Tourism in India

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A million discoveries now

HUGH AND COLLEEN GANTZER

Apart from pilgrimage, travelling for pleasure was not much on middle-class India’s agenda. With plenty of money to spend, that is changing fast as they discover anew the pleasures of mobility and the many Indias within India.

Changing middle class lifestyles have created new segments in the tourism market. People whose working hours are spent enslaved to the small screen need more frequent, wide-open, getaways.

Photos: Mahesh Harilal, R. Ravindran

Plenty to explore: Tourists on a snake boat in the backwaters of Kerala.

Tourism is the leisure sibling of travel. It’s travel for recreation. From 1841, when preacher Thomas Cook launched the world’s first conducted tour, mass tourism had been associated with the Caucasian middle class. Our predominantly conservative, Indian middle class either headed home on leave, or went on a pilgrimage, seemingly disinterested in other places. Indeed, the Leave Travel Concessions (LTCs) restricted government servants’ assisted holiday trips to such destinations.

An independent publisher, Navin Berry, tried to break this mindset by starting a travel magazine, Destination India, in 1975. It dented inhibitions about tourism, slightly. The next year, Khushwant Singh, editing the popular Illustrated Weekly, launched an innovative travel series “The India You Do Not Know”. It highlighted the attractions of a chosen State, every week, because “it is worth knowing that our country has all that any other country of the world has — and much more.” But travelling was still a fairly expensive undertaking if it wasn’t covered by the LTC.

Tamil Nadu was the first to offer a viable solution. The TTDC’s popular Temple Tours tapped LTCs. We were invited on one of these trips in 1977 and it was an eye-opener. When we boarded the coach, the passengers from Delhi, Maharashtra, Bengal, Kerala, UP and Tamil Nadu clustered in their insular regional groupings. By the end of the 10-day tour, however, we had all become friends, integrated by shared travel experiences. We wrote about it just when the press had begun to sense the integrating and economic importance of tourism. It was in that year that the first of our fortnightly destination and critique columns on tourism appeared on the editorial page of a national newspaper. This continued for many years, with a brief hiatus during the critical period of the Emergency.

Viable economically

Those were the days when the State still “controlled the commanding heights of the economy”. Haryana’s C.M., Bansi Lal, while journeying on his State’s highways, discovered that the roadside dhabas were very popular with people travelling from Delhi to Punjab, U.P., Rajasthan and Himachal via Haryana. By setting up Haryana Tourism’s Highway Complexes, he successfully tapped this traffic. They were superbly maintained by the PWD and excellently run by the State’s Tourism Development Corporation under the eagle eye of IAS officer Ashok Pawha who, later, became our DG, Tourism. Highway Tourism had been established as a viable economic activity.

For the first time, then, in 1979, the rather elitist Travel Agents’ Association of India (TAAI) realised the great potential of the domestic middle class market. They instituted awards for travel writing. That was when the State tourism organisations, attending the TAAI convention, started inviting award-winning Indian travel writers to tour their tourism facilities and write about them. Tourism features began to appear in increasing numbers in the press, and interest in travel as a relaxation, grew. Tourism burgeoned.

We were still, however, shackled by the constraints of the license-permit raj and the grim, grey, vaguely socialist feeling that enjoyment was, somehow, unpatriotic.

Five years later came two major developments that gave a tremendous boost to tourism in our land. Rajiv Gandhi introduced the five-day week, and then he liberalised the LTC rules, allowing government servants to go on leave to any part of India. The money spent by domestic tourists began to fertilize the grass-roots of the economy nation-wide. A fisherman’s daughter in Vagator told us that she made more money selling coconuts to tourists than she did carrying fish to the market. An old embroiderer in Kashmir said that, because of tourism, his sons no longer needed to toil in shops in distant Delhi: they were far better off working at their traditional craft at home, in the Valley.

Awareness of the growing impact of tourism prompted Doordarshan to agree to us pioneering the first TV travel documentaries in English: 24 half-hour episodes entitled “Looking Beyond”, telecast on DD’s national network in 1988-89. The sights, sounds and allure of Indian destinations reached into Indian homes, week after week, for six months

A little later, the economic reforms launched by Finance Minister Manmohan Singh in 1991 swept like a slow, implacable, tide over the middle class. With an increasing acceptance of women in the workplace, both disposable incomes and aspirations grew. Cashing in on this growing market, Navin Berry set up India’s first international travel mart in 1994. SATTE, The South Asian Travel and Tourism Exchange, was an encouraging success and attracted a lot of attention. Pavan Varma quotes another publisher, Aroon Purie, writing in the inaugural issue of the glossy magazine India Today Plus, in 1996: “The economic liberalisation that has been sweeping the country for the last few years has altered the lives of a large section of India’s burgeoning middle class. They have become ....more adventurous and demanding in terms of holiday and leisure activities.”

