Notes from the heart

A trained Carnatic musician, P. Susheela had to make a choice. She did, with stunning effect as Suganthy Krishnamachari finds out.

April 14, 2016 04:49 pm | Updated 06:55 pm IST

P. Susheela

P. Susheela

Her singing left her guru emotionally overwrought. And it was not the lyric that moved him, for he had only a smattering of Tamil. It was the voice, the singing…….

My father, a fan of violin maestro Dwaram Venkataswami Naidu, would visit Dwaram every weekend.

In 1963, it often happened, that when father arrived at Dwaram’s house in Triplicane, the maestro would say: “My neighbour turned on the radio, and I heard that Tamil song.

That song always leaves me in tears.” The song was ‘Kanna Karumai Nira Kanna’ from ‘Naanum Oru Penn’ by P.Susheela, who had been Dwaram’s student at the Vijayanagaram Music College. And what a compliment it is to a student if her singing has such an impact on her guru!

P. Susheela’s ‘Kagida Odam Kadalalai meedu’ can leave you utterly disconsolate. What is life after all, when, like a paper boat tossed by waves, you are buffeted by fate? But listen to the TMS-Susheela song, ‘Sirippil Undaagum Raagathile’, and you feel a surge of energy. Listening to Susheela laughing musically, and TMS deconstructing her laughter into swaras in this song, how can one not be joyful?

Susheela’s songstake you through all the labyrinthine turns that human emotions take. You can write hundreds of stories, which take inspiration just from her songs.

‘Iraivan Irukkindraana’ is the voice of the skeptic. ‘Kannanai Ninaaikaada nallilaye’ is the sweet torment experienced by a girl in love. In ‘Iduvarai Neengal Paartha Parvai’ and ‘Mella, mella mella,’ Susheela introduces a subtle suggestiveness in her tone, which matches the tenor of the lyric. In ‘Malarum Mangaiyum Oru jaathi,’ when Susheela sings that a woman’s unshed tears are like the Patala Ganga — a torrent that cascades in her heart, she instantly brings before our eyes a desolate woman in love. Nabokov spoke of an emotion for which the Russian word was ‘toska.’ He said it was untranslatable, but said it indicated “great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause”. And listening to the TMS-Susheela duet ‘Anda Sivagami Maganidam’, which has some lovely Kapi phrases, one begins to think that perhaps this is what is meant by toska, because the song throbs with sadness, when neither the situation in the film nor the lyric warrant such sadness. One wonders why music director

Govardhanam invested the song with pathos, but it is one of Susheela’s most moving songs.

She handled intricate sangatis and brigas with ease, even when she was young. In ‘Donga Ramudu’, she sang a thumri, a javali and light songs. She was only sixteen then. Her voice had the ability to transcend musical boundaries, so handling any genre was a breeze.

Did Susheela get requests for cutcheris after she became famous in films, I ask her. “A famous Telugu director wanted me to give a cutcheri. So I resumed classical music training under Dakshinamurthy Swami. But when I went for film recordings, I couldn’t shake off the classical influence, and recordings got cancelled. So I gave up classical music,” she says. “But my Carnatic music training gave me breath control right from the early days, and the ability to notate easily.”

Did her family want her to take up playback singing? “On the contrary, my father wanted me to sing Carnatic music. He took me to D.K. Pattamal, and told her I wanted to sing in films. ‘Let her go ahead,’ DKP said, and my father was disappointed with the reply!” she laughs. In later years, Susheela’s ‘Sonnadu Needaana’ would leave DKP in tears. M.L. Vasanthakumari used to say that none could have sung ‘Mannavan Vandanadi’ better.

Talking about her experience in singing for different music directors, Susheela recalls the terrific speed at which G.Ramanathan would play the harmonium. She says that with MSV and Pendyala Nageswara Rao, there could be even 30 takes, because they would keep changing the tune. “For Thaedinen Vandadu, director Sreedhar wanted the tune changed after we’d completed the recording.

