Source : The Illustrated Weekly of India, June 28, 1981.

I try to think back to the first time I came face to face with Palghat Mani Iyer - and recall instantly my initial reaction of terror.

I had just finished school that year and moved from Delhi to Madras to join the Central College of Karnataka Music. When the December "season" came round, I had sent in my name for the PALLAVI competition at the Madras Music Academy.

the other students at the college tried to warn me by recounting their experiences in earlier years. If Mani Iyer is one of the judges, you’re done for, they told me. He’ll ask you to sing while simultaneously marking two different talas with your right and left hands. He’ll give you complicated, off beat pallavis to reproduce on the spot. He’ll ask you to do complex anuloma and pratiloma calculations that even professional musicians will find tough... He’ll tear you to shreds, Mani Iyer will. He’ll have you crying in two minutes flat. You’d better not go.

I sat in a secluded corner of the sprawling hostel, on the water’s edge at Adyar, and tried to sing a pallavi while marking two different talas simultaneously, one on each hand - and discovered it was an impossible task.

Like the dried leaves that the eddies in the stream at my feet floated away, my hopes of winning the gold medal also seemed to recede and disappear slowly, thanks to this man who appeared to revel in asking people to do the impossible. would he really make such demands - or was it all a part of the legend that was already built round him (he was only in his forties then) as a person for whom the extraordinary was the norm ?

Mani Iyer the Man-Eater he became in my nervous estimation by the time I arrived at the hall for the competition - and sure enough he was the first person I saw at the gate. I seriously considered withdrawing from the competition; however, it was not Mani Iyer but another pallavi "giant", Chittoor Subramanya Pillai, who was the judge. Nevertheless, something of that awesome, awing impression lingered on through the years.

 Played for Himself

I saw Mani Iyer thereafter several times and sat through many memorable concerts. The image he projected was always that of a serious and solemn person, a man of few words, severe habits and an aristocratic disdain for artistic compromises of any kind. He played neither for the gallery nor for the highly initiated - he played for himself.

for one who became a legend, as the cliche runs, "in his own lifetime", he looked extraordinarily ordinary in his plain white cotton shirt and dhoti. No silk kurtas, no suggestion of a swagger, no craving for attention, no nothing. (Not even a flamboyant "arty" hair style - his crew-cut was always a trifle too short.) Just the man who sat on the stage like a sphinx (that seems such an appropriate description), with his hands draped loosely over the instrument during the raga alapanas when he was not required to perform, back slightly hunched, face held impassive. The barest of nods and a minimum of gestures marked his style, the only give-away of moments of excitement, appreciation or high anticipation being a quick dilation of the pupils and a widening of the eyes. In all my memories of his concerts, I can recall just one occasion during which he broke into a smile for a brief moment, before resuming his tightlipped, solemn mien.

25 - Year Memory

One particular concert I can still recall, 25 years after. This was a radio concert in Delhi before an invited audience. Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer was the vocalist. When he took up the Bhairavi swarajati "Kamakshi" by Syamasastri, Mani Iyer came up with a series of deft, scintillating, rhythmic permutations that even to a juvenile listener (and a reluctant one to boot - I had a lot of home-work that evening, I remember, and understandably fidgety) added a whole new dimension of beauty to the song.

Every time the opening line of four cycles was taken up (16 times on the whole, for the 8 charanas), Mani Iyer paused for a few beats, let the silence fill in - and suddenly broke in with an electrifying pattern to arrive at a synchronisation on the word Amba. each approach was more breathtaking than the one before; now tantalizing, now grand; now subtle, now cunningly simple. From the fourth charanam onwards, I had ears only for the mridangam, excited with anticipation; what will it be this time- a thisra nadai, "mohra" or one in khandam? Every time I sing or hear that song now, those lilting "approach phrases" of his ring in my ears.

He did the same for Viriboni varnam on another occasion (indeed, he did that to every composition, he seemed to them all as thoroughly as the vocalist and, incredibly, even anticipate their every improvisation-however did he do it, unless he was a mind-reader?). It sounds improbable, but he reproduced on the mridangam that evening the whole varnam, matching musical note to musical note sangati to sangati. Had the vocalist not sung, Viriboni would have still been heard - from Mani Iyer’s dexterous fingers. From an instrument tuned to just one note, he produced all the seven of the octave in clear, resonant, bell-like tones. If the song flowed slow and smooth, his nadai matched the mood.