The print and the electronic media boosted this urge to travel. As communications expert Marshall McLuhan put it: “The Medium is the Massage.” It massages and stimulates the egos of would-be consumers to create aspirational needs. In a virtual feeding frenzy, everyone who had a potential tourism product, thrust it on the market in the hope that the great Indian middle class would be attracted. Visit Britain was the first foreign National Tourist Office to tap this urge to travel abroad: today NTOs are flocking here in droves.

Landmark campaign

In 1989 Kerala had coined its memorable slogan “God’s Own Country”. It caught the imaginations, and travel itineraries, of both domestic and international tourists earning for Kerala the title of one of the preferred international destinations of the millennium. This prompted the State government to encourage the private sector to set up the Kerala Travel Mart in 2000. It is still the only permanent market place run exclusively by the industry of a State, to promote its tourism offerings to buyers from around the world. This year it attracted an estimated 1,000 buyers to the stalls of 250 Kerala-based sellers. Its major success lies in the fact that it gives a platform for national and international customers to interact with the middle class and small investors in tourism products. Targeting such entrepreneurs, Captain G.R. Gopinath launched his low-fare Air Deccan in late 2002. He told us that his intention was “To attract the growing middle class of our land; the people with small and medium industries.” A year after Gopinath’s Simply Fly dream became a reality, Kerala-cadre IAS officer Amitabh Kant gave his vision of Indian tourism a global reach. Kant had been one of the prime movers in Kerala’s remarkable thrust into tourism. Now, as a Joint Secretary in the Centre, he initiated the dazzling Incredible India campaign. While, essentially, targeting the foreign traveller, it had a major surge down effect on our aspiring middle class. Lured by the campaign’s projected international appeal of Indian destinations, they decided to discover such places for themselves!

Marketing heritage

Sophisticated international travellers had also given a high status value to re-discovering gracious retro lifestyles: heritage hotels have, consequently, become increasingly popular with our upwardly mobile middle class. Spas and ayurveda, “discovered” by the West, have become coveted fashion statements with our newly rich. Even pilgrimages have acquired a certain éclat. Hardship on the yatra might earn merit but a heli-trip is far more comfortable besides being a status enhancer. Why stay in a dharamshala in Haridwar when there’s a Carlton Hotel at hand?

Changing middle class lifestyles have created new segments in the tourism market. People whose working hours are spent enslaved to the small screen need more frequent, wide-open, getaways. The Maruti 800 became the vector for the week-end break. Adventure tourism is the refreshing new muscle-taxing alternative to mind-and-emotion stressing hours in a Call Centre. Even the personal interaction offered to Double-Income-No-Kids (DINK) couples by genuine Home Stays has been sanitised. Concerns of varying standards of hygiene between the hosts and guests are being taken care of. Ramesh Ramanathan, MD of Mahindra Holidays, has set up an inspection and audit regimen of all homes in their network to ensure the continuing maintenance of quality standards. Obviously, if government-listed home-stays do not conform to such criteria they will lose the quality-conscious middle class Indian tourist.

Flaunting it

These concerns, with value-for-money and upward mobility, of the middle class also focus on the education that they give to their children. It extends to encouraging them to go on school excursions during their vacations. Some schools even choose such attractive schemes as those offered by Malaysian Tourism: it is often cheaper to fly overseas than to Indian destinations that are burdened by high transportation taxes. The well-heeled parents of such kids are, however, increasingly, taking trips on luxury trains like the Palace on Wheels, the Golden Chariot, the Deccan Odyssey and the Heritage on Wheels. Clearly, as Khushwant Singh reportedly put it, “It’s not enough to have money: you must flaunt it!”

That is what makes our middle class tourist today different from the travellers whom Thomas Cook conducted to a temperance meeting, 167 years ago.

Notes of triumph - B. Ramadasappa

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Notes of triumph

RANJANI GOVIND

Life was not a bed of roses for nagaswaram artist B. Ramadasappa. But it was his passion for the art that spurred him on to succeed.

If your breath and blow are under control to deal with variations, any kind of kriti can be played on the nagaswaram

PHOTO: K.Murali Kumar

HIS LIFE’S BREATH: Ramadasappa with his silver nagaswaram adorned with a gold chain.

