My reflections on place names a fortnight ago occasioned some delightful responses, mainly pertaining to musicians’ names. My wife reminded me of one such name connected to Carnatic music. I should have remembered it for its sheer novelty: ‘Cleveland’ Sundaram (born 1945), though hailing from what Google describes as ‘a selection-grade panchayat town’ in Tamil Nadu’s Tirunelveli district, lives in that city in Ohio, US. Cleveland cleaves to Sundaram even as he goes about organising Carnatic concerts by visiting musicians, something he has been doing for years now.
I also realised that when I mentioned M S Subbulakshmi and M L Vasanthakumari for their place-names—Madurai and Madras, respectively—I should not have left out Damal Krishnaswamy Pattammal (1919-2009). Having heard her in person and from records for decades, and having been quite captivated by the gravitas of her repertory and purity of her renderings, I had no business forgetting to mention Damal, the village in Kancheepuram that is part of her name. I have had the great good fortune of being shown her ancestral dwelling in Damal by none other than two musicians of stature—the spiritually inspired and inspiring vocalist Vidvan N Vijay Siva (born 1967) and the violinist of most delicate fluency, Sangita Kalanidhi R K Shriramkumar (born 1966).
Even as I write this, her singing of ‘Shanti nilavu vendum’, the great composition of Namakkal V Ramalingam Pillai (1888-1972), comes alive in my memory’s auditorium. And I realise that Namakkal, the Salem town famed for its temple to Hanuman, keeps up the place-name tradition in Ramalingam Pillai, who could also be called ‘Vedaranyam’ V Ramalingam Pillai for his celebrated part in the great satyagrahic march—singing along the way—to that seaside salt marsh to break the salt law in 1930.
Another chance felicity, the ‘R’ in R K Shriramkumar, whom I just mentioned, is from musically-renowned Rudrapatna in the Hassan district of Karnataka. Of the same generation is Sangita Kalanidhi ‘Bombay’ Jayshree who, though born in Calcutta, spent her self-defining time in the city that is now inalienably part of her name. Sangita Kalanidhi Thodur Madabusi Krishna (born 1976) owes the first part of his three-part name to the village Thodur, also in Kancheepuram district.
Other conferees of the Sangita Kalanidhi in recent times whose names are drawn from places include the mridangam maestro Tiruvarur Bakthavathsalam (born 1956), whose place of birth Tiruvarur is altogether unique in Carnatic lore as the birthplace of the 18th century ‘trinity’—Tyagaraja, Muthuswami Dikshitar and Syama Sastri. For a Carnatic musician to carry Tiruvarur in his name can only be likened to an archaeologist bearing Rome in hers.
If there is a place name that a great writer is known by it is Thakazhi. Awash by the backwaters in Kerala’s Alappuzha district, Thakazhi is inseparable from Sivasankara Pillai (1912-1999), the great Malayalam novelist from there.
If Neyveli in Tamil Nadu is known for something other than lignite, it is for the celebrated vocalist who bears its name—Neyveli Santhanagopalan (born 1963). The legendary violinist A Kanyakumari arrived in this world in Vizianagaram, Andhra Pradesh in the year that state was formed—1953. So her name has to have come from either the goddess of that name or from the southernmost tip of mainland India. But there is no denying that her given name immediately brings to mind the place once known as Cape Comorin.
Vizianagaram gives me cause now to move from Carnatic music to cricket. If there is one person whose long name—Pusapati Vijaya Ananda Gajapathi Raju (1906-1965)—would mean little if anything to most, but whose popular name has ‘household’ status, at least in cricketing circles, it is that of ‘Vizzy’. Derived, needless to say, from the princely state he was Maharajkumar of, Vizzy was more than a name. However, not all of the associated legend and lore did the owner of the name credit.
Vizzy had cricket written all over him, but cricket did not have Vizzy all over it. Wealthy and motivated enough to be a great sponsor of the game, he could not get those assets to help him as a cricketer on the turf. Even less as a cricket commentator. A lack that reportedly led Rohan Kanhai to say—when told of Vizzy’s other ‘skill’ of hunting tigers, with a stated score of 300—to say he must have left the transistor on for the tigers to die of boredom. But we are concerned here with the place name that made him the Vizzy the world knows.
Curiously, while his peer and in many ways his rival, Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala (reign: 1900-1938), was also better known simply as Patiala, the greatest of all princes in cricket, Maharaja Ranjitsinhji of Nawanagar (1872-1933), was known in his lifetime and has been ever since, as Ranji, not Nawanagar. But assuming Patiala and Nawanagar were to be abbreviated, Vizzy-like, into a two-syllabled name, would the great Sikh have been Patty? No, no! And Nawanagar Navvy? Most certainly not. If no one else, their subjects would have protested.
I conclude with a historic place name of Buddhist salience that the Marxist historiographer, mathematician, Sanskritist and philosopher D D Kosambi’s (1907-1966) father incorporated into his surname. The place is situated in what was part of the Mauryan empire; Emperor Ashoka had a famous edict installed there known for its frown on schismatics. Ram Ramaswamy, in his just-out gripping biography of DDK, brings vividly to life the career of the great owner of that great place name.
Names and namings can indeed be tricky.
Read all columns by Gopalkrishna Gandhi
Gopalkrishna Gandhi
Former Governor of West Bengal and Bihar
