka Hanumant Singh, former Prince of Banswada, former India batsman and the captain of the all India State Bank team, that I was to defect to his team. I, who was not even a regular in the local SBI team, was hijacked by the national bank squad, thanks to all rounder Syed Abid Ali, who had alerted Hanumant to my presence amidst enemy ranks.

The blow was softened somewhat as I bowled to class batsman after class batsman in the SBI nets. Hanumant himself had been the hero of my teen years when he launched an incredible assault against Bob Simpson’s Aussies before Norm O’Neill caught him brilliantly on the boundary for 94 at the Corporation Stadium, Madras. And there were little Gundappa Viswanath, Abid Ali, Ambar Roy, Gopal Bose, Syed Kirmani, VS Vijaykumar, Abdul Jabbar and Madhu Gupte, all making for a formidable batting line-up.

Hanumant, I found out, was a shrewd captain, but his skills were not tested, as, helped by great batting by his top order, and ineffectual bowling by the opponents on a friendly pitch, State Bank made over 400 runs. (My contribution was a stylish zero, bowled first ball by William Bourne). When the Breweries batted, I bowled the last over of the day, beating Rohan Kanhai outside the off stump with my first ball at that level. It was an ordinary delivery, but the great West Indian was rather rusty from a long layoff.

Then the heavens smiled on us and laughed a rather cruel laugh at our opponents. A sharp overnight shower rendered the wicket wet and soft, and when the sun shone on it in the morning, the drying surface was quite unplayable. I twiddled my thumbs going from mid-off to square leg between overs while the other off spinner Arun Ogiral grabbed five wickets. By the time I came on to bowl, the wicket had dried completely and I managed to get a couple of tailend wickets. I had done nothing spectacular, but did not disgrace myself either. We won the match comfortably.

With that win, State Bank entered the final of the Gold Cup, where it would run into UFoam XI, led by ML Jaisimha, and including a number of top performers like Brijesh Patel, Parthasarathi Sharma, Prasanna, BS Chandrasekhar, Mike Dalvi and so on. I was eagerly looking forward to the final and bowled long and hard at the nets the evening before the match. So, pleasantly tired after my exertions, I was delighted to accept an invitation from Chhotu to have a glass of beer at his room. The players stayed at the ground those days, and the rooms, belonging to the Fateh Maidan Club, had sitouts enjoying a superb view of the cricket. I joined Hanumant in his balcony after a shower in the dressing room.

Even before I started enjoying the cold beer, the captain dropped a bombshell. As our ace left arm spinner Rajinder Goel was available for the final, he was dropping me. ‘You are a far better off spinner, but Arun has just taken five wickets, and poor chap, he could do with some morale boosting, after being dropped by his state.” Hanumant went on to predict a bright future for me and even wagered that I would soon be picked for Hyderabad in the Ranji Trophy.

It was a crushing blow, being dropped from the team just when I was beginning to believe my cursed luck in cricket had finally begun to change. I did not know it then, but this was to become a pattern for the rest of my cricketing years. Every time I thought of hanging up my boots, there came that unbelievable break and for a while I enjoyed the rarefied atmosphere of success. But the moment I thought I had arrived, fate had a habit of cutting me down to size, as if I needed to be told repeatedly that life wasn’t a bed of roses.

But this is not about my cricket. It is about that prince among cricketers of that generation, Hanumant Singh, who thought it was important to spend a whole evening talking to a younger cricketer he was about to drop from his team. Not only did he offer balm to my wounded spirits, he also took me on a conducted tour of the finer points of cricket, with special reference to off spin bowling, my field of specialisation. What I learnt that evening about my craft was more than a lifetime of learning, formal and informal. For Hanumant was an all round expert on cricket, and a storehouse of its history, especially, Indian and central Indian. His first hand accounts of the daring deeds of C K Nayudu not only entertained but also educated.

I met Hanumant again a couple of years later at a Duleep Trophy match at Bangalore. He was leading Central Zone, and I was a reserve player in the South Zone squad, with two other off spinners, Prasanna and Venkataraghavan in the playing eleven. He was delighted that I had received recognition as he predicted, though a season later than his prophecy.