As a young boy, nagaswaram artist B. Ramadasappa would hope he got at least one meal a day. This past month, after a concert in Mumbai, the septuagenarian asked the organisers why he was being given so much money! “How can I forget my childhood?” he says as his eyes turn moist. “I am fortunate that God gave me the strength not only to wade through tough times of penury, but bestowed me with the strength to hold on to my nagaswaram to this day. To think that my hands which were denied a morsel during my growing years, are proudly receiving gold coins as awards and honours now…” says the emotional artist.

Ramdas, as he is affectionately known, lives in Bangalore. The 108-year-old house where he was born has seen a century of music, from the days of his father. One can’t miss his 10-ft long showcase that is packed with citations and awards along with his photographs with star musicians and dignitaries.

“Several newspapers have covered my concerts and have written quite a bit about me. What more are you going to write?” Ramdas wonders. Often referred to as ‘Karnataka’s Bismillah Khan,’ his unassuming nature is a virtue one instantly notices even as he expresses his gratitude to his father who was instrumental in his foraying into the world of nagaswaram. “My father used to say every musical instrument is a vadhya, but only a nagaswaram is a mangala vadhya. It is this instrument which is played at auspicious occasion, be it a wedding or a kutcheri.”

Rigorous practice

A well-known nagaswaram artist of his time, Ramdas’ father, Chikka Muniswamappa, insisted on very early morning practice. Much before sunrise, Ramdas would begin his practice, the air resonating with varnams, ragas and kritis. What did the neighbourhood have to say about the decibel levels? “This is where my father’s guidance helped me gain control over tone and volume. His lessons on subdued blowing and soft stylised touches on the swaras helped me in becoming a restrained performer. Today, when people appreciate the difference in approach while playing for temple processions, on concert platforms or at weddings, I remember my father. The control over the instrument speaks for itself.”

Varied presentation

It was more or less an unwritten law that he would continue the family profession, says Ramdas. “It isn’t easy to handle the instrument as it calls for a good deal of lung power. If I have stuck to playing my instrument, it’s only because of my passion and adoration for the sacred notes that the instrument is associated with.”

Ramdas recollects how he used to listen to recordings of Rajarathinam Pillai and Karaikuruchi Arunachalam and improve his style, even as his presentations later saw stalwarts such as Lalgudi Jayaraman and Balamuralikrishna appreciate the merge of violin, veena and mridangam in some of his concerts. His English notes and Veda inclusions in concerts have become a hit with his fans.

Stress on sahitya

Nagaswaram is made from rudrakshi tree that grows mainly in the humid Thanjavur region of Tamil Nadu. That it isn’t suited for gamaka-laden presentation is a myth that the maestro broke with his style and knowledge. He made history with his briga-oriented alapanas in rare ragas, took up kritis that laid stress on sahitya and brought in long vilamba kala sangati stretches in his pallavi.

“If your breath and blow are under control to deal with variations, any kind of kriti can be played on the nagaswaram,” says the musician, who would practise for 18 hours.

“Veena Doraiswamy Iyengar, a producer at AIR, gave me my first break when I was 22 and from then on, I have tasted success year after year.” Ramdas has received numerous awards that include the Karnataka Rajyothsava Award, Chowdiah Award, Sangeetha Nrithya Academy Award and the TTK Award that won him a silver nagaswaram. He is the asthana vidwan of the Venugopalaswamy Temple in Malleswaram, Bangalore. All his five sons play the nagaswaram.

Serious presentations for an appreciative audience apart, Ramdas feels at home at wedding concerts as the instrument is considered a mangala vadhya. “Can you imagine a wedding without a nagaswaram producing a soft Bowli, a soothing Nadanamakriya, a bubbly Manirang, an exhilarating Bilahari or a comforting Suddha Dhanyasi?” he says even as his son Govindraj points out that he is booked for two years.

Wearing his celebrity status with humility, the nagaswaram vidwan hopes more government encouragement would help in preserving a fast dwindling art form.

Toilet Revolution in Kurukshetra

THE OTHER HALF

The toilet revolution

KALPANA SHARMA

Villages in Kurukshetra district, Haryana, are showing that providing clean sanitation to everyone is not an impossible task.

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In government schools around this country, adolescent girls are dropping out, or missing school, because there are no toilets.

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Photo: Kalpana Sharma

Changed lives: Rekha in front of the toilet in her compound.

Rekha is a landless labourer in the village of Bishangarh in Haryana’s Kurukshetra district. All around her poorly constructed open brick house, where the rain pours in through the rafters, are lush fields of potato and wheat. She lives there w ith her husband, an agricultural worker like her and her three children, a girl and two boys. Between the two of them, on the days they get work, they bring in around Rs. 150 a day. Her husband gets paid twice as much as her.

