In the hallowed courts of Madurai, under the reign of the Pandyan kings, poetry was never merely a pastime; it was a matter of state, of spirit, and occasionally, of survival. The story begins with a riddle posed by the king: Is the fragrance of a woman’s hair a gift of nature, or a result of nurture? He offered a staggering reward of one thousand gold coins to any poet who could resolve this query with a verse of absolute truth.
Enter Dharmi, a poor temple priest whose devotion was as vast as his pockets were empty. Taking pity on his plight, Lord Shiva himself — the presiding deity of Madurai — penned a poem and handed it to the trembling priest acting as his ghostwriter. However, when Dharmi presented the verse in the royal court, he was met not with applause, but with the sharp, uncompromising intellect of Nakkeerar, the poet-saint and head of the Sangam academy.
Nakkeerar did not object to the sol — the poetics, the masterful construct, or the sheer beauty of the linguistic form. His objection was rooted in the porul — the metaphysical essence and the underlying ethereal truth of the verse. Shiva’s poem had claimed that a woman’s hair possesses a natural fragrance. Nakkeerar, the relentless guardian of truth, declared this a flaw. To him, the fragrance was a result of nurture — of flowers and scents applied — not an inherent property of nature.
What followed was perhaps the most audacious standoff in the history of world literature. Even when the air grew thick with divine energy and the poet in disguise revealed himself to be Lord Shiva, Nakkeerar did not flinch. As Shiva opened his third eye — threatening to incinerate him, Nakkeerar stood his ground. His famous retort, “Netrikan thirappinum kutram kutrame” (Even if you open your third eye, a flaw is a flaw), remains the ultimate anthem of intellectual integrity.
On that occasion, Nakkeerar’s defiance was not a display of ego, but a defense of the sanctity of the ‘word’.
This episode best brings out the Indian world view that defines the creative liberty allowed in poetry and art. While they kindle the subjectivity of the rasika, as a discipline they do not grant an open-ended subjective license to the creator. Creativity and its prowess are instead measured against a resonance where the sol (expression) and porul (substance) of the work align with the universal laws of nature and the divine. In this context, Nakkeerar stands as a perennial reminder that mastery in skill or intellect can truly be appreciated only when the gravity of the form meets the unwavering rigour for which the artist strives as a search for form.
The agony of the gatekeeper: HMV Raghu
A contrast between the ancient masters and our contemporary stage can be best demonstrated by a man who has spent nearly a century as the silent guardian of the ‘word’: KS Raghunathan. Known to the world of music as ‘HMV Raghu’, he is a nonagenarian whose very presence is a direct link to the source. He learned from Sonti Narayana Rao — grandson of Sonti Venkataramana Bhagavatha, who belonged to the direct student lineage of Saint Thyagaraja. Later, refining his craft under Maestro GNB, Raghu is more than a technician; he is a nadasvara vidwan in the truest sense.
During his storied career at AIR and HMV, he recorded the greatest legends. His own legacy is defined by his uncompromising vak shuddhi (purity of diction). He was known to stop the most formidable artistes mid-rendition, demanding a retake not for a missed note, but for a mangled syllable. To him, music was a sacred vessel, and any crack in the vessel — any distortion of the word — was a leak through which the bhava (emotion) escaped.
When I spoke with him about the importance of the ‘word’, his joy was quickly eclipsed by a palpable agony. “I have the greatest love for form and I bow to it as the ultimate,” he stated. “The greatness of our ancestors was their breadth and depth of knowledge — they knew how to tie the holy knot between rhythm, melody, and word without losing the complex nature of form in each. However, it breaks my heart when I hear established singers and youngsters today. I have walked out of concerts not out of disrespect to the art, but because of their disrespect to the sentiment of the composer.”
His angst is a remnant of an era when the Chennai audience was feared by visiting artistes from across the globe. A rasika like HMV Raghu represents a time when the listeners were also as disciplined and knowledgeable as the performer. They possessed the rasikatva to appreciate the most microscopic nuance: how a gamaka (oscillation) could stay true to the raga while navigating the rigid structure of the tala, all while keeping the meaning of the word (porul) untouched.
A clarion call for the Word
If the marriage between Shiva (word) and Parvati (meaning) is annulled for the sake of a flashy vocal run, will the rendition of the composition still retain its quality of being “shastria”? This misplaced compulsion to treat melody or rhythm as independent entities — does it not stem from a desperate need to satisfy Western aesthetics that values phonetic texture over embodied word?
When the vak is hailed as supreme in two classical cultures — Sangam and Vedic — how can a vocalist claim to bring out the intent of the vaggeyakara by treating diction with a step-sister attitude? Without the word, isn’t the bhava evicted: leaving behind nothing but a hollow, melodic frill?
May the rasikas of Carnatic soon return to the Indian world views, where the mastery of an artiste is not measured by their ostentatious gimmickry and noise, but by the truth they preserve within the word.