My last meeting with Hanumant was a few years ago, once again at Bangalore, at the National Cricket Academy, which he headed. He was as always dedicated to his task, and had many great ideas for our young cricketers. Unfortunately, his old-fashioned insistence on discipline, decorum and sincere effort did not go down very well with some cricketers whom the media seemed to back. In this matter, I am not sure Hanumant received the support he might have expected from the cricket board.

In his playing days Hanumant Singh received the roughest treatment from the selectors and the board. For someone of extraordinary talent, he played only 14 Tests, and never toured anywhere after his impressive showing in England in 1967. Every time the Indian team was picked to go abroad, Hanumant was found mysteriously unfit, once with a congenital condition that had never troubled him! He never complained and he hated it if young cricketers did, about their own bad treatment at the hands of selectors. He believed in doing his job without expectation of reward, and he expected youngsters to do the same. He worried about them, especially if they did not realise their potential, or did not know how to channelise their talent. Knowing him, I am sure he worried about some of his wards to the very end.

ENDNOTE: Fortyseven years after my match against Hindustan Breweries XI, I have miraculously made contact with the Warwickshire fast bowler turned international coach William Bourne who bowled me for duck that time. I have stolen a quick single this time, William.

 

GULU EZEKIEL ON 'THIRD MAN'

 

Third Man: Recollections from a life in cricket - Book Review  by Gulu Ezekiel Mar 09, 2015

Now, you can get all the USA Cricket updates via Facebook. Also follow us on Twitter via @dreamcricket Third Man - Recollections From a Life in Cricket By V. Ramnarayan; Westland. 348 pages, illustrated. Rs. 395. V. Ramnarayan, Ram to one and all is a modern-day Neville Cardus. While Sir Neville was the music and cricket correspondent for the venerable Manchester Guardian, so Ram comes from a family, including from his wife’s side, steeped in classical South Indian music and the fine arts and is the editor-in-chief of Sruti, a monthly magazine on the performing arts. Ram was also one of the best off spinners in the land for a brief period in the 70s and could have walked into many Test sides around the world. But like a whole generation of Indian spin bowlers—Naushir Mehta, Rajinder Singh Hans, Padmakar Shivalkar, Rajinder Goel, et al—Ram could not break into the national squad due to the presence of the legendary quartet of S. Venkataraghan, EAS Prasanna, BS Chandrasekhar and Bishan Singh Bedi. Indeed Ram’s account of his career—belated but most welcome—is one of tough breaks, hard luck, poor judgment, dodgy umpiring and simply bad luck in being born in the wrong era. But in his introduction he states his love of playing cricket overcame the disappointments and setbacks that marred his career. For someone who had to wait till the age of 28 in the 1975-76 season to make his Ranji Trophy debut for his adopted Hyderabad he would emerge as the side’s leading bowler with 86 wickets in his brief career of five seasons. The top South Zone sides of the 70s, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Hyderabad, were packed with quality spinners back then and despite his late debut, Ram did not pale by comparison. Indeed he managed to break into the South Zone team in the Duleep and Deodhar Trophy and the Rest of India side in the Irani Trophy and was chosen as one of the 30 probables for the 1977-78 tour of Australia. While all along knowing he had no chance of making the final cut with offies Venkat and Pras in his way. The title of the book comes from the fact that in the 70s Ram was the “third man” when it came to the off spinner’s slot in the Indian team with Chandra cementing the leg spinner’s and Bedi monopolizing the left arm spinner’s position. The book will be particularly fascinating for anyone with an interest in Tamil Nadu and Hyderabad cricket. Having reported extensively on the ultra competitive Tamil Nadu Cricket Association first division league in Madras and first class cricket in the South in the 80s for Indian Express daily, the stories recounted by Ram brought forth a wave of nostalgia. I must admit though that I had no clue that Ram’s paternal uncle was PN Sunderasan, the doyen of Indian cricket writers. Or that a distant relative was one of the great characters of Madras cricket, the inimitable S. Annadorai who would regale us with tales of his favourite Australian Alan Kippax (pronounced ‘Kipp-aaax’ by Anna) who of course he had never seen! It is rare in India that a non-international cricketer writes his story though there was still plenty of glamour attached to first-class cricket here till the 80s. Indeed, the book traces his career from college to club cricket in Madras and finally first-class in Hyderabad where he moved to in 1971 since Venkat blocked his place in the Tamil Nadu side. To his misfortune, his place was then blocked by another ace off spinner, Naushir Mehta. He had practically given up the ghost before injury to Mehta saw Ram force his way into the side and he made an immediate impact.  Ram had toyed with the idea of a book for many years and mulled over the title Autobiography of an Unknown Cricketer. But that was taken some 20 years back by the late Prof. Sujit Mukherjee who played a handful of Ranji games for Bihar in the 1950s and whose book remains my all-time favourite. Hyderabad presented a whole new world of cricket for Ram. From the strait-laced world of Madras cricket he entered a city steeped in nawabi (royal) culture where club matches often did not start on time as players and umpires sauntered in and where elegance and grace (and apparently the ability to drink) counted above all. The Hyderabad side of the 70s was the most glamorous in India with the likes of the charismatic ‘Tiger’ Pataudi (who moved from Delhi), the handsome Abbas Ali Baig and the dashing ML Jaisimha whose captaincy skills were such that ‘Tiger’ gladly played under his leadership both for Hyderabad and South Zone despite being the undisputed captain of the national team for a decade. It was perhaps this very nawabi attitude that saw to it that they never made it to the Ranji Trophy finals despite being packed with Test players, falling agonizingly short to Bombay in the quarter-finals in ’75-76 in which Ram excelled with seven wickets in the first innings. As one of the players of that era has been quoted as saying: “we may never have won anything, but we certainly had the most fun.” The rich vein of stories provides the fun side of the book, the expert technical analysis of his contemporary spin bowlers the serious side and the look back at some of his ex-teammates who are no more the poignant side. It is a well-rounded book and a terrific read about an era that can never be replicated in Indian domestic cricket.

