String Hopping In Thanjavur

ARRIVING AT AN unremarkable street lined with ATMs and home appli­ance stores, you wonder if this is indeed a place of musical heritage. Then you hear the staccato of the chisel, emanating from any one of the narrow dwellings. The blue house with the open gate and rusty old murals of a veena and Goddess Saraswati on the facade is M Narayanan’s. Inside, a quilt of dust covers every surface, including the parts of many unfinished veenas: the hollowed-out resonator bowl known as the kudam, the dandi or the fingerboard, the end piece shaped like the mythical lion-faced yaali, the sorakkai or the extra resonator that was originally made of the eponymous gourd. A large plywood box for shipping and a modern carry case take up much of the space in the cramped front room. Thanjavur, the Cremona of south India, holds the Geographical Indication tag for the veena, and Narayanan’s family is among the handful of traditional craftsmen who have preserved the authentic­ity of its provenance for generations. On the only veena that is ready to be shipped—made to order for a customer in Coimbatore—Narayanan plays a few notes. The instrument strains coarsely, but with some coaxing, it can evoke, in the hands of a skilled musician, a golden era of art music in Thanjavur that lasted three centuries.

For a lover of music, a pilgrim­age to Thanjavur does not end at the monumental 11th-century Brihadisvara Temple. The story of how the city came to be a glorious seat of music does begin with the Cholas, who were instru­mental in recovering lost verses of the Thevaram and setting them to tune to be sung in the temples of Thanjavur. When the Vijayanagara Empire fell in the 16th century, the Nayakas who then ruled Thanjavur welcomed Telugu dancers and musicians to settle in the prosperous and culturally fertile Cauvery delta. It was here, in the courts of Achutappa Nayaka and his son Raghunatha Nayaka who ruled between 1516 and 1634 that the theory of Carnatic music, as we know it today, crystallised. Raghunatha Nayaka and Govinda Dikshita, the musicologist who served as a minister in the courts of both the kings, are credited with developing the modern veena with 24 fixed frets. There is, of course, a long history of string instruments in India dating back to the Vedic period. But early veenas—literally, lutes—were fretless, with the earliest iconographic example of a fretted veena coming from a 12th-century temple in Belur in present-day Karnataka. “The vina with frets known as kinnari later led to the Rudra vina of Ramamatya…. The modern vina attained its perfection in Tanjore during the 17th century,” writes S Seetha, former head of the department of Indian music at the University of Madras, in her 1981 book Tanjore as a Seat of Music. “Thus the way was paved for the fresh system of raga classification on the basis of the svara system signified by the vina frets, which recognised sa and pa as avikrta (unchang­ing) svaras.”

The next big musical milestone followed soon after in the form of the Chaturdandi Prakasika, an authorita­tive treatise written by Dikshita’s son Venkatamakhin, who architected the 72 melakarta raga scheme of Carnatic music, identifying parent ragas with all seven notes that represent all possible combinations of the 12 semitonal intervals. Even after the reign of the Nayakas came to an end, the musi­cians and composers of Thanjavur continued to break new grounds under the patronage of the Maratha kings. “What is most revealing is that almost all the Nayaka and Maratha rulers were themselves linguists, composers, artists, performers on musical instruments, musicologists of repute. Three of the four standard laksanagranthas which are so vitally connected with the present day Karnatic music, viz., Sangita Sudha, Ca­turdandi Prakasika and Sangita Saramrta were written by King Raghunatha Nayaka, Venkatamakhin, minister of Vijayaraghava Nayaka, and Tulaja Maharaja, respectively, within a span of one hundred and fifty years,” writes Seetha. It was this musically charged atmosphere that paved the way for the revered trinity of Carnatic music, Tyagaraja Bhagavatar, Muthuswami Dikshitar and Syama Sastri, born in different parts of Than­javur district, to redefine the south Indian classi­cal music tradition and to compose songs that would move billions of people in the centuries to come.

