BY "KAPPA OF THE CLOUD"

Of her many facets of gracious, grateful light, South India, for centuries, has never shone for anything more benignantly than for her music. Music seems to have made amends for a great deal of her ravaging wants by its ethereality. Conceived with immemorial grandeur and nobility, it has been constantly sought to employ music here for none but lofty purposes. It has been applied to enliven men and women with health, to inspirit arid inspire them, to heal the sorest wounds, and to attune the Soul with the Infinite in ineffable bliss. Whatever its decadences or abuses, in its history, its supreme object has not once been forgotten, namely, the imparting to man of rejuvenation from far-off, intangible contact, and glimpses of the Godhead. It has been the vehicle of all the great experiences of the Elect, as of the Major and the Minor among the Pleiades of the Sixty-Three, whom the too devoted Tamil land adores as manifestations of the Highest. Of examples of the exponents of Music, who are only second to these, with bold command of all its emancipating efficacy, there cannot be a dearth, for the names of Tyagaiyyah; Deekshita, Venkatesa, Sama Sastri and others would occur readily enough, names of those who, incorruptibly, have kept music altogether on high planes with distinction. If, for good or for evil, –presumably for the former, –India has remained remarkable for her aptitude for religion, it must be also rendered to her fame that she has pressed Music, like all other things, and above them all, into the exalted service of religion. By this no disparagement is meant to other peoples, who have not been blind to the divineness of Music. However, in India, the emphasis has been laid all the greater on its spiritual aspect by her children, whose despisal of earthly values may be taken as deeper and as far more innate and potent than is usually supposed.

At present, as one can read into the vogue that obtains among professors of Music, nothing strikes so much as the general tacit concurrence in the subordination of its emotional, religious side. The fashionable concert, now-a-days, is conspicuous for the open and unabashed neglect of it. Heretically, it appears to revel in a profusion of Talam and in tedious indulgence of Swara, even to unmasked contempt for the courteous wistfulness that would, crave timidly for a jot of worthy inspiration. Who now cares to pronounce with mellifluous regard, or so much as to let Music dwell reverentially and lovingly upon sacred words, as "Rama", "Sankara", etcetera, which are the very matrix of too excellent compositions by devotees? Such performances as we have to witness today are not pitched, as it should appear, above the commonplace, hackneyed hankerings of a public, normally too sapped and bored down throughout the week in their avocations, after anything light, anything pleasantly sensational. Still the fact that the blame lies not wholly on the part of the people may be borne out by the enthusiasms that attended the reception of a noble genius like Pandit Vishnu Digambar, a genius because so pure and peerless a lover of Music. He has in him a touch of its spirit, a gifted abundance of what did radiate from Orpheuses, for was it not found that he could alter the pulse of myriads just as he wished? With him is something of the wizardry of Music, as with our own musicians its form in all its multi-coloured display of scientific completeness. The public, in truth, has not the time either to choose well out of their formless inclinations, or to dictate things of their cultured, decisive choice. Meanwhile, concerts go on about us as merrily as ever, and know no restraint, and their auditors are glad and content to compound for anything to enable them to beguile a Sunday evening with a measure of too careless jollity.

The Kathas signify much, by their adaptation to lessons in religion. The stories themselves are many and wonderful, as those of Rama Das, Kabir, and Nandanar, not to mention episodes which are taken for themes from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. They cover a large area of fine, human susceptibilities, and relate to incidents calculated to purge off the dross wholly unto the point of perfection. The bhakti of Rama Das who minded not his tragic putrefaction in goal, brave Kabir who stood fast by his rule of entertainment of guests, even at a compromise of his wife's chastity, the sight of dear Nandanar, whose whole being liquefies into love for God, here is the kindergarten for the heart that may thrill even brazenness into godly piety for a while. The very bare skeletons of such stories are apt to lift one off the ground. And when they are informed by Music, by all its transcendent glows of light, and charm, and colour, what transformation comes upon them, and what appeal with it which surges into the temple of our existence! Blessed, then, are the memories of the Bhagavatas, who, with full-throated melodies and golden-hearted prodigality of inspiration can make people stand on tip-toe, and lure them on to give themselves over into ecstasies of self-renovation. Srimati Saraswati Bai, we think, almost belongs to their class by sheer excellence of her Nandanar Charitram. Her endowments, now almost unapproached, either for her accomplished variety of music, or for the bold, stunning reach of her voice, do not but appear most worthily lavished on her presenting the exquisite treat that it is, of her Nandanar Charitram. The story itself has been wrought by an immortal giant of the Tamil land, Gopala Krishna Bharati, who, as is accepted, lived near Mayavaram in the Tanjore District. His ballad of Nandanar Charitram is an imperishable classic, and will bear comparison with the historic ballads of other countries. What could be more straight, what truer to life, than the beginning of the Poet's story of Nandanar? What more picturesque and lovelier than the description of his impregnable faith, and of the humility of his offerings of tanned hides, at a very humble distance, at the feet of priests? What a yearning consumes him to catch but a glimpse of the thrice sacred Chidambaram! How he is possessed by it! What contagion, what holy infection, which he must instill into his fellows! How dramatically has the Poet delineated all this! Srimati Saraswati Bai has found herself, in her interpretation of it, a born actress no less than a musician par excellence. With what fidelity she represents the unredeemed boorishness of environment about Nandanar! The slum, whither he has been sent by his beloved Maker, in her rendering, seems almost to swim before our eyes. Her performance of this story is, if the language will be, permitted, a series of super-erogations. You cannot say where she has outdone herself more than in any other place. If you should wish to point out the best at all, no task more bewildering could be self-imposed, for you are sure to have set store by well-nigh everything, ere you are yourself aware of it. Moving as is every part of the story, one may almost find oneself stolen away, when Srimati Saraswati Bai