 

Travelling light: a journey in music

By V Ramnarayan

Chapter 5

Krishnan's Hindustani guru

Krishnan first met Guru in 1963, when he was doing his Pre-University Course (the equivalent of today's 12th standard) at Vivekananda College, run by the Ramakrishna Mission at Mylapore. Facing the college was a dhobi settlement advertised by the slow moving traffic of donkeys carrying laundry. The college itself  was located in a fairly large tree-shaded complex of buildings constructed in a non-descript style, but cool and reasonably friendly with its spacious classrooms and high ceilings serving to keep the heat out. Except for the Monday morning religion classes, there was no attempt at indoctrinating the students into the teachings of the mission. The teachers were generally of a high standard, but other than the general emphasis on academics, there was no overt pressure on the students to perform. Krishnan, his old schoolmate Bala and Guru hit it off straightaway, all three in the Natural Science section, as they found many things of common interest to share with one another.

Bala was the most studious of the trio, though he wore his industriousness lightly, never showing off his academic superiority over the other two. Krishnan was the middle-order batsman and Guru the tailender, so to speak, in order of effort put in, which all showed in the results. Bala topped the class, and Krishnan was not very far behind, while Guru did just enough to pass tests and exams. Though all three were close to one another, Guru and Krishnan forged a special bond thanks to their common interest in music. The bonus was that Guru was an accomplished tabla maestro, taught by the eminent percussionist Tabla Nawaz Shaik Dawood of Hyderabad.  Krishnan had always been fascinated by Hindustani music ever since he heard Nikhil Banerjee and Ravi Shankar as a boy, and he was proud to call himself a friend of Guru. He regularly went to the concerts in which Guru performed. He was thrilled when Guru was introduced before a concert at the SGS Sabha as The Young Man with the Magic Fingers.

