This is about Maestro Lalgudi Jayaraman and not about me.

But I must set the stage from which to view the great music blossoms that bloomed in the household of Sri Gopala Iyer, the revered father of Sri. Jayaraman. I was five, and by all accounts, unkempt, unruly, playful to the extreme and a tactless young girl pampered by my father and despised by siblings. My mother dragged me to the house of Sri. Gopala Iyer and requested that the master give me music lessons. Initially, according to my mother, Sri. Gopala Iyer was not willing to take me as a student having observed my behavior and suggested that I needed a bit more of maturity to be in a class taught by him. My mother, herself a musician and a convincing talker convinced the master to accept me as a student much to my dislike and dismay.

I remember asking my father never to send me to that scary house where everything seemed so ordered and seemed to have a high degree of discipline. I was also frightened by the rules that were handed to us students by Sri. Gopala Iyer. We had to take our baths before arriving at the master’s house, before 6AM. My mother would wake me up by 5 AM and drag me to the back yard well; draw water by buckets full and pour the same on my head. I would then put on crisp washed clothes and with my forehead adorned with Vibhuti and Kumkum proceed toward the master’s house while screaming my head off all the way wailing and crying aloud. Everyone in the town would know that I was going to my class. Arriving at the masters’ house, we would be asked to be seated in the outer porch while older girls and boys of ten years and above would be taught painstakingly and meticulously by Sri. Gopala Iyer. My turn would not come before 8. 30 AM and I never really understood why I had to be there so early.

Lalgudi’s house was the last one in the Brahmin agraharam and was adjacent to a grotto of tall trees. His house was a charming modest house with a sizeable backyard. With the amount of music classes going on, it was just as well that his was the last house. At times, like in the old Gurukulam days, the other children and myself were given chores around the house such as watering the plants, drawing water and at times minding the shrine etc. Sri. Jayaraman’s mother was a quiet, enduring and kind lady who was always working in the kitchen or around the house. She would repeatedly request me to keep my hair tied behind my ears neatly because it was not auspicious to leave the hair open. Sri. Gopala Iyer started me on the harmonium and did not find my progress satisfactory. He rarely used the rod and never against a girl child; but my discordant notes drove him to take a stick and lightly tap me on my knuckles. That was enough for me to throw a tantrum and there upon I was transferred to Sri. Jayaraman who was a young budding musician of great talent. I remember him being very quiet, rather reserved, he spoke little and to me he seemed very respectful of his disciplinarian father. To me it looked like that he was fearful of disobeying his father. Unlike my household, there was extraordinary peace and harmony around his house.

Sri. Jayaraman looked like a vision, clean as a whistle, thin, slim and had a body of a yoga teacher, very intense face and his hair tied into a knot, a symbol of Brahmin orthodoxy of those times. I believe I never heard him laugh but he smiled at a good performance and at times at my dreadful pounding on the keys. One day he suggested that harmonium was not a good instrument for me to learn and told his father that I had a good voice that could be trained. Thereupon he taught me to sing. He was a welcome change from his disciplinarian father. He was gentle, considerate and never had a temper. Then one day I went to fetch him (sent by his mother) from a household where he was teaching a young woman named Vaidehi. I remember little else about either Vaidehi or her household other than the fact that when I went to that house I heard the most divine music and the picture of the handsome shiny young teacher with the beautiful young woman with the instrument in her hand. The whole scene was a like picture from a book of Hindu classics. I decided then and there that I was going to look like that and to that extent, I immediately decided to take up learning the Veena and abandon vocal music. That and other school related interests put an end to my musical career until much later when I took up veena music with Sermadevi Subramania Shastri, a great Veena master.

I continued to follow Sri Jayaraman’s musical career. Our families had moved to other places. Then in 1963, while traveling to New Delhi for a posting, I met my future husband Srinivasan in the Grand Trunk Express. As we started to converse and he heard the town Lalgudi mentioned, he asked whether I knew Lalgudi Jayaraman. He proudly declared that he was a slave to the music of Sri. Jayaraman. From then on every time he came down to Madras, during our, ‘innocent dating days’ he would repeatedly request that I play krithis in the Raga Mohanam always adding that he was addicted to Lalgudi's rendering of that Raga.

While living in Washington, Srinivasan often found refuge in the music of Lalgudi. As the head of one of the most contentious technologies with the US government, Srinivasan would often put on Lalgudi's records after the children and I had gone to bed. He would stretch himself on the wooden floor of a large hall purposely kept empty except for a large library desk in one corner, floor to ceiling bookshelves on a 20 feet wall and a piano in the opposite corner. A picture of Thanjavur Navneetha Krishna was the only picture on the Northeast wall. In that darkened sprawling hall, except for the street light coming through large windows, the only illumination was from Lalgudi’s music. Every time he appeared at the Senate on nuclear and other reactor safety issues trying his explanations with the various groups, we knew that he had spent the previous night in the company of the divine music of Lalgudi. He was not given to verbiage and long winded explanations but would say simply that listening to Lalgudi often gave him the clarity of mind he needed to deal with either the technical or policy issues. To us it seemed bit of a stretch. But coming from a man of deep conviction and sincere few words there was no doubt that indeed was the truth.

Lalgudi’s influence worldwide is legendary. His family, especially his father was a master who taught every musical instrument besides vocal music. Lalgudi Jayaraman’s music is about his extraordinary talent and divine gift, but it is also about an exemplary life of devotion to art, dedication, hard work and relentless pursuit of excellence. He, in fact, is a study in how a single individual elevated the violin music to such transcendence and in the process inspiring great number of young musicians to flower forth. I often open my meetings whether it is a lecture at the Smithsonian or the conferences that I do at Harvard or elsewhere with the most extraordinary selections from the Maestro. Like the poet Wordsworth who would remember his ‘ten thousand golden yellow daffodils when in pensive or vacant moods’, I unfailingly will switch to a time when I would remember the song Hanumane Swamikindha Adayalam sollayaa, in the raga Malayamarutham floating all around the blessed house of Lalgudi’s. To remember the scene and hear the music in my head give me much comfort. I used to say in jest that I never would reveal that I was a student of Lalgudi’s with his reputation in mind. My own little musical outbursts have been forgotten and forgiven but the fact that he was my first teacher, I have to think is a matter of my good Karma!

Sri Lalgudi Jayaraman will be conducting a music workshop at the Sackler Museum, Harvard University on April 25 at 6:30 pm (See our calendar for more details)

Mangalam Srinivasan is a fellow of the Centre of International Affairs at Harvard University and lives in Cambridge.

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