So MSV had to redo the whole thing, and the recording went on till 2 a.m.” She was in such demand as a singer that she would often record from 7 a.m. to well beyond midnight. If K.V. Mahadevan was pleased with a take, he’d say: “Okay, Sushi.” And if he said Sushi, instead of Susheela, that meant he was pleased with the way the song had turned out.

Talking about T.M. Soundarajan, Susheela says she admired his sruti suddham. Her son too is a great fan of TMS.

“I could never sing on a full stomach. I would have a cup of tea and a few biscuits. But TMS would have a sumptuous lunch and feel perfectly at ease before the mike. TMS was a good cook too. There was a restaurant in Parry’s, where he would go straight to the kitchen and make very tasty rasam. He’d tell the cooks to call it TMS rasam,” she laughs.

Susheela has sung more than 11,000 songs in Telugu, more than 7,000 songs in Tamil, a little more than 1,000 each in Malayalam and Kannada, and won the National award for best female playback singer five times. Why didn’t she sing many songs in Hindi? “I had offers from Salil Chowdhury, C. Ramachandra, Khayyam and Jaidev, but I was so busy in Telugu and Tamil that I didn’t take up these offers.” Didn’t Naushad insist with the producer of the Malayalam film ‘Dhwani’ that Susheela should sign up first, before he would sign on as music director? “Yes, but do you have to put that down?” Susheela asks. In fact she is so unassuming that one has to be gently insistent with her in getting her to acknowledge her achievements.

Given Susheela’s reluctance to take credit for her work, it was a team of nine fans — Sriram Lakshman, Kamala Narayanan, Rajeswari Narayanan, Adepalli Rajagopal, Kalai Kumar, Rajeshkumar, and Thaenraja Kaliappan, Srividya Sanjay, Nageshkumar — who collected her songs, and sent all the information to Guinness World Records. Kalai Kumar says they sent details about 17,695 songs to Guinness in 2013, but they kept discovering Susheela songs, so that the count today stands at more than 20,000, and is expected to get bigger.

Robert Southey’s lines of verse perhaps best express what Susheela’s songs have meant to me and to thousands of her fans.

My never-failing friends are they,

With whom I converse day by day.

With them I take delight in weal

And seek relief in woe;

And while I understand and feel

How much to them I owe,

My cheeks have often been bedew’d

With tears of thoughtful gratitude.

* M.S. asked Susheela if she would like to sing cutcheris with her.

* Susheela sang a song in ‘Tenaliraman’ (Tamil), in which Ritigowla was used for the first time. But the song, which had Maand and Khamas as well, was canned.

* MSV used to say that for ‘Nenjam Marapadillai’ seventy per cent of the credit had to go to Susheela.

* ‘Tamizh Thai Vaazhthu’ was set to tune by MSV and sung by TMS and Susheela.

* “Susheela has sung many verses from classical and bhakti Tamil literature for films,” says Kalai Kumar. “She sang lines from Silappadikaram in the film Karumbu, Kamban’s ‘Moongililai mele’ in Kaatu Rani, Andal pasurams in Tirumal Perumai, Sambandar’s ‘Osai Kodutha Nayakiye’ and ‘Thodudaiya Seviyan’ in Gnanakuzhandai.”

* “In Mohini Bhasmasura (music Rajeswara Rao) Susheela’s Teeyanaina Oohala in Misra

* Pahadi, is inspired by a Bhade Ghulam Ali Khan thumri. Recently we uploaded it on YouTube and A.R. Rahman went into raptures when he heard it,” says Sriram. In his Facebook page Hariharan says the song is “sheer magic.”

* In an essay Vairamuthu wrote: “If, when I am on the verge of death, I am asked what my last wish is, I will say it is to hear a Susheela song.”

* Director S.P. Muthuraman, says, “Susheela would go to the recording only after getting an idea about the scene from the assistant director. So her singing enhanced the appeal of the scene.”

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