That was the time Krishnan got to listen to some LP records of Hindustani music and such devotional music as Lata Mangeshkar's renderings of Meera bhajans, and the non-film music bhajans and ghazals of Mohammad Rafi, another great Hindi film singer. The Meera bhajans by Lata Mangeshkar had been set to music by her brother Hridaynath Mangeshkar, and many of Rafi's bhajans and ghazals by such iconic music directors as Khayyam. These the two youngsters listened to at the T'Nagar home of Guru's cousin who had been named after the Rajasthani songstress of yore. Meera, her mother and her siblings were lovely hosts in whose company the truant friends spent many an afternoon talking nonsense and listening to great music on the radiogram in their spacious, gracious home. In what was proving to be a completely unstructured if eclectic initiation into Hindustani music, Krishnan started listening \not only to the likes of Amir Khan, Paluskar and Bhimsen Joshi, but also to Lakshmi Shankar, A Kanan and Malabika Kanan, Bismillah Khan, Ali Akbar Khan, Omkarnath Thakur and N Rajam.

From Guru, Krishnan learnt some Hindustani music basics, and also tried to share some of his amateur knowledge of Carnatic music with him. He not only introduced Guru to the music of some of the leading Carnatic artists, but also made an attempt to explain the history and rationale of Carnatic music as well as the structure of a typical concert.

If we stitch together the bits and pieces of Krishnan's intermittent explanations to Guru over a period of about a year in college together, and flesh it out with the knowledge he acquired through reading and listening to through the years, it would read somewhat like what follows:

Carnatic music or karnataka sangitam is the classical or art music of south India—the area covering the four states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala.

Traditional followers of Indian music believe that it is of divine origin. In this, people who listen to north Indian or Hindustani and south Indian or Carnatic classical music, are united. In particular, the Vedas, more specifically the Sama Veda, are said to be the wellspring of what has evolved through the millennia into Indian classical music.

Carnatic music, like its northern counterpart, is essentially raga music—raga and tala music, to be more precise—with a vast number of songs based on an austere structure of melodic and rhythmic fundamentals. In short, every Carnatic music composition is rendered in a particular raga and a definite tala or rhythm cycle.

In Tamil Nadu, ancient Tamil compositions such as the Tevaram or Devaram and Tiruvachakam have been sung for centuries by a community of temple musicians known as Oduvars. The music they render is based on melodies called panns, which predate raga music.

A raga is a unique arrangement of the seven swaras or solfa notes—sa, ri, ga, ma, pa, dha and ni, with the microtones in between distinguishing it from western music. In practice, 12 such srutis are identified—with two ri-s (rishabha), two ga-s (gandhara), two ma-s (madhyama), two dha-s (dhaivata), and two ni-s (nishada).

In the melakarta scheme of ragas, 72 parent ragas are identified, and divided into two sets of ragas, based on the two types of madhyama—suddha and prati—with 36 suddha madhyama and 36 prati madhyama ragas.

All 72 parent ragas are complete ragas, with each raga containing all seven notes in both ascent and descent. In other words, each melakarta raga will have the scale sa-ri-ga-ma-pa-dha-ni-Sa in the ascent and Sa-ni-dha-pa-ma-ga-ri-sa.

The two subsets are further divided into 6 chakras each, consisting of 6 ragas each. Each of the suddha madhyama and prati madhyama ragas is differentiated by the positions of the other swaras, with only the shadja and panchama constant.

While the parent ragas are known as mela or janaka ragas, their offspring are known as janya or offspring ragas. A large number of permutation-combinations is possible, with such variations as 5 swaras in the ascent and 6/ 7 in the descent or vice versa, 5 and 5, or 6 and 6, so on and so forth.  Thousands of ragas are the result.

A tala is a rhythmic cycle with a specific number of beats. Carnatic music uses a comprehensive system of talas called the Suladi sapta tala system. It has seven families of talas, each of which has five members, one each of five types or varieties (jati or chapu), thus allowing 35 possible talas. In practice, a small number of talas are regularly used.

Sophisticated, arithmetically intricate rules govern the elaboration of tala patterns. Once the tempo of a song is decided, the musician can accelerate. The vilambita is the slow pace, while madhyama is double that pace and the durita four times the vilambita kala. The singer maintains the tala or tempo by slapping his hand on his thigh, while instrumentalists may resort to tapping their feet.   

This is Carnatic music in a nutshell, though it is an oversimplification of a complex, sophisticated system.