Rekha’s pride is her outdoor toilet, built on the corner of her small plot. She has no money to build a door. A jute curtain does the job. But she has a constant source of water. So the toilet remains clean and there is no smell. The design is a simple one, easy to maintain, with a soak pit that we are told will not pollute the water table.

Talking point

The toilet revolution in Bishangarh and other villages in Kurukshetra district has become a talking point. It draws visitors from around India and the world who look on in wonder as well-built Haryanvi women lustily shout “Jai Swatchatha” (Long live cleanliness) and show off the toilets attached to their homes. Each costs around Rs. 1,200. The poor, like Rekha, get a subsidy. The others pay what they can and the rest comes from an NGO run by the local MP, young Navin Jindal, whose beaming countenance greets you at every street corner as you drive through the district.

Bishangarh has received the Nirmal Gram Puraskar, the prize instituted by the central government in recognition of villages that are free of open defecation. It is one of hundreds of villages across the country that are qualifying for this award. The women in the village, who are part of the Nigrani (vigilance) Samitis, go around with torches, sticks and whistles early in the morning. If they catch anyone defecating in the open, they blow the whistle and shine the torch on the crouching figure. This, they believe, embarrasses the individual to the point that they will not do it again.

There is no question that the toilet revolution has made a huge difference to the lives of women, as well as elderly men and children. No more do they have to scramble in the dark in the nearby fields. Women, especially, would have to go before dawn or wait until after dusk. The absence of toilets assaults their dignity, lays them open to sexual harassment and has a direct impact on their health. Not anymore.

Is it sustainable?

But questions remain. Can this be sustained without policing? Will people change their habits so easily, particularly men who feel no embarrassment defecating in the open? Can it work without a subsidy? Is it possible in villages where there is no water? Where there is no electricity? In Kurukshetra district, out of 418 villages, 412 are electrified. And will it work in villages with caste and communal divides, where the villagers are not willing to cooperate? In Bishangarh, the majority belongs not just to one caste, but even one gotra (clan). The woman Sarpanch is also from the same caste and gotra. Hence, getting everyone to work together is a little easier. Women I spoke to acknowledged that the situation would have been different if they had been a “mixed” village, in terms of caste.

One also hopes this will the first step in enhancing women’s status. For, women are visible in their support of the toilet revolution. Yet in Haryana, and Kurukshetra district, the sex ratio remains skewed in favour of boys. And dowry has not disappeared although some women insist it is declining. If one goes by what Rekha’s 18-year-old, college-going daughter Babita has to say, it has increased. “People pay upto Rs. 10 lakhs”, she says ruefully. And marriage, of course, is inevitable, she adds. What other option is there?

Babita is lucky that she has got as far as she has in her education. In government schools around this country, adolescent girls are dropping out, or missing school, because there are no toilets. So when they get their monthly period, they simply don’t go to school. In Kurukshetra district, all the schools have toilets, claims the indefatigable Sumedha Kataria, the Additional District Collector who is also the force behind the sanitation movement in the district.

Bigger challenge

Of course, urban sanitation is an even bigger challenge and intimately linked to the almost insurmountable problem of providing housing for millions of urban poor. You can build community toilets but until you solve the housing crisis in cities, you really will not be able to deal effectively with sanitation. For women especially, the absence of toilets is a far more traumatic experience in cities than in villages as there are practically no secluded places.

Some of the more innovative projects on show at the recent Sacosan III (South Asian Conference on Sanitation) in New Delhi — which incidentally was virtually ignored by the “national” media in the capital — were those where village self-help groups are using simple technology to manufacture sanitary napkins at low cost. This is being done in several States and in at least one location in Tamil Nadu, the increase in school attendance of adolescent girls has been dramatic.

Toilets, sanitation, sanitary napkins, defecation — these are not things we like to talk about. Yet, this is such a fundamental issue that affects all our lives — especially if we happen to be poor and women. Half of India defecates in the open. The government hopes to get all these 600 million people to start using toilets by 2012. That’s a lot of toilets to build in just four years.

Email the writer: sharma.kalpana@yahoo.com

Detriot Big Three

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The Jurassic Auto and Idea Park

By P. SAINATH

It's unfair to call the US auto industry dinosaurs, as some now do. It's certainly unfair to the dinosaurs. The 'Terrible Lizards' did not lay the basis for their own extinction or that of myriad other species. The original dinosaurs (who scientists now tell us were neither all that terrible nor lizards), were great examples of success and adaptation, good enough to rule the planet for 150 million years. The US auto industry is the opposite. It's not just that the Terrible Metal Lizards opposed fuel efficiency standards. Of course, they did. They also promoted gas-guzzling SUVs as a lifestyle must. They cranked out cars many did not want to buy. They wielded heavy clout in Congress, and were able to sponge off public funds in the name of saving jobs as they have yet again. Having received $ 25 billion earlier, their hats are in their outstretched hands again.

