From the memoir: Carnatic singer Sanjay Subrahmanyan looks back on his days of singing for the radio

Appa was a station engineer in All India Radio Calcutta in the 1960s and knew quite a bit about the significance of musical competitions on the radio. And because of Rukmini paati’s radio career, in our family circles, it was common knowledge that, if you wanted to make your presence felt in Carnatic music, one, you needed to practise; two, you had to enter competitions; three, you had to get into All India Radio; four, you had to sing in the Thyagaraja Aaradhana.

By 1984, I had more or less given up the violin and was singing more. Right after I wrapped up class ten, my mother insisted I go sing in a radio youth programme called Ilaya Bharatham on Madras B station. The rules were simple: two songs in ten minutes. This was to be my first ever programme, and I was as inexperienced as they came. I was sixteen when I signed their contract (after reading through four pages of the most incomprehensible legalese).

A while later, I received a postcard from someone called V. Sethupathy who said he was playing the mridangam for me for the Ilaya Bharatham programme, and that it required a rehearsal. He’d said his father would also be around, and asked me to come to his home for a practice session. I made my way up to the top floor of a house near the famed Karpagambal Mess in Mylapore, where a huge photograph of a nadaswaram vidwan dominated the living room. Who had time for questions at sixteen? His father was sitting there through the rehearsal, and after we were done, he even took the time to sing the same song and offer a few pointers. Even then it didn’t strike me to ask for his name or that of the vidwan in the photo. Just another music teacher, I assumed.

On the day of recording, I had a ten-minute slot from 7.40 am to 7.50 am I reached the station at seven and was soon joined by Sethupathy. We were allowed in only at 7.15 am. There wasn’t going to be live tambura, just a sruti box, and I suspected no violin either. But at 7.36 am sharp, who else should walk in briskly but Dwaram Mangathayaru! She sat beside us, and even as the announcement was on, she quickly tuned her violin and was ready to play. It took her just three minutes to do all of this. That was my first brush with a true professional who knew how to manage their time perfectly.

After the programme, we walked to the duty room to collect our cheques and were asked for 25 paise for a revenue stamp. I was penniless! I took an impromptu 25 paisa loan from Sethupathy, and that was that. A couple of weeks later, I found myself at a concert watching Sethupathy’s father perform onstage alongside Thiruvarur Sethuraman. Only then did I realise – the man whose house I had been to, my mridangist’s father was the singer Kuzhikkarai Viswalingam, and the nadaswaram vidwan in the photo? The legendary Kuzhikkarai Pichayappa.

The second time I went to record for Ilaya Bharatham was in 1985. I was not yet an AIR-graded artist, but had an equally thrilling brush this time too. Another senior violinist, Kovai Dakshinamurthy, played for me. The mridangam was by a staff member of AIR, Easwaran maama. When I started singing, the famous mridangist and vocalist TV Gopalakrishnan (TVG) walked in and heard us. I was singing Kambhoji raga alapana, which I had planned to sing for ten minutes, but then my accompanists started to nod vigorously, asking me to stop. I didn’t know then that you were not supposed to elaborate a raga for Ilaya Bharatham, you had to sing only the songs. But then when I looked around, TVG was nodding along, signalling that I keep singing the ragam. He wanted to keep listening. I wrapped up in five minutes somehow and moved on to the next song.

Later, at an AIR music competition, I had to sing two songs. We could choose whatever raga and swara we liked. The selected candidates’ names were announced in the newspapers, which was a big inducement for competing. For two days, I practised diligently, following Rukmini paati’s advice. I selected Mohanam and Bhairavi ragas, choosing Kapali and Upacharamu as my songs, and set the swaras accordingly.

I loved a recording of Santhanam’s rendition of the song “Nannu Palimpa” in Mohanam, and incorporated some of his korvais (rhythmic patterns) as I sang. A month later, the results were announced, and I had won the first prize. MS Subbulakshmi attended the prize distribution at the Academy, and I sang for a few minutes, and we all got to take a photo with MS that day.

Just a month later, I applied for a scholarship from the Maharajapuram Viswanatha Iyer Trust. It offered Rs 200 a month for two years. I applied and went in for the selection. After I finished singing, Santhanam asked me, “Are you the one that got the All India Radio first prize? You sang Kapali, right?” I was surprised, but then realised that he must have been one of the judges to whom my recording for the contest had been sent (they were blind submissions), and I had, quite by chance, chosen one of his trademark songs to perform!

For this scholarship, singers TMT and Rajam Iyer and the violinist RTukmini were the judges, with Santhanam often joining them. There were evaluations every six months, with a beautifully designed syllabus defining what we had to sing. At the end of the two-year scholarship, we were all given a concert at Sastry Hall. There were five of us initially, but two were sent off due to a lack of progress, leaving only three of us for the final programme.

One day, during this process, I was taking notations while Rajam Iyer was singing. He stopped and pointed out a mistake in my notation. Santhanam intervened, telling me gently that, while my singing was good, learning to notate would help me sing more comfortably. Being a practising artist, Santhanam valued the music, whereas Rajam Iyer, who worked in a college, was more focused on correctness and theory. This balance of practical and theoretical perspectives during the course of the scholarship kept me hooked.

I shared many such moments with Santhanam over the years. Once, in Bangalore, at a competition conducted by the East Cultural Association, a group of us, including Anuradha Sriram and R Ganesh were participating. The first prize was Rs 1,000, and we travelled from Madras to compete. Santhanam was one of the judges. We had to sing a raga picked by the judges.

The finalists included Anuradha, Ganesh, myself and two other girls from Bangalore. Anuradha sang first. She was learning from the vocalist Kalyana Raman then. She was asked to sing Saveri. She did a terrific job, singing “Sankari Sankuru: with many good sangathis. When it was my turn, Santhanam asked me to sing a song in Reetigowla. I didn’t know a single keerthanam in the raga back then. I elaborated the raga. Then he asked me to take a line from the song and perform neraval. I had to admit that I didn’t know any keerthanams in Reetigowla. Santhanam said, “What is this pa?” and then sang the line “sharanagata bharanotsuka” from “Paripalaya”. “You’ve heard this song right, now do the neraval.” I would have been more comfortable if I had been asked to sing ragas I knew well, like Kambhoji or Bhairavi. Somehow though, I managed to complete the song based on his prompt. This is how it was in competitions – anything could happen, and you had to be prepared for the unexpected. Anuradha won the first prize that day; I won second, and went home with Rs 500.

Excerpted with permission from On That Note: Memories of a Life in Music, Sanjay Subrahmanyan with Krupa Ge, Westland.