Travelling light: a journey in music

By V Ramnarayan

Chapter 1
(Revised and expanded)

Beginnings

The first time Krishnan heard Carnatic music, he was barely five. He did not know it was Carnatic music, but it was clear to him that his mother Radha's singing was special. She had a sweet, ringing voice, perfectly aligned to sruti, and she loved the kritis she sang, sitting before the little puja alcove in the kitchen-cum-dining space in their first floor apartment. Her favourite composer was Tyagaraja (1767-1847), the saint-poet the rasikas of the present day classical music of south India worshipped as an avatara purusha. Largely influenced by her eldest brother Ramu, a successful  executive of Burmah Shell, but a firm believer in tradition and culture, she learnt music from a teacher who came home three times a week, and strenuously practised what she learnt from him. She was as eager to please him as she did her parents, and she became a regular devotee of Tyagaraja, because her brother was one.

Radha was also a devout young girl, though not an ostentatious practitioner of rituals.  She spent a quiet half hour every morning in puja, praying to her ishta devata Rama, whose Ravi Varma portrait in full regal splendour accompanied by his consort Sita, brother Lakshmana and lieutenant Hanuman, filled one wall of the puja space. A brilliant student, strong in English and mathematics, Radha was the joy of her family, with her perfect behaviour and unfailing courtesy to everyone, trusting ways and love of her siblings and parents. 87 years today, she still gets all misty-eyed when she recalls the care and concern eldest brother Ramu had for her. By the time she entered her teens, Ramu recognised her unusual musical ability and located good teachers for her at every stage. Two of her mentors were the veena vidwan Kalyanakrishna Bhagavatar and Professor Srinivasaraghavan.

Marriage when she was 18 to insurance company officer Ramanan put an end to her college education and her music classes. She married into a large middle class joint family, whose head was Srinivasan, a brilliant but unworldy-wise scholar in his mid-fifties. A widower, he lived in Mylapore, Madras, at a somewhat decrepit old two-storeyed bungalow, Sarada, named after the wife of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, whom Srinivasan, a devotee of the saintly couple, had once met.

His three sons Raja (and wife Kamala), Ramanan (and Radha) and Raju and three sisters Lakshmi, Kalyani and Lalita lived together under one roof at Sarada, when Radha came into the family.

Srinivasan was a believer in women's empowerment and encouraged his daughters and daughters-in-law to develop an interest in literature, art and music. He had a good ear for music, and enjoyed listening to Radha's singing on the rare occasions she could take a break from housework. Srinivasan died two years after Radha came into the family. Soon after that, Ramanan and Radha left for Trivandrum, Kerala, where the insurance company transferred Ramanan.

Five years later, when Ramanan, Radha and their three children returned to Madras, the head of the family was Ramanan's grandmother, Paatti, a wise old widow. With both her daughter and son-in-law long dead, and only two grandsons earning any income, she had to run a tight ship. She told Radha she must give up her aspirations and merge into the family as a typical woman member bound to the kitchen and household duties, as grandma could not be seen to favour one daughter, granddaughter or daughter-in-law over another. The extended family under one roof then included Ramanan's two brothers and two yet-to-be-married sisters Happily, Kamala, the other daughter-in-law of the family, and Radha got on well. Kamala, the older of the two, was easy-going, and not afraid of hard work, so the workload of cooking and cleaning for an army of hungry adults and children, was shared equally by the two women in a true spirit of give and take. When the two had a few quiet moments to share, in the afternoons when the menfolk and schoolgoing children were away, the pair grabbed a shut-eye in a corner of the cool dark of the vast puja room, before the next round of housework caught up with them. Frequently, Kamala (whom Radha called Manni) asked Radha to sing for her a song or two out of her considerable repertoire. One of Manni's favourites was Syama Sastri's (1762-1827) Brovavamma in the raga Manji, which Radha sang in a deeply moving voice that captured the delicate nuances of the kriti with its pleading, plaintive verses before the goddess Kamakshi.