The luthiers of South Main Street claim to have sculpted sound out of jackwood for four or five generations, although many came to the trade sometime in the last century. With every generation, there is a whit­tling of the veena-making workforce, but also an addition to it in the form of new artisans from other local woodworking families who choose to apprentice with the elderly practitio­ners of the art. “There were 150-200 of us. Now there may be less than 50,” says Narayanan, 74. There is music playing at his workshop, located behind the house off a narrow bylane, but it is not the kind you expect. An SP Balasubramanyam number reverberates in the confined space as aasari S Palanivel is engrossed in scooping out a kudam. It is back-breaking work to reduce the thickness of the rough-cut bowl to a uniform half-inch. He sheepishly turns down the volume as Narayanan gives me a tour. We duck to enter the small work space that reeks of nostalgia and the sweet smell of wood pulp. “My father made veenas for vidwans like S Balachander, KP Shivana­ndam and Chitti Babu,” says Narayanan. “I myself have repaired instruments for E Gayathri and Rajhesh Vaidya. But my two sons, who are settled in Singapore and Chennai, don’t want to continue the family tradition, and I don’t blame them. There is little money to be made and long hours of labour. Even if you are not educated, you can make a better living working as a carpenter for daily wages of ₹1,000. I have three people helping out at the workshop and I cannot pay more than ₹750 per head per day.”

It takes nearly a month to craft a veena—from the rough woodcut to outlining, carving, tuning and the final polish. A Thanjavur ottu veena, made of several pieces of jackwood attached to optimise for cost, is priced upwards of ₹23,000 and can cost twice as much at a music store in a metro city. But if you are attracted to the mythology of timeless instruments, the ekantha veena, made from a single log of jackwood, is the one you want. It can cost up to ₹ 70,000 in Thanjavur, depending on the quality of the wood and the embossing or carving on the instrument. Most concert musi­cians play antique ekantha veenas, and say it takes years to break in an instru­ment. “When you buy a veena these days, it does tend to be oomai (mute),” says Rajshri Ramakrishna, professor of music at the University of Madras, and a veena player. “It takes 4-5 years before you can extract the actual naadam (sound) out of it.” Ramakrishna owns 17 antique veenas, many of them over a hundred years old. For her students, she picks out veenas from a music store in Chennai. “When I was a student, I spent a month-and-a-half in Palani to observe and learn from the aasari who made my veena. Today no one has the time. The connect between the artisan and the vainika has broken. For the sake of convenience, we have made a lot of compromises.”

A veena is not made—it is born. The aasari listens to the wood, nurtures it with the wisdom of a hundred years, and imbues it with life before finally handing it over with the promise that it will ‘speak’

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A VEENA IS NOT made— it is born. The aasari listens to the wood, nurtures it with the wisdom of a hundred years, and imbues it with life before finally handing it over with the promise that it will “speak”. For the aasaris of Thanjavur, supplying to music stores has now become the mainstay of the business. And business it is, with many of them admitting to running an assembly line instead of crafting a veena from start to finish like in the old days. The wood comes from Panruti in Cuddalore district. “We make 5-6 trips a year. Sometimes we are unable to go, and they send the timber over,” says Narayanan. “The quality is not always up to the mark, but we must make do with what we get.” Directly unloaded at a saw mill where it is cut down to the rough outline of the veena, it is further hollowed out and pared down by carpen­ters at Sivagangai Gardens near the Big Temple. From here on, the veena makers take over. “We have mechanised a part of the process—the cutting and shaping of the logs, for instance, and spray paint ma­chines. The rest must be done by hand,” says Narayanan. The aasaris have kept up with the times, posting ads on Facebook and WhatsApp groups and adapting to the needs of young musicians by making veenas that can be dismantled. Some of them use guitar tuning pegs. The sorakkai is now made of fibre on bulk order by a local industrial unit. The ivory and stag horn inlays along the body of the instru­ment have made way for painted plastic.