But that's the easy part. There's a lot more they did, as a major sector of industry - and as part of the larger corporate world of the United States. Over decades, they destroyed both existing and potential public transport. The 'American Dream' so far as the automobile went, was an imposed nightmare. In Detroit itself, you can see the skeletons of a once-alive transport system. All across the country, for decades from the 1920s, they bought up public transport systems and shut them down.

Trains were shifted from electric to diesel engines. Sometimes, they were simply done away with and replaced by buses and then cars. Together with Big Oil, Big Auto converted electric transit systems to fuel-based bus systems. In one estimate: In 1935, electric train engines outnumbered diesel train engines 7 to 1. "By 1970, diesel train engines outnumbered electric ones 100 to 1. And GM made 60 per cent of the diesel locomotives." The electric rail system in and around Los Angeles was almost erased.

Fostering the cult of the individual-owned automobile was a major goal. By 2001, that goal was achieved, beyond belief. Some 90 per cent of Americans drove to work by that year. The findings of the 2001 National Household Travel Survey are striking. Only 8 per cent households reported not having a vehicle available for regular use. The survey showed that "that daily travel in the United States totalled about 4 trillion miles, an average of 14,500 miles per person." Trips by transit and by school bus each made up just 2 per cent of daily trips taken in 2001.

Not just a cult but a culture grew around the Metal Lizards and fossil fuels. Even an economy that goes to war to deal with perceived threats to Oil. (As Robert Fisk often asks: Would there have been a war in Iraq If Iraq's national product had been asparagus?) Again together with Big Oil, Big Auto for decades crushed all serious moves towards cleaner energy sources.

Almost everything grew dependent on it, from agriculture to aviation, individual to national needs. When oil prices rose (before their present crash) thanks to heavy speculation, countless households in the US were paralysed. Hundreds of little family trucking businesses went kaput. People in outlying places who drive many miles to fetch things like bottled water and provisions found their budgets burning. An average American family in 2004 spent up to a fifth of its income on transportation. That's against 13 per cent on food. In "automobile dependent neighbourhoods," according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, that could go up to 25 per cent. In bigger cities, the traffic only gets worse, never better. There were over 135 million passenger cars in 2006. Overall, registered vehicles clocked in at more than 250 million. Imagine the centrality of oil, autos and private vehicles to just about everything. This is the very model our own Indian elite seek to transplant. Private automobiles at the cost of public transport. Never mind the latter is a lot cleaner and creates large numbers of jobs. And so we add thousands of such vehicles to the roads each week.

But back to the Metal Dinosaurs of Detroit. Their asteroid hit will impact on far more than the nearly quarter of a million workers directly stranded on their turf. There are also more than a million retirees and dependents in trouble. The retirees now watch their health benefits vanish. That's not nice in a country where health costs are the largest single cause of bankruptcies. At age 75 or 80, it's misery. Then there's millions of other workers in associated sectors. In part-makers, supplier companies, in dealerships.

The health issue is also vital. With all its wealth, this country has no decent public health system. The corporate world as a whole have never allowed that to emerge. The health insurance mob, the drug companies, huge corporations in the medical field, and so on. Take the loss of jobs in the automobile sector to Canada. One reason is simply because Canada has a much better public health system. Even GM (which also exists there) has lobbied in the past in that country to see that that Canada's universal health plan was not scuttled! It has saved GM countless dollars.

Each car that GM puts out carries a health care cost of around $1600. For Chrysler, that's $1500. But for Toyota, that cost is under $300 per car. Japan has a far superior public health system. In the corporate-media of the United States, this does not lead to calls for a good health system. Or for making health access cheaper. It leads to calls for doing away with the union contracts that guaranteed auto workers health benefits for life. For retirees, the pullback has already begun.

India even now has one of the most highly privatised health sectors in the world, yet exults in emulating the worst of the US model. The Indian elite boasts of India as one of the hottest destinations in 'medical tourism.' Sure, Americans might fly to India to get their surgeries done (which would cost them dear in their own country). But close to 200 million Indians have given up seeking any kind of medical attention at all -- simply because they cannot afford it.

Meanwhile, the logic of "too big to fail" keeps Big Auto and others of its ilk going. There is never any debate here of whether they should have been allowed to get as big as they did. President-elect Obama says he will aid the auto oligarchs who he calls "the backbone of American manufacturing." Sure, with that many jobs at stake, any government must worry about the consequences of letting them sink. No question about it. It's on the basis of that very fear that the Terrible Metal Lizards are able to bargain for handouts from public money. This economy has lost close to a quarter of a million jobs in the month of October alone. So the thought of many more simply vanishing is scary. The US has already lost over 1.2 million jobs this year. Close to half of those in the past three months alone.