It was only when Ramanan's sisters had married and left Sarada, and  Krishnan and his sisters were old enough to go to school unescorted that Radha was able to find time to sing in the puja room of an evening. She was also able to persuade Ramanan to hire a music teacher for her daughter Vijaya and niece Gita. Ramanan's family then occupied the first floor of Sarada while his elder brother Raja, his wife Kamala and their four children lived downstairs. After his parents passed away, Ramanan never took a step without Raja's permission, and he duly approached Raja with Radha's proposal. Raja was a strict, orthodox traditionalist, but not an unreasonable man. With some music training because of his proximity to Balakrishna Sastrigal, an iconic harikatha exponent, he agreed, but not before teaching the girls to sing a couple of slokas, and satisfying himself that they had it in them to learn the rudiments of a complex art.

The paattu vadyar who came home twice or thrice a week to teach the girls the basic lessons of Carnatic music was a disciple of well known vocalist Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar. He saw some talent in the girls, and taught them conscientiously, with patience and skill.

Listening to these music classes and Amma's tentative attempts to start singing the songs she had learnt in her own teenage years, Krishnan discovered a latent love of music in himself. As he managed to do a fair imitation of Amma'sKamalambambhajare in the raga Kalyani, and her rendition of Munnu Ravana in Todi, both Appa and Amma decided to enrol him in the paattu class, along with Vijaya and Gita. That year, he was also a member of a group of siblings and cousins that Raja Periappa gathered together to teach them Tiruppavai verses in preparation for a competition at nearby Subramaniaswami temple. With inputs from both Periappa and Amma, Krishnan did manage to learn a few verses in a ragamalika, which he sang with great gusto during practice, raising hopes that he might win at least a consolation prize. But, come the day of the competition, and he was a bundle of nerves, and made an ignominious exit without completing even the opening verse.

Krishnan had been born in Trivandrum, a ''midnight's child'', whose arrival into the world had been welcomed by much noise and celebration, as only hours earlier had the new Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru announced the fulfilment of India's tryst with destiny from the ramparts of the Red Fort. The Ramanans were at the time close neighbours of Radha's parents. A retired schoolmaster, Radha's father Swaminathan was a great music lover, and his offspring including his eldest son Ramu arrived every year to spend the summer vacation with their parents.

While Krishnan had been too young during the Ramanan family's Trivandrum tenure to remember much about these huge family gatherings, he now began to look forward to the annual summer trips from Madras to Trivandrum, where he would be joined by cousins and uncles and aunts. Grandfather Swaminathan's house was stacked with books, which had begun to attract Krishnan. Indoor games galore from Pallankuzhi to Scrabble were delightful escapes from the heat outside, while the late evening was reserved for singing by the adults of the family, Ramu Uncle leading the way. Though not the most talented of the many amateur singers in the extended family, Ramu was the most devoted, most prolific and most disciplined of them. If Tyagaraja was God incarnate to him, Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar was his hero. One of his younger brothers, Mani, had a strong, sonorous and malleable voice with excellent reach. He loved to sing slokas in elaborate ragamalikas, and did so movingly, keeping his audience spell bound, even though he perhaps did not know a single kriti in its entirety. Radha was the most gifted of the women of the family, most of whom had learnt music from private tutors.

The high point of the week during these vacations was the Friday evening soiree in which everyone with a semblance of musical ability sang by turns, with Ramu Uncle guiding and controlling them. Though Tyagaraja was the favourite composer, the climax of  the evening was invariably provided by the grand coronation songMamava Pattabhi Rama by Muttuswami Dikshitar (1775-1835) in the raga Manirangu, which almost everyone present joined to render together. Magically, the family sang in one voice, the grandeur of the chorus somehow managing to hide any false notes by individual singers.

Sweat. Pain. Badges.

By Akhila Ramnarayan

Singapore
Dance India Asia Pacific, 4 September 2012

Dance India Asia Pacific participant Sivakami Ananthanarayanan from the Temple of Fine Arts, Singapore, thumps herself enthusiastically on right and left shoulders as she darts in and out of the Apsaras Arts office at the Goodman Centre during a break between sessions.  I look up, quizzical, from frenetic typing and she repeats: “Sweat. Pain. These are our badges, Leela Akka said. So now, when we’re tired, we’re telling each other that!” The advice is timely; the participants need all the grit and collective goodwill they can muster on Day 3, the most grueling thus far.

