Evening raga
Yesterday, 24 May 2007, a dear friend and mentor more than 25 years my senior, breathed his last. The death of R Ramachandran, the man who founded the south Chennai sabha Hamsadhwani and made a brilliant success of it has created an irreplaceable void in the world of Carnatic music. Like many other music lovers, musicians and friends and admirers from every walk of life, I am devastated. I reproduce here a tribute I wrote of him some years ago, which appeared in the portal Chennaionline..
Some people never retire. Some start a second innings after they have completed long years of service in their chosen profession. ‘Hamsadhwani’ Ramachandran is one of those rare birds to make an impressive success of their first innings and a roaring one of their second. R Ramachandran or RRC as he is known to one and all was a veteran journalist when I first met him, back in the early eighties at the office of ‘Sruti’ magazine. It was, in those days and for long afterwards, an exciting adda where people interested in music and dance came to chat, discuss, debate, occasionally come to verbal blows, under the informal chairmanship of the editor, N Pattabhiraman, my uncle. RRC was initially a guest of P N Sundaresan, Pattabhi’s eldest brother, and a former colleague at ‘The Hindu’. Keenly interested in cricket, RRC straightaway decided to adopt me as one of his younger friends. Come to think of it, most of his friends are young, and the few among his contemporaries are bound to be young at heart as he himself is.
When RRC retired from ‘The Hindu’, as its chief sub-editor, if I remember right, he had been a journalist for well nigh three decades, including some years in ‘Free Press’, ‘Economic Times’ and the ‘Indian Express’. Throughout that period he had been a champion of the downtrodden and his political views were Left of centre for all that he was an admirer of such stalwarts as Rajaji whose persuasion was of a completely different hue. He was a fiery trade unionist too - I mean in the moral sense, not knowing if he ever held office -and even courted imprisonment once while trying to obstruct his bosses from producing the newspaper with the entire workforce on strike.
These qualities were very much in evidence during the time I had the honour of being his colleague in an evening daily in the early nineties soon after his retirement from ‘The Hindu’. With the young team there (with the exception of RRC, and a couple of others including yours truly) he shared his vast experience cheerfully. He often lightened the deadline-induced tension of the office with his bright smile and constant encouragement.
And he was positively inspirational when a mindless management, aided and abetted by a spineless editor, demanded apologies from all of us for an imagined slight to the “MD’s wife”. He and some of us resigned in a bunch, but not before RRC had told the editor, in the gentlest of voices and with the most benign of smiles, how ashamed he was of having to share a room with such a moral coward.
Never afraid of celebrities, RRC rubbed shoulders with the high and mighty with the practised ease of a politician, though never with an ulterior motive. Even in his student days, he did not hesitate to approach the eminent personalities of the time with invitations to address student audiences - a practice he continued when after retirement he started one of the most successful sabhas of Madras - Hamsadhwani.
A great admirer of Nani Palkhivala and his speeches on the Union Budget, RRC organised similar speeches at ‘Hamsadhwani’, to offer members a break from the music. I even had the pleasure of speaking at a function at the sabha to felicitate Tamil Nadu’s representatives on the Indian team that took part in the 1999 cricket World Cup in England.
As I said before, RRC had, and still is, in the midst of a great second innings as the secretary of ‘Hamsadhwani’, the south Chennai sabha he founded, which enjoys immense popularity among rasikas and musicians alike. It is a place where performer and listener alike are made to feel important and welcome. The resultant ambience, enhanced by the open-air theatre, often produces music of excellent quality. And every time the sabha organises an unusual event, the support for the occasion is total, from members, sponsors and VIP guests alike. Not long ago, RRC’s own sathabhishekam was celebrated by his team of office-bearers on a grand scale, and the encomiums came from far and wide.
Today, as he prepares to honour the memory of the late Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer, with a ‘Hamsadhwani’ concert by T N Krishnan, accompanied by Umayalpuram Sivaraman, to be followed by an audio-visual presentation of the Sangita Pitamaha in full flow, RRC is as full of energy and enthusiasm in the evening of his life, as any youngster.
Some people never retire. Some start a second innings after they have completed long years of service in their chosen profession. ‘Hamsadhwani’ Ramachandran is one of those rare birds to make an impressive success of their first innings and a roaring one of their second. R Ramachandran or RRC as he is known to one and all was a veteran journalist when I first met him, back in the early eighties at the office of ‘Sruti’ magazine. It was, in those days and for long afterwards, an exciting adda where people interested in music and dance came to chat, discuss, debate, occasionally come to verbal blows, under the informal chairmanship of the editor, N Pattabhiraman, my uncle. RRC was initially a guest of P N Sundaresan, Pattabhi’s eldest brother, and a former colleague at ‘The Hindu’. Keenly interested in cricket, RRC straightaway decided to adopt me as one of his younger friends. Come to think of it, most of his friends are young, and the few among his contemporaries are bound to be young at heart as he himself is.
When RRC retired from ‘The Hindu’, as its chief sub-editor, if I remember right, he had been a journalist for well nigh three decades, including some years in ‘Free Press’, ‘Economic Times’ and the ‘Indian Express’. Throughout that period he had been a champion of the downtrodden and his political views were Left of centre for all that he was an admirer of such stalwarts as Rajaji whose persuasion was of a completely different hue. He was a fiery trade unionist too - I mean in the moral sense, not knowing if he ever held office -and even courted imprisonment once while trying to obstruct his bosses from producing the newspaper with the entire workforce on strike.
These qualities were very much in evidence during the time I had the honour of being his colleague in an evening daily in the early nineties soon after his retirement from ‘The Hindu’. With the young team there (with the exception of RRC, and a couple of others including yours truly) he shared his vast experience cheerfully. He often lightened the deadline-induced tension of the office with his bright smile and constant encouragement.
And he was positively inspirational when a mindless management, aided and abetted by a spineless editor, demanded apologies from all of us for an imagined slight to the “MD’s wife”. He and some of us resigned in a bunch, but not before RRC had told the editor, in the gentlest of voices and with the most benign of smiles, how ashamed he was of having to share a room with such a moral coward.
Never afraid of celebrities, RRC rubbed shoulders with the high and mighty with the practised ease of a politician, though never with an ulterior motive. Even in his student days, he did not hesitate to approach the eminent personalities of the time with invitations to address student audiences - a practice he continued when after retirement he started one of the most successful sabhas of Madras - Hamsadhwani.
A great admirer of Nani Palkhivala and his speeches on the Union Budget, RRC organised similar speeches at ‘Hamsadhwani’, to offer members a break from the music. I even had the pleasure of speaking at a function at the sabha to felicitate Tamil Nadu’s representatives on the Indian team that took part in the 1999 cricket World Cup in England.
As I said before, RRC had, and still is, in the midst of a great second innings as the secretary of ‘Hamsadhwani’, the south Chennai sabha he founded, which enjoys immense popularity among rasikas and musicians alike. It is a place where performer and listener alike are made to feel important and welcome. The resultant ambience, enhanced by the open-air theatre, often produces music of excellent quality. And every time the sabha organises an unusual event, the support for the occasion is total, from members, sponsors and VIP guests alike. Not long ago, RRC’s own sathabhishekam was celebrated by his team of office-bearers on a grand scale, and the encomiums came from far and wide.
Today, as he prepares to honour the memory of the late Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer, with a ‘Hamsadhwani’ concert by T N Krishnan, accompanied by Umayalpuram Sivaraman, to be followed by an audio-visual presentation of the Sangita Pitamaha in full flow, RRC is as full of energy and enthusiasm in the evening of his life, as any youngster.
posted by Ramnarayan at 11:37 PM
2 comments