So there is a good chance that more public money will be thrown at the auto giants, and that, without larger strategic shifts being imposed on them. Yet, everyone knows this does not mean an industry saved. They could be back soon with demands for still more. At which time, with things being even worse (quite likely) the pressure to save jobs by pouring in public money will be still greater. This is the United States. The money given out in the bailout so far has delighted the tuxedo dinosaurs -- CEOs and senior executives.

As The New York Times notes ruefully in a lead editorial: "Just weeks after the Treasury Department gave nine of the nation's top banks $125 billion in taxpayer dollars to save them from unprecedented calamity, bank executives are salting money away in billionaire bonus pools to reward themselves for their performance." Other bailout bandits have held meetings at resorts costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Remember the 'debate' over CEO compensation in India? The media shouted down their favourite prime minister when he made a few meek sounds of protest over inflated CEO pay. Well, there too, we were and are on the very track that has helped the US land itself in the mess it now is in.

Welcome to the Jurassic Auto & Idea Park.

N S Krishnan- The generous comic genius

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The generous comic genius

RANDOR GUY

N.S. Krishnan, ‘the Charlie Chaplin of India,’ used laughter to expose the inequalities in life. Big-hearted, he also donated, along with his wife, to deserving causes. A tribute in his centenary year.

Cult figure: N.S. Krishnan

Critics and cognoscenti hailed him as ‘the Charlie Chaplin of India.’ This comedian was a genius and perhaps, there will never be another quite like him. He was N.S. Krishnan.

He used laughter to make the audience think about the inequalities in life, superstitious beliefs and so on. He translated these ideas onscreen in a brilliant and effective manner. This not only made him successful but also a cult figure.

Curious by nature

Nagercoil Sudalaimuthu Krishnan (NSK) was born on December 1,1908, into poverty. His lack of formal education was made up by his curiosity, native genius and enthusiasm. Thanks to the talent-spotting eyes of TKS Brothers, NSK gained entry into Tamil Theatre as a comedian. Soon he was a big draw with his inventive and innovative comic bits.

He faced a movie camera for the first time in ‘Sathi Leelavathi’ under Ellis R. Dungan’s direction in 1934. However, problems delayed its release till 1936. Meanwhile, another movie, ‘Menaka’ (1935), established him as a new talent on the horizon.

N.S. Krishnan with Kannappa and wife T.A. Madhuram in Film Centre’s Nannambikkai.

This comedian was also a filmmaker, screenwriter and social reformer. He and his star wife, T. A. Mathuram, virtually dominated the Tamil film world for over two decades with their own brand of screen comedy. From the mid-1930s to his untimely demise in 1957, NSK was in almost every other Tamil film. He was so popular that his films drew audiences even in non-Tamil areas where they were screened without subtitles or dubbing.

NSK had a unique method of working. After being signed on for a film, he would wait till it was completed. Then, along with a team of writers and artists, he would work on his comedy track. Next, he would shoot it himself, edit the footage and hand over the reels to the producer or director with detailed instructions about how and where to link his comic sequences to the main movie. He charged a lump sum, which also included the salaries of his team members.

NSK usually had a duet in the films. He often sang and composed the music for it using popular folk songs, stage melodies or even brazenly copying them from Hindi movies. He would also record them.

During the making of ‘Vasanthasena’ (1936), he met and fell in love with Mathuram. Their marriage was performed by the icon of early Indian Cinema, Raja Sandow.

NSK established his own production unit based in Coimbatore and produced comedy shorts which were sold to producers and screened along with the main film. Many of these short films proved to be more popular than the main one.

NSK was also known for his generosity and gave away his earnings to deserving causes and the poor.

Then came the sensational Lakshmikantham Murder Case. NSK, whose involvement was never proved, was imprisoned for 30 months. He was released early in 1947. Soon, he turned producer and director. ‘Nallathambi,’ adapted from the 1936 Frank Capra classic ‘Mr.Deeds Goes To Town’ by C. N. Annadurai, is one such example. It became a cult film and is often telecast on television. His ‘Manamagal (with Padmini in the lead),’ about a woman who chooses not to be a wife but remain a bride, was a major success and had social messages.

End of an era

As times changed, NSK also faced health problems and a financial crisis. Although he continued to act, it was not the same. He died in 1957, when he was barely 50.

