SquareShooter

That is a question that arose in my mind when I saw a tweet some days ago. The tweet was a screen shot of a translation of a popular Tallapaka Annamacharya Kirtana “Manujudai Putti” posted by a fellow tweeple. Since it is a song that I had heard from my childhood, from the album of M.S.Subbulakshmi I thought, am I missing the line “ andamaina Sri Venkatadrisu sevinci ”. I had the book with me for long, but had done only a cursory browsing as I have been using the translations only as a reference. Whenever I heard a song, had a doubt over the lines that I can’t understand I refer to translations. I do that with two books I have, one a Tamil translation of Tyagaraja’s and another for Swati Tirunal compositions. I hardly ever referred to the Annamayya translation volume ‘God on the Hill: Temple Poems from Tirupati’ by Velcheru Narayan Rao and David Shulman. One reason perhaps is that the book had only a handful of the popular songs.   To get back to those lines in Manujudai Putti:- ...

  It is heartening to see so many posts today on Subramania Bharati.  It reminds me of my elementary school days. There was not an Independence Day or Republic Day that passed without singing Bharati’s songs. In that small school, the flagstaff was just outside the compound and we would stand there and sing “thaayin manikkodi paareer”. There would be singing and dancing to his “aaduvome pallu paaduvome”, “vetri ettu thikkum etta kottu murase” etc., Our headmaster at that time would teach all of us to sing Bharati’s songs. I got introduced to almost all the Deshbhakti songs of Bharati at that time. “paarukkulle nalla naadu”, “bharatha samudayam vaazhgave” and many others. We used to have a collection of his poems at home, printed in some poor, dull paper. I didn’t know music, I didn’t know the ragas that are printed alongside some of the poems. But I used to sit near the window, and keep humming something. I used to even try the “eesan vandhu siluvayil mandan” trying to imitate...