Musings on the Life & Times of Chinnaswamy Subramania Bharathi           Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan                                   5

Musings on the Life & Times of Chinnaswamy Subramania Bharathi

Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan

                                  5

 

 

 

 

While on ‘Panchali Sabatham’, how can one miss on how it came into being. It is suggested that when Chinnaswamy Subramania Bharathi was returning home with his dear Pappa @ Sakuntala, younger daughter from Uppalam, ‘he strayed into Eswaran Dharmaraja temple’ as is reported. His Pappa was curiosity itself and Bharathi played a doting father/teacher. His daughter was identified the characters as Dharman, Bhiman, Arjuna and others in statue. Sakuntala was astounded when she saw the statue of Draupadi or Bharathi’s Panchali. And now it was time for Bharathi to lose his voice. ‘The very sight of Panchali teleported him and he was on a time machine’ as an author put it.

 

Truth to tell, ‘Bharathi went into a trance. Little Pappa knew that Papa should not be disturbed. Her mother had told and warned her all the time. Bharathi did not have to tell her to go quiet.”. They came out of the temple and went home without exchanging another word as Sakuntala herself revealed. Bharathi was in a world of his own. He was  furiously walking up and down. He was in his mood. A zone. Chellammal and kids knew he would be better to be left alone.

 

Bharathi ‘s brisk walk became brisker and the house was too small to provide  him the space. So he was kicking  his legs and muttering to himself. And then it came. It came in a torrent. A fusillade. As if a Niagra fall. Rushing and pouring down. Panchali Sabatham, the stand out iconic classic from Bharathi was thus born. He breathed the words. It was oral. Bharathi was demonstrating the truth in the Ernest Hemingway quote- There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed”. Need one say more.

 

Yes, a little more from the world of who else but Bharathi’s Kannamma who was none other than Chellamma. Subramania Sarma was a close friend of Bharathi during his scholastic days.Bharathi and Sarma attended dramas put up by ‘Kalyanaraman Set’ at Tirunelveli, with this friend Sarma. Among the stage plays what captured Bharathi’s ‘heart, mind and soul’ was “ The disrobing of Panchali in Mahabaratha’. It was Kalyanaraman who took on the role of Draupadi and he lived her. Bharathi was captivated and lost himself as Sarma said. And particularly, “ the way Panchali’s posers stumped and exposed the greats as Drona and Bhishma in the Court appealed to Bharathi and the impress never left him as revealed later”. Panchali was etched in Bharathi’s memory, body, mind and soul for ever.

 

Bharathi could not imagine of accept the classy Yudhishthira meekly succumbing to the happenings. Bharathi felt hit. As an analogy, one can allude to Thondaradi Podi Azhwar who was a King from a Kerala province. He was a Lord Rama devotee. And when he the Rama-Ravana battle recounted in his court, Azhwar got so involved that he ordered his generals to go assist Rama and offered to lead the battalion. To Azhwar,it was a story or a drama. It was real. And his verses in Divyaprababdham brilliantly capture it as evocative as could be.

 

Bharathiyar was in that zone and terrain when he saw Draupadi’s character enacted. He was hurt. He felt wounded. He felt furious and ashamed at the same time that great thinkers and stalwarts like Bhishma, Drona,Vidhura even were silent spectators for all intents and purposes.Their silence was damning on them. Their credibility was shredded in Bharathi’s eyes. All this were absorbed to cone out as a torrent in his Panchali Sabatham, wrote Chellamma. The world was astounded and continues to be by his language and framing of verses and the impress that the Draupadi character made on him in early childhood was the seed that the world should be ever grateful for.

 

One is not apologetic that one is musing, a sort of accidentally hit upon forte, in these Pandemic times. That sits and fits with one’s half-baked scholarship too. By no stretch of imagination this is a biography of Bharathi. And certainly claims no authority or authenticity. The quotes may be morphed in the British English. Not tutored or tweaked for convenience. No  unfair licences availed.For, they are not fanciful or imaginary, and that is a promise. It is a tour de force from the heard, read, discussed, debated, retained, over the years. Therefore,  for any one to go looking for ‘scholarship’, even of the half-baked variant would be their folly. Not mine.

 

It is not historical. It is not philosophical. It is not a  knowledgeable dissertation on the life and times of Bharathi. Why this caveat when it is known that this writer has but wobbly credentials to embark on the Mahakavi. What gumption and gall? Even thine own self is seeking answers. What to say  of the learned, well informed,academicians and professors?

 

This caveat is necessitated because  in the name of an anecdotal detour, yours truly may tread on sensitive shoes or toes. Bharathi was a maverick. He was controversial. He embraced it. He hugged it for dear life. ‘Never shunned to take on the world even if he was rejected as  a majority of one’ as a poet mused.