Mathuram was reduced to a mere shadow after his death. In a chat with this writer she said, “ ...we destroyed ourselves by giving...my husband and I did not realise that one should always think of oneself before thinking of others... generosity should have limits but we did not bother in those days when we were at the top ... eventually we were the sufferers...” She lived for nearly a decade after NSK’s death, in poverty and with failing health, helped by a few friends. Heartbroken, she died in 1968.

One is, perhaps, not likely to see again another husband-wife team with this kind of popularity and success, genius and generosity. With their deaths, an era in Indian cinema had ended.

History in Bronze

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History in bronze

PRADEEP CHAKRAVARTHY

The gallery at the Government Museum boasts a fascinating array of artefacts from across the country.

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The earliest bronze in Tamil Nadu dates back to 5th century B.C. and was found in a small village called Adhichanallur.

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PHOTOS: S. THANTHONI & courtesy The Government Museum

TIMELESS beauty: The museum and some of the icons on display (below).

(This is the first of a five-part series on the Government Museum, Chennai.)

Going past Pantheon Road, Chennai, whether it is to the railway station or for a shopping trip, it is hard to not admire the stately museum buildings that can be seen even better now thanks to the flyover!

Set up in 1851, the Government Museum Government Museum or the Central Museum is one of the oldest in India. It has relics from as early as 2nd Century B.C. and is home to a fascinating and rich collection of artefacts not just from Tamil Nadu but from South India and India itself.

Started in Fort St George in 1851, it first had a collection of geological specimen. By 1853, it had several more specimen and in 1854, moved to its present premises in Pantheon Road (named after the Pantheon/public assembly rooms). The current buildings date to circa 1896.

The best buildings in the campus are the Museum Theatre, the Connemara Library and the National Art Gallery. The buildings, designed by Henry Irwin and built by Namberumal Chetty, are inspired by Italian architecture except the Art Gallery (not in use now) that is inspired by Akbar’s Buland Darwaza in Fatehpur Sikri. The art gallery was originally intended for use by the Victoria Technical Institute and came to the use of the Museum from 1951.

The museum has eight sections. The Bronze Gallery is one of the best known and probably the most modern after international standard design techniques were used. The bronzes number more than 1,200 though only a fraction is displayed. The bronzes in the museum were meant for worship in Hindu temples. Many bronzes are also Buddhist or Jain and some are in the ‘folk style’ meant for worship in humbler village temples.

The earliest bronze in Tamil Nadu dates back to 5th century B.C. and was found in a small village called Adhichanallur near Tirunelveli. The figurine of the mother goddess is a crude one but this was a precursor to the life-like images that are internationally renowned today.

Made by the lost wax process, the crafting of icons requires great skill and patience. Early South Indian bronzes tend to be simple and spare in ornamentation. The golden age of bronzes was the 11-13th centuries when the dynasties, especially the Cholas, embarked on massive temple building projects. Increasing power of the temples meant an increase in temple rituals and the stationary main deity was soon competing in religious devotion with the processional deity made of bronze.

Excessive ornamentation

Images from the Chola period became bigger, more lifelike and exquisitely formed. The boon soon became a bane, for later Chola pieces became more ‘template-ised’ since demand began to outstrip supply. The hiatus that intervened between the 14th and 16th centuries saw resurgence in the Vijayanagar and Nayak regimes when temple building and re-consecration became important once again. Images now however gained in the excessive ornamentation but lost the lissomness of the past.

Most of us normally associate bronzes only with Hinduism, while bronzes of the Hindu deities are the most prolific, at a time when Jainism and Buddhism were important religions in India, monasteries and devotees of these religions too commissioned bronzes of great beauty for worship. The museum has more than a dozen bronzes in this group. They date from 3rd century A.D. to 16th century A.D. with most of the bronzes dating from 12th century.

The images of Buddha are usually standing, with the great teacher holding his two hands in the abhaya (offering protection) and varadha (granting boons) mudras. One rare image has the Buddha in the kataka mudra indicating the holding of a flower. Given the size of these images and the rings in the pedestal that were meant to secure the image to a base, they must have been used in processions. It is also significant that many of the images were discovered in and around Nagapattinam.

The Jain images show the Thirthankara. Some of them are seated in front of a prabhavali that has chamara (flywhisk) bearers or the Makara (a beast that symbolises fearlessness). There are four Thirthankaras and they can be identified by a symbol usually on the right side of the pedestal. The Jain images date between the 11-13th centuries.

