MUSIC Anecdotes

To all intents and purposes, this year is the 50th anniversary of a rather singular achievement by a little-known, less remembered personality whom music historian Sriram Venkatakrishnan describes in these words: “Like the proverbial squirrel t hat helped Rama build a bridge, he was the chosen medium of Tyagaraja for a mammoth task.”
The fascinating story of the completion of that task by a postal sorter in the Railway Mail Service — which work contributed to what many called him in his time, RMS Sundaram Iyer — was recently narrated by Sriram.
Iyer, who worshipped regularly at the Tyagaraja samadhi in Tiruvaiyaru, was, during a visit to Benares, struck by the verses inscribed on the walls of the Tulsi Manas Mandir there. He decided that his Saint deserved no less, that he would make it his life’s work to have the kritis of Tyagaraja inscribed on the walls of the samadhi. He approached T. S. Parthasarathy, who was translating Tyagaraja’s kritis into Tamil, for his advice. Iyer told Parthasarathy that he would collect one rupee from every person he met to make his project possible.-----
With Iyer’s collection drive proving a success, by the end of 1957, the interior walls surrounding the samadhi, put up by Nagarathnammal, had been fully covered with the engraved marble slabs.
But with surplus funds available, it was decided to build a mandapam in front of, and abutting, the walls Nagarathnammal had raised around the samadhi. The Valmiki Mandapam, on which work was started in 1958 and completed in 1960, now had its inside walls embellished with more engraved marble slabs. By 1964, all Tyagaraja’s kritis had found a place on the interior walls of the shrine and the mandapam. And then Sundaram Iyer vanished. There is not even a picture of Iyer to honour his contribution . 6/2007