The intensive training sessions continue apace, with the dancers coming (sweatily, painfully) to grips with the pieces they are learning: in Leela Samson’s advanced class, Papanasam Sivan’s Anandanatam idum padam (Kedaragowla) choreographed by the late Kalakshetra stalwart Venkatachalapathy, in Priyadarsini Govind’s intermediate class, the dancer’s signature sadakshara kauthuvam on Murugan (Shanmukhapriya).  

Shantha Ratii’s lec-dem on Kuchipudi follows.  As they did with Kathak and Odissi in the introductory workshops with Aditi Mangaldas and Arushi Mudgal earlier, students learn basic Kuchipudi stances and moves, also developing an understanding of the dance form’s roots and history.  One of Singapore’s own, Shantha Ratii is a faithful presence at Dance India despite illness, with comments and contributions always insightful, always pertinent to the session at hand.  Her poise and erudition shine through, as does her absolute commitment to Indian art and culture.   

In the afternoon, Leela Samson and Priyadarsini Govind swap classes for a one-time, full-blown interaction with each others’ cohort.  There is no let-up in dance instruction, or dancing.  But each icon of Bharatanatyam does, in her own distinctive way, take the time in these concurrent sessions to reflect on the growth of her practice and art, on teaching and learning methods, while the students listen enthralled.  

Leela Samson’s choreography workshop follows immediately after.  She unveils not only the creative process—from initial concept to embodiment in time and space —but also vagaries of stage and technology (lighting, stage layout) that affect actual proscenium performance on a given day. The demonstration part of the session involves pointing out choreographic choices and decisions—movement, melody, rhythm—in video excerpts of her work.  

Tall, always smiling Sruti Pegatraju, a student of finance, classical music, and Bharatanatyam, is thoughtful as she considers the impact of the session: “Leela akka’s analysis of the term choreography made me think beyond the conventional definition. Before this talk, the alarippu was just the first piece I had learnt after adavus. I never stopped to appreciate that it maintains our centre, introduces us to the audience, and lets us offer salutations to the Lord. As Akka was talking about her own previous projects, I was in awe that everyday thoughts and inner philosophies can be transformed into such exquisite pieces of art.” 

The day isn’t done yet.  We move to a panel discussion—spearheaded by Milapfest director Alok Nayak, the Esplanade theatre’s director of programming JP Nathan, dancer Shankar Kandasamy and I—moderated by Aravinth Kumarasamy.  As apprehensive as we panelists are about the stamina of the participants in the late evening, they surprise us with spirited rejoinders to our deliberately provocative, no-holds-barred salvos on what should continue and what should change in dance. JP Nathan shares frankly his perceptions of what crosses over, and what remains a source of eternal bafflement, to uninitiated audiences in Singapore, culturally curious but with little or no background in the Indian classical arts.  Alok Nayak expresses his earnest wish that Indian dance become a “global export,” discussing the roadblocks Milapfest often encounters in making it so.  I speak of my experiences as an actor in Gowri Ramnarayan’s JustUs Repertory, from the perspective of someone who has worked with many dancers and musicians—including Priya Govind, Sheejith Krishna, Mythili Prakash, and Anjana Anand—in theatre, a forum that garners new audiences.

Questions immediately bubble up about experimentation, commodification, how to retain the “purity”of the art form, and innovation’s relationship to tradition.  Though the students get heated at times, black and white dissolve into finely shaded greys, into messy, complicated, real-world exigencies. Dancers, theatre workers, scholars, festival organizers, and venue heads all realise we are working from a common impulse to create pools of beauty and awareness in a complex, fast-changing world, whose presence we cannot ignore, much as we try.  The air is still buzzing as we conclude the session with a call for reflective practice through reading, writing and socio-political consciousness, and for ethical practice on the part of each individual in the room.   Funnily enough, we come to see that, in a continuously evolving, commerce-driven world, it is perhaps artistic integrity that is ultimately recognised and prized. 