Among the hundred Hindu images, those of Nataraja and Somaskanda are more well-known. The gallery has several fine images of Parvati as well. A particularly beautiful one is from Thiruvengimalai dated from 11th century. It shows Parvati in the characteristic Thribhanga pose but her left hand is gracefully resting on the head of an attendant who carries a casket. The detailing of the ornaments and the folds of textile are superb as are the calm facial expressions of the figures. An unusual 14th century copper image of a sage seated on a tiger trampling on a demon with one foot has an inscription that identifies it as that of Vishnu’s incarnation as a dwarf Vamana.

The collection on display in this gallery is rotated on a periodic basis and there is an excellent illustrated guide available that was published in 2003.

S Rajam

SOURCE

Story of a postage stamp

S. Rajam’s portrait of Syama Sastri was used but the artist did not get an invitation for the function.

ENDURING: S. Rajam

The Music Season of 1985 was in full swing and the Music Academy’s annual conference had begun on December 20. The Governor of Tamil Nadu, S.L. Khurana was inaugurating the conference and Dr S. Ramanathan, eminent musician was presiding over i t. The Hindu of December 20 also carried an interesting news item. Under the heading Syama Sastri stamp, it stated that such a postage stamp would be released by the Governor at the Music Academy on December 21. There followed the usual text whenever a stamp is released stating that special first day covers would be made available at various locations, etc.

On December 21, a day after he had been at the same venue to inaugurate the conference, the Governor reappeared, this time to release the postage stamp. In his speech, probably written by a knowledgeable assistant, he called upon musicians to “undertake intensified research to discover the numerous Tamil compositions of Shyama Sastri, believed to have been lost.” Thankfully this piece of advice has not been taken up seriously. We have enough trouble with suspected spurious kritis attributed to Tyagaraja and Muthuswami Dikshitar!

The special edition of Sruti magazine with the cover carrying the stamps.

Syama Sastri’s portrait had been commissioned when he was alive. The artist, unfortunately unknown, had only completed the face when the composer passed away. The rest of the portrait was finished later and it still survives, in the puja of Syama Sastri’s descendants. When the Music Academy commissioned the then up-and-coming artist, musician and film star S. Rajam to paint the portraits of the Trinity in 1940, he used the surviving portrait for reference among other sources. Rajam’s portraits of the Trinity to which set he added Purandara Dasa and Swati Tirunal (over which his brother Balachander would raise a controversy forty years later), grace the Music Academy auditorium even now. Now and then, a demand is raised for the inclusion of Papanasam Sivan as well, but nothing has come of it.

To get back to the postage stamp story… The Government of India and the Department of Posts were honouring themselves by releasing a stamp on the great composer. A stamp on Tyagaraja had been released as early as in 1961 and that on Dikshitar had come out in 1975. And now ten years later, it was a stamp on the remaining Trinitarian. It was duly released by the Governor and was received by Dr S Ramanathan, the Sangita Kalanidhi designate and also S Raja, the descendant of Syama Sastri. PS Raghavachari, Member (Operations), Postal Board, said that though stamps on the Trinity and Purandara Dasa had been brought out, the Department of Posts would not stop with them, but continue identifying suitable subjects for stamps. This is a promise that the Department has fulfilled in subsequent years. There have been stamps on Ariyakkudi, Musiri, Dwaram, Chembai, MS and others.

Rajam’s painting of Syama Sastri.

Less than two kilometres away from where the release took place, Rajam, the man who had done the painting of Syama Sastri lived. He had been informed of the decision to use his painting as the basis for the stamp a couple of days before the release. But for some reason, the powers that be chose not to honour him on the occasion. In fact not even an invite was sent! It was a faux-pas of the first order, for Rajam was a member of the Experts Committee of the Music Academy and was attending the morning sessions of the Conference every day and could have easily been given an invite. How this was overlooked remains a mystery.

Rajam in characteristic fashion chose to brush this aside but that was not the case with N. Pattabhiraman, editor of Sruti, who immediately decided that the cover design for the next issue of the magazine had to include the stamp. The design was executed by Rajam himself and featured a full sheet of the stamps with a cut-out in the centre that featured a line drawing by Rajam of Syama Sastri.

Today, Rajam is 90 and when reminded of this incident, simply smiles. He is happy that his portraits of the Trinity grace so many music-loving homes. He remembers with gratitude men like Harikesanallur Muthiah Bhagavatar, ‘Tiger’ Varadachariar and K. Chandrashekharan (the son of eminent lawyer V Krishnaswami Iyer and a man of letters and artistic temperament) who felt that he was capable of executing the portraits of the Trinity when he was just twenty. To Rajam that has been reward enough. To Carnatic music lovers of the subsequent generation, Rajam’s portraits became the archetypes for the Trinity and it is sometimes amusing to read accounts of how the Trinity looked, all written based on these portraits!