From our 21st-century vantage point, we may bemoan the loss of “tradition” and overlook the fact that Thanjavur from the 17th to the 19th centuries was an ever-changing confluence of various aesthetic currents, drawing upon north Indian and even European music to create a special evocative charm. The Thanjavur bani or style of music is one that has embraced the onward march of modernity. And so have its craftsmen.

Like Narayanan, N Tamizhmani next door sells four or five veenas a month and employs as many craftsmen in his workshop. Crouched over a woodwork­ing vice, the 62-year-old is shaping plastic teeth for a yaali—three on each side. “We have been upgrading some of our techniques and materials every few years,” he says. “The adhesive my grand­father used was called vajram and it was made of tree resin. It took forever to dry. We then switched to Fevicol, which takes hours. Now, you get quick-setting adhe­sives for sticking small decorative parts like these teeth.” Next to him, 53-year-old M Ganesan chisels along pencil mark­ings made on an ekantha veena, its kudam resting on a donut cushion—called perumanai—made of rags. It is a Sunday and they are racing against time to get through their backlog of orders. It will take Ganesan three days to finish what is called “light carving”—engraving patterns and a few figures including a Saraswati along the length and the top of the veena. An elaborately carved veena, called “full deep” in Thanjavur parlance, can take weeks, even a month if you want embossing. The focus on decora­tive carving of late has added as much as two kg to the instrument, which used to weigh between six and eight kg until 10-15 years ago. “It’s what people ask for now,” Tamizhmani claims. Carving and bright coats of paint are in fact easy value additions for artisans who may not be able to make much money on the instru­ment otherwise. The story is the same at the hole-in-the-wall wholesale Thanjavur bommai—Tamil for doll—shop next door. The traditional bobblehead dolls, made of terracotta, are getting blingier and more colourful, with the latest ones covered in cheap sequins and rhinestones.

At the airy shed on the terrace of his house in Srinivasapuram, 65-year-old N Rajendran, one of the last traditional craftsmen to still make veenas from start to finish himself, works under a hanging bulb. “I don’t outsource. I can only make one or two veenas a month,” he says, his voice barely audible over the cackle of parrots in an aviary outside. Rajendran only makes ekantha veenas and prices them upwards of ₹40,000. While his son, who works at Nokia in Tiruchirappalli, is not interested in the craft, he has taught five others, who he hopes will keep it alive for another generation or two. I am here to place an order for an acoustic tambura, a plucked drone instrument that provided the essential sonic backdrop for musicians before it was replaced decades ago by a tiny electronic version and eventually by apps. It will take two months and cost ₹25,000-₹30,000, Rajendran says, and we discuss specifics—the length, the cir­cumference of the bowl, the width of the bridge. “Leave the rest to me,” he says.

For all their skill, the Viswakarma community of Thanjavur has not embraced veena playing, or Carnatic art music for that matter. “The men are too busy trying to earn a livelihood. The girls, well, some of them learn to play film songs on the veena but when they get married and move away, they give up playing altogether,” says V Chinnappa, the 55-year-old who runs Thanjavur Veenai Works, a store and workshop on Keela Raja Veethi. While his own father was a carpenter, Chinnappa learned to make veenas from a relative. Now he employs 10 craftsmen, owns two work­shops and supplies to some of the top instruments stores in the country. He is proud of his keen ear and tuning skills. “Not a swara will be out of place. You will not be able to tell my veenas from those made 30-40 years ago,” he says.

The story of the Thanjavur veena is larger than wood, strings and decibels. In Valmiki Charitra, Raghunatha Nayaka, himself an accomplished vainika, gives us poetic descriptions of Urvasi playing a fretted veena, displaying advanced techniques, as Seetha notes in her book. Upon Urvasi’s rapturous perfor­mance, “… he says that the mountains began to melt, animals stopped chewing the grass and the barren logs of wood began to sprout”. Four centuries later, Thanjavur continues to be a place of musical magic.

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