"atma shakti onga vendum ulagile"

For an uninitiated listener, her music was a simple tutorial. For someone whose knowledge of swaras were limited, her crystal clear rendering of sahityas was an entry point into the world of carnatic music. To begin with, it was not her music that drew me to D.K.Pattammal. The D in her initials was fascinating and brought me to close to her. Damal was her native village and it was the village my maternal grand father hailed. And her face and the underlying innocence and simplicity was just as my maternal grand mother. But once I was drawn into her music, the rest of the identities that drew me to her became irrelevant.

Like so many Tamilians, my first introduction to D.K.Pattammal was through her famous songs in the movie 'Naam Iruvar'. “Aaduvome pally paaduvome” and “Vetri yettu thikkum yetta kottu murase” – the relationship with the writer (Bharatiyar) and the singer were made the day I heard them. From that day, somewhere in early seventies to date, I have continued to read Bharatiyar and listen to Pattammal sing his songs. As a teenager Pattammal used to sing the patriotic songs of Bharatiyar during the freedom struggle. She was warned that she might get arrested if she continued to sing those songs. In her own innocent style she told me as she would have told several others, that “ I continued to sing them. No one arrested me”.
At a time when Ariyakudi and Mani Iyer were above my powers of comprehension, Pattammal's singing made listening easier for me and slowly initiated me into appreciating the art. While it was difficult to follow the sahityas which were little incomprehensible in the speed of the stalwarts, the quieter, clear rendition of Pattammal took me closer to her as well as the compositions she rendered. Her repertoire was large and to my knowledge widest. I have heard her sing almost every composer – from Muthu Thandavar to Dikshitar, Tygaraja, Shyama Shastri, Purandaradasa to Bharathi, Papanasam Sivan, Arunachala Kavi to Kalki. She was in her eighties when I last saw her on stage performing a concert with her grand daughter Nityashree for the Damal temple trust. It was a difficult concert to listen to – the pitch and pace of Pattammal and Nityashree wouldn’t match. But her dedication was moving. When we thought the concert is about to end, she announced that she would sing couple of Kalki’s songs as it happened to be his centenary year. I think utmost credit for popularizing Bharti’s songs and Tamil isai should go to Pattammal.
There are two concerts I would never forget in life. One was of D.K.Jayaraman’s in the year 1988 in my college auditorium as part of Spic-Macay series. I used to be an enthusiastic auditorium goer in a campus where there was just a bunch of classical music enthusiasts. I encouraged my cousin and few of her friends to stay on for the concert after the assembly was over. Reluctantly they stayed on. Pattammal’s brother, disciple and a long term accompanist so surprised the group of young collage kids for never thought Carnatic music can be so interesting. The Pantuvarali he sang that day and the popular thukkada (not demeaning it in anyway, just using the phrase to indicate the stage in which the song was sung in the concert) "Eppo Varuvaro" I still remember. Under the same Spic-Macay banner Pattammal was scheduled to sing at IIT Powai in 1991, the year DKJ passed away. For someone new to Bombay and living in a Colaba hostel, reaching Powai at 7 am was a tough task. But the experience was something that I would treasure for a lifetime. It was a damp early morning and Pattammal was in a contemplative mood. Obviously I could sense the loss of her brother weighing in her mind and the way she chose particular pieces and rendered them. It was a concert that explored the philosophy of life. She sang the Purandaradasa kriti "Satyavandarigidu kalavalla" which complains that the world seem to be letting bad guys life well while good ones suffered. Later came the viruttam ‘Pullai pirandhalum” where the line “ethanai annaiyar ethanai thandhayar innum ethanai piravi varumo” ( how many more lives, how many more mothers and fathers). We were in tears. Those were the lines I recalled as my mother told me with tears in her eyes that Pattammal was no more. It was after that IIT concert that I followed all her Tamil kirtanams, thukkadas to devour the beauty of emphasis on words and contemplating the meaning of those lines. Pattammal was the only great musician from that era I have had the opportunity to meet personally and she was graceful to give a private audience to someone who promised nothing in return. I was not a working journalist at that time and I couldn’t even have written anything. I was only exploring a proposal for a television channel to make a series on the living greats of Carnatic music. Pattammal would speak to me as if I was part of the family, share all those anecdotes from her childhood and early singing career to even making a mention of her 90-year old husband’s continued tennis sessions everyday. With a simple assertive pride of a career woman she would say how her husband stopped working the first time she got paid Rs 1000 for a concert. At the same time, she was a quintessential housewife who would also talk of her running the household where she had to take care of even the cows in the house.
Even at that age, suffering from acute arthritis she would teach a few students regularly. She promised to look at my proposal for a TV shoot once she had got through a busy season where she had to attend weddings of couple of her students. But I never got to do the programme. At least I had the fortune of meeting and having spent time with someone whose principles I adore and music I love. In his book on 'Carnatic Masters' V. Sriram mentions how she refused to take payment from AIR for having sung on the Independence Day, calling it a national duty. There was another duty which she performed without fail from the concert platforms. The duty to spread the message of peace as ordained by Gandhi. She would say that since she believed the world should end wars she stopped singing "mangalam" at concerts and only sang “Shanti Nilava Vendum”.