Once upon a life

As the last surviving daughter of F.G. Natesa Iyer, Padma Swaminathan’s anecdotes span the rich fabric of theatre, classical music and her own foray into social activism

November 23, 2014 12:10 pm | Updated 12:12 pm IST

Mrs.Padma Swaminathan, daughter of Rasika Ranjana Sabha founder F.G.Natesa Iyer. Photo: B.Velankanni Raj

Mrs.Padma Swaminathan, daughter of Rasika Ranjana Sabha founder F.G.Natesa Iyer. Photo: B.Velankanni Raj

Dear sister Padma, thanks you so much for your kothamalli and pudina chutneys – they are so tasty I relish them like halwa …”

So goes the letter from a friend to another. Only, the sender is also one of the greats of Carnatic music – Damal Krishnaswamy Pattammal. The recipient, Mrs. Padma Swaminathan, is no less deserving of attention – she is the last surviving daughter of F.G. Natesa Iyer, the pioneering thespian and political activist whose Tiruchi-based Rasika Ranjana Sabha was the cradle for amateur drama in southern India – and a classical musician of high calibre herself.

“What is there to write about me?” wonders the self-effacing Mrs. Padma, who was in Tiruchi recently as a special guest for R.R. Sabha’s five-day commemorative cultural festival.

In fact, leaving out something proves to be more difficult, as Mrs. Padma’s anecdotes span the rich fabric of theatre, classical music and her own foray into social activism, woven into her 97 years.

Presently residing in Coimbatore with her son, Mrs. Padma’s voice and hearing have weakened of late, but her memory remains as sharp as ever.

Early years

Growing up in an artistically charged atmosphere, the young Padma, like her seven siblings, led a nomadic life in the early years as her father’s career in the South Indian Railways took him to Coimbatore, Madras and Calicut, among other places. “We’d study in one school and write exams in another,” she recalls. It was the now-demolished Manohara Vilas (in Woraiyur), that gave the clan their first proper home in Tiruchi. “It was a palatial house – and there’d be groups of people hanging around waiting to meet my father – poor students looking for admissions, graduates looking for work, and musicians working on the Sabha’s productions,” she says. “I used to play pallankuzhi with Thyagaraja Bahavathar when he used to take breaks while rehearsing for his role as Lohitadasa in Harishchandra.”

She shared a close friendship with another new talent spotted by her father – M.S.Subbulakshmi. “He arranged her first concert when she was just 11 years old [in 1927], at the 100-pillar hall in the Rock Fort temple where she was accompanied by Dakshinamurthy Pillai on the mridangam and (Tirumakudalu) Chowdiah played the violin,” says Mrs. Padma.

Home and heart

Matrimony beckoned at 18, but not before Padma personally chose her partner, T.S. Swaminathan, an ardent Gandhian and freedom fighter. “I saw him jump out of his cart with great energy,” says Mrs. Padma, “and I thought, ‘this is the man I want to marry.’” The Tiruchi-born Mr. Swaminathan was sentenced to a six-month rigorous imprisonment and held in Multan Jail in 1930 for organising volunteers to prevent the movement of foreign goods from Chandni Chowk in Delhi, where he was working as a clerk. In jail, he also witnessed personally, the scene of Bhagat Singh and his associates being led to their execution with their faces covered. Had he not decided to shift to Calcutta after his release, he may have become a more well-known figure in the independence movement, says Mrs. Padma. The couple enjoyed 72 years of companionship. Mr. Swaminathan, who retired as the financial adviser and chief internal auditor of Life Insurance Corporation (LIC), passed away at the age of 98 in 2007.

For Mrs. Padma, life was a sea-change after marriage and six children, a time of balancing family responsibilities with the yearning to pursue the arts in earnest.

At the age of 40, she earned her Sangeeta Vidwan degree from the Central College of Carnatic Music in Chennai, learning from stalwarts like Musiri Subramaniya Iyer and Brinda.

At the insistence of Lady Durgabai Deshmukh whose acquaintance she had made in the 1930s, Mrs. Padma completed her matriculation, attending school with her daughter, and eventually earned a degree from SNDT University in Mumbai, where they had shifted to, at the age of 50.

“It was very difficult, and sometimes just torture,” says Mrs. Padma about her battles against social and familial orthodoxy, “but I had to study.” Today her successors – from her children and their spouses right up to her great-grandchildren – have all been exposed to classical music, and many of them are accomplished artistes. Mrs. Padma herself was an All India Radio artiste for 40 years, and has trained innumerable students in classical music. She was also an accomplished veena player, and was closely associated with Kalakshetra.

Service to nation

As a political activist, Mrs. Padma Swaminathan came into her own in the Congress Seva Dal, where she was mentored by S. Ambujammal, and managed a group of 200 volunteers in Srinivasa Gandhi Nilayam, Chennai in the 1940s.

An archive photograph shows Mrs. Padma leading a procession of women volunteers on August 15, 1947, holding a giant national flag in Madras, with the Munroe Statue in the background.

She is an expert in using the charkha, and for the past 60 years, has worn only khadi saris and foresworn using jewellery.

A spiritually inclined person, Mrs. Padma spent five years in Tiruvannamalai in devotion to Sri Ramana Maharishi and attributes her own health to “God’s blessing and nature cure.”

Her eyes light up when she talks of her mother ‘Mataji’ Raja Rajeshwari’s long hair that captivated her father, and the loving home that she grew up in. “I wish more would be done to remember my father’s service to the arts and Tiruchi,” she says.

***

F.G.N FACT FILE

Born in 1880, F.G. Natesa Iyer was educated in Nagapattinam and Tiruchi. He ran away from home at the age of 10, in retaliation for being beaten up his father after he acted in a play. He joined the South India Railway in Erode as a labourer. He was taken care of by Englishmen who adopted him and brought him up as a Christian. Some 20 years later, Iyer reverted to Hinduism, and while his formal career was spent in the service of South India Railway (he retired as District Traffic Superintendent in 1935), he was also a noted patron of the arts and amateur theatre in Tiruchi.

He acted in the Tamil film Seva Sadanam (1938) opposite M.S. Subbulakshmi.

Iyer was a member of the Indian Congress party and represented the city as a delegate to the annual Indian National Congress sessions during the years of the World War I. He joined the Indian National Congress in the year 1914, and was a delegate at the sessions in Bombay (1915), Lucknow (1916), and Madras (1917).

He was Chairman of the Tiruchi Municipal Council from 1923-25.

F.G. Natesa Iyer died at the house of his daughter Tirupurasundari at Bhopal, in January 1963.

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