I was perhaps 14 then, and there still exists somewhere in our Bangalore house, a red file with a panegyric I wrote, crammed with superlatives, on the mind-boggling creativity of his genius. I have since cleared that file several times and thrown away a lot of juvenile jottings, but this one I had to keep as a momento of one of those rare, moving experience of those years.

Another concert I remember is from the early 60s. Mani Iyer was playing Alathur Srinivasa Iyer in Bombay and the microphone was misbehaving. Right in the middle of one of its particularly piercing squeaks, he stopped playing and began to address a very surprised audience on what was to become a pet theme of his - the demerits of the amplifier system and how it "killed" the nadam and squashed the artiste’s enthusiasm. He would play a stroke, pause and point an accusing finger at the speakers; see how the sound goes! Just listen to that!

From a man known to prefer to make do with two words where ten would be normal, and a silent nod where others would use two words, this was most unusual outburst, but it was a measure of his feelings on the subject. which remained unyielding for the rest of his professional career.

It was "mikeless concert" every time thereafter, whenever he took the stage. there was less than a handful of musicians whom he accompanied and not all of them - had voices that did not miss the microphone’s ministrations. No matter, if Mani Iyer was on the mridangam, mikeless the concert had to be. Only someone of his stature could have stuck to that stand and got away with it.

Living legend

How many kinds of legends one heard from different sections of the musical community! there is the story about his sharing the platform with the great Dakshinamoorthy Pillai who played the kanjira - and insisting on being given pride of place in the seating hierarchy, although he was a youngster and far junior to the veteran, because the mridangam deserved that preeminent honour as against the kanjira, which was only a secondary accompaniment.

Another legend had him refusing to accompany women artistes - till he made an exception in the case of D.K.Pattammal. No one chose Mani Iyer as an accompanist; he chose the artistes whose concerts it pleased him to embellish with his accompaniment.

They called him Nandi after the celestial drummer and referred to him as an avatar, a wizard, a colossus, the "uncrowned king of mridangam", a one-of-a-kind genius. Yehudi Menuhin is said to have called him " an electronic computer that made no fault". That was one way of describing the man and his pan optic art.

His curriculum vitae records that he came from a musical family and had his initial training from Chathapuram Subba Iyer and Kalpathy L.S.viswanatha Iyer, that he showed promise even in his teens and shot to fame after accompanying Chembai Vaidyanatha Bagavathar for one of his concerts. Later he came under the tutelage of Tanjavur Vaidyanatha Iyer and his career, spanning nearly 60 years, brought him, among other things, the prestigious Sangeeta Kalanaidhi award (1967), the President’s Award (1956), the Padma Bhushan (1971) and an invitation to perform at the Edinburgh Festival (1965).

Last April he announced his voluntary retirement from professional performances, but was persuaded to stage a comeback 6 months later - by popular demand.

End of an Institution

They say that just a few days before his death on May 30 - a day before his 70th birthday - he had got all his instruments repaired and in trim. How does one adequately explain the loss to Indian music ?

that he was someone like Thirakwa for the world of tabla and the "last of a generation of the greatest laya architects" ?

That he was the greatest mridangam player ever to enthrall an audience ? That he had the rare distinction of attracting listeners to the taniavarthanam (the solo session on the percussion instrument) he played whereas the normal reaction of average audiences was - and is - to go for "coffee and snacks" the moment the tani started?

Yes - the "void in the musical world created by his passing is impossible to fill"; yes-he was institution by himself, woven with legend for wrap and halos for woof. Yes- "he embellished the performance of several top-ranking musicians with his feathery touch and glittery strokes..." and "pioneered the technique of making the mridangam produce, not the solkattus, but the sahitya and sangathi".

Words, Just words. How can they ever substitute for, and convey, even remotely, the sounds, the feelings, the ambiance that Mani Iyer’s mridangam spelt ?