CHENNAI: When PC Ramakrishna was three years old, he had approached the mridangam artist and Carnatic music legend Palghat Mani Iyer, while he was taking a quick afternoon siesta at Ramakrishna’s home in then Calcutta, and began drumming on his head.
Although I don’t remember the instance, I was severely chastised for this, but Mani Iyer allowed me to experience my first strike on his mridangam in front of a vinayagar idol the very next day, and that was where it all began,” said the veteran theatre and voice artist. For the next 18 years, he trained under several disciples of the mridangam artist, before finally learning under Iyer himself at his home in Thanjavur.
It was in the gurukulam system then, so I was functioning as a sishya. Now, we have Skype or the teacher would come home but then, we were around 12 of us learning under him. We would wash his clothes, look after his mridangams, set it to the right sruthi for the right performance, and speak to the in-house tuner to adjust the tune,” said Ramakrishna. He remembers the artist as a soft-spoken and kind man who treated him as his son and an extremely talented teacher of a few words. In the gurukulam, all the students were at a different level of proficiency, and Ramakrishna admits he was a junior-level student. When Iyer would perform, Ramakrishna said that he would perform exactly what he had taught that particular student before them in a concert setting, and merely look at them, as if to say, Did you see what I did?
Once he was deemed fit to perform on stage, after 17 years of training, Ramakrishna then began to perform in Chennai at the Music Academy in 1962. However, this stint was very short-lived.I am unashamed to admit that I couldn’t make a living out of music at the time. Others had the adventurous spirit and courage at the time to get into it, but I, much to my master’s chagrin, stopped playing,” said Ramakrishna. For the next 27 years, the Madras Players’ member worked in the corporate sector, before an early retirement in 1996 to pursue voice-acting and theatre. From his first performance in The Crucible in 1969 till date, Ramakrishna has donned the robes of an actor and recently, a director.
If there is one thing playing mridangam taught me, it is that everything is about layam, or rhythm. My master would give a speech, and ask what is layam. Layam is God, he would answer. It is in everything, the sunrise and sunset, in the humming of bees, it is the rhythm of nature. I grew up playing with this rhythm,” said Ramakrishna. As the Madras Players begin to focus more on Indian themes in their English plays, the question of rhythm has affected Ramakrishna in many ways, especially as an actor.
To find a perfect line between a script and a stage adaptation, to find the perfect balance between two languages, and the perfect way to present Indian content to an English-speaking audience, Ramakrishna goes back to the rhythm he studied for 18 years. “When adapting plays written in Tamil, like in the case of Water, a play centred around a village that did not have water for three days and where everyone was illiterate save the school teacher, it is difficult not to make your characters a caricature. But a technique I discovered is to convey the rhythm of the words’ intent, rather than the words themselves. I would ask my crew to read the line in Tamil and to understand how they would say it in English,” said Ramakrishna.
For the first time in the Madras Players’ 60-year history, the theatre group will be putting up an English play with live music called Trinity next month, featuring Vijay Siva, Gayathri Venkataraghavan and Dr S Sundar in acting roles and Ramakrishna as the director. The play will focus on the lives of the Carnatic legends, the Thiruvarur Three, namely Muthuswami Dikdhitar, Shyama Sastri and Thyagaraja. “Because of my background in music, I know exactly what I want them to play and what songs I want in the play. These people are all at the peak of their careers, and yet they are so humble. I run by the songs I’ve chosen by them. It is, after all, transference of rhythm,” he said.
If I was presented with the same crossroads I was at that point in time in my life, if I had to take the decision in 1964, the passion for music would have ruled me. When I see other performers at kutcheris, I do look back, and I feel a twinge somewhere inside, saying that I could have been doing that,” said Ramakrishna. Two years ago, on his daughters’ persuasion and request, he brought down his mridangam from his attic and performed to a private audience in Music Academy’s Kasturi Srinivasan Hall, along with Prince Rama Varma. Ramakrishna explains that he does not find time to practice regularly, partly due to his schedule and partly due to the bulky nature of the instrument.