plays the part of Nandanar, so, so mad, so gone out of his senses, to see for once sacred Chidambaram, and, there, to behold the Deity at His shrine. "There is a holy land, the Tillai land!" begins what, out of her artistic capacity and taste, and her talents for poetical acting, she makes a song of beauty, a song of sublime devotion and of self-forgetfulness. The Brahman scholar and landlord, under whom Nandanar is a lowly chief of the untouchable tenants, furnishes a type, and he is it that contributes an action, a contrast, and an interest to the main subject. What wealth of dramatic irony lies suffusing Nandanar Charitram! If the doctrine that both the playwright and the actor illumine each other holds good, it applies to Srimati Saraswati Bai's rendering with particular force. The Brahman Mirasdar, only bookish and epicurean, and given to fancying mechanical repetition of formulae as equivalent to Sadhana and hard-earned wisdom, pours forth such a wordy harangue of well-intentioned advice to Nandanar, when he feels gratified to the bone to find his tenant, according to his superficial belief, making rapid amends for his culpable negligences. How this dear pedant soon discovers that he has outwitted himself, by his fond simple reliance upon matters of orthodox faith, and his petrified astonishment and sense of the yawning difference between himself and Nandanar, as he espies his broad acres by the hundred all covered over by the Invisible Hand with a bumper crop, –here, perhaps, is the most effective stroke of dramatic irony, not untouched by dissolving pathos. Srimati Saraswati Bai is up to the ablest elucidation of Nandanar as a model of the opposite to the Brahman Pandit. How she points the latter's sermon with the glibness of tongue, the verbosity, and the stolid self-complacency, which are at once characteristic of all those of whom, as we said, the Mirasdar is only a type and an illustration!

From this point, almost everything, –Nandanar's parting words to his master, his visit to sacred Chidambaram, etcetera, –has been raised by Gopala Krishna Bharati to white heat, and maintained thereat without cooling. It should be presumptuous, if not elaborating our theme on too large a scale, to demonstrate each merit either in the ballad, or in the brilliant exposition of it by Srimati Saraswati Bai. An incarnation of genuineness, as it may be taken, well apart from the summits of beatitude and mystic bliss whereon lies its native abode, is here attempted to be weighed against wooden cant, formality, and artificial persuasions. And without indulging in inferences from this too chastening episode, one may remark truly that we possess not only an immortal classic of a ballad in Tamil, but that we should congratulate ourselves upon having so gifted an aesthetic interpreter of it. We are reminded, in this connection, of Mahatma Gandhi, who has vowed such championship of the class to which Nadanar belongs. Already he has expressed his resolve to reincarnate among them as their saviour and servant. And he is such a lover of the Tamil language, for its matchless nuances of soul-redeeming Pity, and Pathos, and superb Self-Abnegation, and he may not think that he could forego a chance of listening to Srimati Saraswati Bai's Nandanar Charitram without a regret. Will it not be fitting on our part to bring about a public recognition of her successes under his presidentship? The Tamil land owes a heavy obligation to her for her picture of Nandanar Charitram. Had she been born in the West, what could she not have achieved? And how would they have honoured her there! Nandanar Charitram has now come to be so associated with her, for who could surpass her presentation of it? The consecration of Gopala Krishna Bharati's birthplace as object of pilgrimage, and the award of the public estimation to be accorded appropriately to her by Mahatma Gandhi for us, are, in our eyes, duties which, if performed early and satisfactorily, will distinguish our profound sense of what we ought to do by those who, to no small extent, have augmented our collective happiness.