VIRUDHUNAGAR: In the quiet hamlet of Chinnakamanpatti, the rhythmic thud of the Parai no longer echoes with the silence of social divide. An instrument once relegated to the margins and restricted to the sombre rites of mourning has found a vibrant, new life among the village’s youth. As dusk settles, the air thrums with the energy of over 20 students reclaiming a lost heritage.
Under the seasoned tutelage of 50-year-old B Saravanakanth and his troupe Athirvu Tamil Isaiyagam, the children are transforming a craft once stigmatised into a symbol of cultural pride.
The journey began a year ago when headmaster M Kaliraj noticed a growing curiosity for traditional arts among his pupils. To channel this interest into a disciplined pursuit, he turned to Saravanakanth. “When I approached Saravanakanth to train them, he agreed immediately,” Kaliraj says. “He has never asked for any remuneration and even politely declines when we offer snacks. His commitment to teaching the students has been unwavering.”
Once their training is complete, the students will be equipped to perform at public platforms, including the Kalai Thiruvizha, he adds.
For Saravanakanth, this isn’t a solitary project but a crusade. Over the past few years, he has been teaching the art form for free to over 300 students from government schools.
One of humanity’s oldest percussion instruments, Parai — a hollow wooden frame bound by cowhide and struck with asymmetrical sticks — was once the heartbeat of ancient Tamil society. It was the herald of news, the soul of weddings, the clarion call of festivals, and the invocation of divine spirits during funeral processions. However, centuries of orthodox rigidity stripped its versatility, tethering it solely to the ritual of death and the hands of the Dalit community.
Saravanakanth’s journey into the world of percussion came quite early. As a schoolboy in Thanjavur, he remembers being transfixed the first time he heard the kottu during the annual Draupadi Amman festival. While his brothers gravitated towards academics, he found himself drawn to art forms. “During my teenage, I would accompany my mother to touring talkies just to listen to the songs,” he recalls.
His sonic world was further enriched when his father’s transfer to Sengottai introduced him to the rolling thunder of the chenda melam. These influences quietly shaped his musical sensibility, revealing themselves in small, unconscious gestures — tapping out kottu patterns on doors, humming beats under his breath.
Though he dreamt of working in cinema, parental insistence steered him towards a diploma in computer science. He established a computer centre to anchor himself financially. Yet, the call of the arts remained. He briefly pivoted toward the silver screen, training in film direction, but his cinematic aspirations were cut short in his 30s by a period of health complications.He returned to the classroom as an instructor for polytechnic students. But the embers of his creative spirit were waiting for a single spark. In 2017, a newspaper clipping announcing a two-day Parai workshop in Coimbatore caught his attention, and at nearly 40 years, he arrived with more curiosity than confidence.
“I couldn’t dance well, but the trainer felt my sense of rhythm was right and encouraged me,” he said. Within two weeks, Saravanakanth enrolled in a year-long weekend Parai course in Chennai, meticulously balancing classes with his work, returning, at last, to Parai that had quietly followed him all his life.
As Saravanakanth delved deeper into the craft, he realised that the Parai carried a weight heavier than the wood and hide — how Parai had been historically reduced to a caste marker rather than as a cultural inheritance. The realisation compelled him to form his Parai band. The networks he had built while teaching soon helped him introduce Parai classes to colleges.
“I also educated students about the politics surrounding the art form, following which many of them persuaded their parents to include Parai performances in family weddings and private temple events.”
Despite these triumphs in urban academic circles, Saravanakanth found that the roots of stigma ran deeper in rural pockets. Parents were often hesitant to pay for, or even permit, their children to learn an art form they still associated with inferiority. “That was when I decided to offer free classes in government schools across the district,” he said.
The impact, he notes, has been transformative. “In Sivakasi, nearly 500 households now keep Parai instruments at home,” he said, adding that the art form has taken its rightful place alongside others as a mainstream extracurricular activity.
As the final bell rings, the Parai no longer throws people to the margins but gathers them inside the circle of all. Saravanakanth’s revolution is not fought with rhetoric, but with the steady strike of wood against hide. Each beat cracks a stone in the old fortress of otherisation, each performance bridges a chasm of caste. Today, the nimble fingers of Chinnakamanpatti’s students rewrite history, establishing that art, when returned to its people, has the power to change who gets heard.
(Edited by Swarnali Dutta)