 

In his 39  short years,  he did not get the recognition he deserved. Yet, he was a human being,  even if he claimed he was a Yogi or a Siddhan. He was  of blood and flesh, frail and emaciated, he may have been. He had ‘ordinary feelings and emotions as a commoner,  yet a Mahakavi. We may deify him. Yet it was his ordinariness as a human and the simplicity in his verse that endeared and continues to captivate us after a 100 years and  more of his last breath,”says Ilangai Jayaraj, a great exponent in Tamil literature from Sri Lanka.

 

That is why when one indulges in the anecdotal and communicates a Bharathi less godly than imagined, the terrain may be slippery. The dear reader would do well  to bear in mind that the effort is not  to raise controversies. Just allude to them as they happened or recorded or articalised by the better read and informed.

 

It was and is fascinating to read about the Mahakavi. There has been no character like him. There may never be another like him ever.He was his own self. The word ‘Yadartham’ in Tamil ( no equivalent- closest- truthful,realistic) fits him to a tee. He never held his punches. He was brutally honest to the core. He was a confident person who spoke with conviction. So read him and enjoy the anecdotes. Do not sit and analyse. Fit them in the times he lived in. And  not superimpose our complexes or the present climes. That is a prayer made.

 

Typically, one would continue the anecdotal retinue with his dear Chellammal. She was but 7 years when she married her Subbiah who was 14 years but a child prodigy – already crowned Bharathi by Ettayapuram Zamindor  or Raja at 11 as is popular belief or lore. Yet, there is the story, “ At Ettayapuram, in 1893, a man who was an exponent of Siddha medicine and yoga, stumbled upon two boys playing on a street. He asked them a few questions and was surprised at their electric responses and dexterous answering skills. The same evening this gentleman conducted a competition to compose Nerisai Venba ( a metre and variant in poetry) the most complicated conventional poem in the home of one Guruguhadasapillai. While all the participants were awaiting the muse, the two boys,whom he had met on the street that morning, were quick in composing the verses and showing it to him.

 

Amazed at their prodigious talent the man asked for their names and out came Subramanian and Somasundaram. On their success in the tough poetry competition, which even adults would have found difficult, the boys were given the title “ Bharathi’ viz. blessed by Goddess Saraswathi. They both came to be christened Subramania Bharathi and Somasundara Bharathi then on”, said Pulavar Senthalai Na Gowthaman, the noted Tamil scholar from Coimbatore and author of several books on the historicity of Coimbatore including Sulur Varalaru ( History of Sulur).

 

Many gape in wonder with the connectivity between Chinnaswamy Subramania Bharathi and Coimbatore. The man who honoured the boy with the title ‘Bharathi’ was Viruthai Sivagnana Yogi. Though the Yogi went on to settle in Virudhunagar later, he hailed from Avinashi District of Coimbatore”, the Pulavar recalled.

 

Back to Chellammal. She was a typical Bharathiyanari of 1890s, born in an orthodox Brahmin agraharam. “She adored her husband as an elder friend with dreams in her eyes. But what she got and secured for herself and her two daughters was only continued poverty, penury hardship and worse”said Bharathiyar’s friend.  It was not as if Bharathiyar did not earn money. He did. But his ‘philanthropic instincts were  regardless and reckless’ said Somasundara Bharathi. Yet, she regarded and respected her Subbiah and was loving and possessive of his extraordinary talents as she herself recorded. Time to go anecdotal with Bharathi in Chellammal’s eyes.

 

Remember Kanakasubburathinam  who took on the name of Bharathidasan ( dasan in Tamil as in a slave,  as he himself said and not as a student). He worshipped Bharathiyar. Bharathidasan was an atheist. He openly hated the community Bharathi belonged to. His writings were not hidden on his contempt . They were transparent and he  wore his ideology on his sleeves.Yet he never once addressed Subramania Bharathi by name. He always addressed him  respectfully as ‘Aiyar’, much to the dismay of his  ( Bharathidasan’s) diehard followers. And he was a huge and impactful protagonist of the Self-respect movement.

 

And when  he fell at the feet of Chellammal in the presence of many, it was construed as betrayal of his allegiances. Bharathidasan said, “ No, this lady is holy of holies. If we have a Mahakavi, we owe it to her. She is the epitome of womanhood, I respect. I deem it my solemn privilege and duty to fall at this woman’s feet”. Bharathidasan shut the mouths of naysayers as he was a colossus in the movement and the words and conduct coming from him, clinched the debate.

 

We have got a lovely entry pass into the world of shy, orthodox and demure Chellamma and coming from her mouth, they cannot get more authentic as they came or can ever come.

 

( Author is practising advocate in the Madras High Court)