On September 4, the last day of Dance India Asia Pacific 2012, each class spends the morning session under the persistently hawk-eyed supervision of Leela Samson and Priya Govind, practising the piece it learnt for the video-filming session to follow.  Watching the advanced session, I am struck anew that the act of performance, putting yourself out there, making yourself vulnerable to others through your art, is an act of courage, an act of giving, in itself.  Each student attempts the task at hand with complete sincerity and faith, from seasoned professional Shankar Kandasamy who performed at the welcome ceremony, to the youngest, most inexperienced dancer in the room.  When I talk to him during lunch, I get a sense from Shankar Kandasamy of how important the immersion that Dance India offers is for the artistic diaspora, how vital to creative survival.  His sense of mission about the work of the Temple of Fine Arts, Malaysia, where he is faculty, is palpable. 

We move to a short presentation about Sruti magazine, which allows us to continue thinking through some of the themes initiated during the panel discussion the previous evening.  I ask students to consider reading, researching and writing on the art form as integral to individual creative practice, and together, we brainstorm ways in which Sruti can provide an entry-point for aspiring dancers into the creative and critical conversation. By this point, all participants have become aware of the need to learn about the history and present-day context in which they practise and perform their art.  

The decision-model based workshop on synopsis writing by scholar Shobha Vadrevu which comes next is interactive and boisterous, with many valuable inputs from Shantha Ratii, Shankar Kandasamy, and  Aravinth Kumarasamy.  They each draw on their experiences of presenting work internationally to suggest what does and doesn’t appeal /convey to different audiences. I propose considering various kinds of synopsis writing as one kind of exercise in a whole host of available writing practices ranging from informal to formal that dancers might incorporate into their creative approach.  Alok Nayak and Archana Shastri describe some of the communicative hurdles they face in liaising between Indian classical artistes and potential sponsors/ cultural organizations In the UK.  

After the dancers put their best feet forward for the filming and sharing session with their gurus, the final lec-dem on abhinaya is by someone who is considered Bharatanatyam’s leading exponent of the same.   Since 2007, I have had the unalloyed luxury of watching Priya Govind rehearse her portrayal of Kalki Krishnamurthy’s legendary dancer-heroine Sivakami in Gowri Ramnarayan’s play Flame of the Forest, and know as a result the capacity for self-surrender, the resoluteness and strength, she brings to her practice, day in and day out.  But the students at Dance India—having now glimpsed her iron insistence on perfection and absolute attentiveness in the classroom— have no inkling how visceral it can be to watch her perform up close.

With none of the appurtenances of the stage (she is in her practice costume, wearing minimal makeup and next to no ornaments), Priya Govind takes us through an entire emotional gamut, from jilted lover to bereaved mother, in the span of two hours.  The walls are breached between inner and outer realms, self and world, as, again and again, with one dismissive gesture, one quiver of the eyebrow, one toss of the head, one tremulous look, she makes us laugh, rage, scold and weep with each character she presents.  Her iron discipline, her ability to shut out all extraneous thoughts and impulses to create moment after bejewelled moment of wordless communion between artiste and audience, is the most valuable lesson the students could possibly receive.

The awarding of certificates, thank you-s, and speeches all go by in a blur after that, as Alok Nayak and Aravinth Kumarasamy  joke during the closing ceremony. Past meets present as, in a poignant final address, reticent, dignified Apsaras Arts founder Neila Sathyalingam commemorates the efforts of her late husband in the arena of Indian dance abroad.  The students drink in the voices and words of their mentors commending their hard work, spurring them onward in their practice—their sadhana and sadhakam—one last time. 

As part of her solo performance on opening night, which now feels like it happened an age ago,  Aditi Mangaldas intones: “I seek the beloved,” letting the words hang softly in the air as she sits still on stage, a picture of perfect repose.  Is this search for the beloved (whoever, whatever that may be) a dewdrop falling on a leaf, or a storm unleashed, she asks, before letting loose a blizzard of breathtaking movement and sound that spirals slowly into silence.  Those who only vaguely grasped what that moment meant then will surely now arrive at deeper, more complex understandings of the daily physical, psychological, intellectual, metaphysical striving constituting artistic endeavour:  the elusiveness, the tantalising nearness, of the goal.