This week, let us go back to the year 1525 in Tamil Nadu, when a family of musicians looked forward to the birth of their child. They were instrumental musicians who played at temples, and their community was known as Isai Vellalar, literally ‘those who grow music’. They lived in the town of Sirkali in the Kaveri delta and revered Lord Shiva as Koothan, the cosmic dancer, at his ninth-century temple in Chidambaram.
Chidambaram was across the river Kollidam from Sirkali and the only place in India that depicted Shiva as Nataraja, the Lord of Dance. If the newborn was a boy, the family planned to name him after Shiva as ‘Thandavan’, the ‘one who dances the thandavam’—the cosmic dance believed to keep the universe going. It was a philosophical concept expressed through bronze statues of Nataraja. Each detail of such statues had an iconic meaning and layers of theology to it. These were well-known to all through oral tradition so that a statue was like a book to both the educated and those who could not read.
But the child, when he arrived, was a terrible disappointment to his family. He was weak, sickly and unappealing. It was a handsome family, proud of its musical talent and its place of honour at the temple and in society. They were ashamed and angry that their son, their heir, who should have made everyone envy them, was a liability, not an asset. So Thandavan’s position in his family, which should have been sky-high, fell to the bottom.
All this open disapproval further took its toll on the boy. He developed a severe skin infection. Pustules oozed all over his body. His family began to absolutely loathe him and the little boy became even more sickly and silent.
His only friend was Shivabhagyam, the lady of the house next door. Shivabhagyam always had a kind smile for Thandavan. She invited him home to watch when she did her daily puja to Shiva and sang him songs about the Great God. Thandavan’s family hated that she was good to him. They took it as a personal affront. How could they stop it? They came up with the diabolical idea of throwing him out of the house. If he no longer lived with them, he could not visit the woman next door. Nor would the kaval or town police let anyone loiter on a residential street.
Driven out of home by his own family like little blind Surdas in North India, the boy’s precarious world wholly tumbled down about his ears. He stumbled to the Shiva temple at Sirkali. Where else could he go? He sat down at the very end of the ranks of beggars outside the temple. Unwilling to hold out his hand, he subsisted on such scraps of the temple’s prasad as fell to him and grew sicker by the day.
One hot afternoon, he crawled for shade into the temple’s storeroom where the palanquins were kept. Weak with hunger, he fainted away in a corner. After the evening worship, the priests put out the oil lamps and locked up for the night, not knowing about the refugee.
Waking up in the dark, Thandavan called out faintly and lay back exhausted. Soon after, a little girl appeared, carrying food and water on a tray. She called out to him in a bright, affectionate way. Thandavan saw that it was the chief priest’s daughter. She fed him and advised him to go to Chidambaram every day and compose a new song to Shiva with the first words that he heard spoken in the temple. Greatly comforted, Thandavan went to sleep.
The next day, when the storeroom was unlocked, Thandavan stepped out, apologising humbly for having fallen asleep in there. But the priests looked at him in awe. Gone were the wounds. Not only was he healed but his skin glowed with such lustre that they called him ‘Muthu Thandavar’ with an honorific ‘r’ at the end of his name. ‘Muthu’ meant ‘pearl’.
But it soon came to light that the priest’s daughter had stayed at home the previous evening. Nobody knew who the little girl with the tray was. Thandavan felt it must have been Parvati herself, the ‘Lokanayaki’ in Sirkali, taking pity on him. The priests invited him to make his home in the temple’s rest house.
Thandavan thanked them and went to Chidambaram, anxious about his composing ability. His first song there began with the words, ‘Bhuloka Kailayagiri Chidambaram’ meaning Chidambaram is Mount Kailash on earth, the exclamation of an ecstatic devotee. Five gold pieces of great antiquity appeared at the deity’s feet after this song was sung, creating an uproar. It was taken as a miracle attributed to Thandavan’s song. Koothan Shiva had let everyone know that Thandavan was both gifted and loved, healing his heart just as Parvati had healed his body.
Many songs followed. One morning, to Thandavan’s confusion, not a word was spoken in the temple. All he could hear was his heartbeat pounding in his ears. He cried aloud, “Peysaadey nenjamey!” (Don’t speak, my heart) and so composed the day’s song with his own words. His creative dependence on others was over.
Free in his mind, happy in his poetry, Thandavan had no anger or grief left about those who had been so shatteringly unkind to him. The townsfolk were greatly drawn to him, sure of a kindly word. At least sixty of his songs are known to have survived and some of them are very famous. They are sung and danced to on concert stages even today.
The legend goes that one day, in the year 1600, a great light was shone in Shiva’s sanctum at Chidambaram and Mutthu Thandavar disappeared into it. Aptly, it was the anniversary of the day that Shiva is said to have danced the thandavam at Chidambaram.
Renuka Narayanan
(shebaba09@gmail.com)