When Palghat Mani Iyer died in the early hours of the morning of Saturday, 30th May 1981 in a private nursing home in Cochin, he had completed his worldly assignment with the same degree of precision which had been the quintessence of his art and the leitmotif of his life almost from the time he was born. It was his 70th birthday the previous day.

And Mani played as all geniuses played, with that mysterious alchemy of ability, intuition and prescience. Prescience is also a God's gift which, he believed, was essential in one's passage to greatness. He told us when we met a few months ago that it was not practice alone that made a great musician. there were many others who had put in more practice than himself but met with less success. Only those who were gifted could attain greatness. When asked whether he had spotted any young artists who showed promise of becoming great, he said that it was not enough for an artist to show outstanding skill in the initial stages, he should do it consistently for, say, 50 years or - here he made an instant, generous concession - or atleast for 25 years. there is no doubt that, Mani was subconsciously considering his own case as a parameter.

The reference to God's gift notwithstanding, one did gather the lurking impression that Mani was essentially an agnostic. Asked what he thought could be the possible justification for hides and skins being allowed to be taken inside right close to the sanctum sanctorum in our temples (with the chenda, maddalam, edakka etc.,), he thought for a while and admitted without any embarrassment that he had not really thought of it that way ! A friend who was present suggested helpfully and rather enthusiastically : " Why ? Even Lord Siva always wore a leopard-skin" ! It was not a valid enough rationale for Mani who shot back : "That's all mythology ! How do we know that Siva actually wore one" ? Mani, one suspects, must have had the same ambivalent approach when it came to his choosing a cow-hide or velvet cover for his mridangam. Yet, two days before he reached the 'disputed barricades', while in a semiconscious state, he had asked a surprised Rajamani to prepare three or four mridangams, because he wanted to play in front of Guruvayoorappan! No doubt, there will be many anecdotes to prove and disprove this facet of Mani's ethos.

In him, one could perceive that unmistakable spark of defiance of a man who never had to bow his head in submission to superior talents. And the six decades in which he dominated the world of Carnatic music spanned a period which is generally considered as the golden chapter of Carnatic music in this century. all the more remarkable because he was a mridangist and therefore, seemingly had only a secondary role. He did not do so by the usual articulation or by flamboyance on or off stage, normally considered as essential accouterments for the making of a charismatic figure. Some may express the view that, while Mani was great player, he was inarticulate in the sense that he never showed any enthusiasm to verbalise on his technique. He would never expatiate on the searching analysis of his method and the anatomy of his style vis-a-vis that of the others. There was always an aura of inscrutability about him. the difference or the uniqueness was not the product of deliberate or conscious cultivation.

Despite his tendency to be reticent, he was quite unequivocal when it came to expressing his opinions on what he considered was undesirable or improper in others' technique or music. His admirers did speak eloquently on the outstanding features of his style that set him apart. Even those who had heard him in concert for over half a century still found an element of surprise about his playing, an element of unpredictability which is the litmus test of versatility. Every concert was thus a fresh experience to others and perhaps even to himself. And because of this, when Mani was the accompanist, he enjoyed a monopoly of attention denied even to the main artist.

Mani never really took cognizance of Hindustani music until lately and that too, it seemed incidentally. It was fairly obvious that he was not overly impressed by it; nor did he feel that it had much to offer to Carnatic music. He felt, for instance, that there was much of a sameness in the pattern of tabla accompaniment. It merely kept the rhythm, but a mridangam player had to 'get the laya by the stem' and vary it sometimes imperceptibly. In a Carnatic music concert the laya is in a constant state of flux, while in Hindustani music, the progress of the tempo was all too predictable. Furthermore, a mridangam player had to have a pliable style to be able to accompany such diverse and versatile maestros as Madurai Mani Iyer, Alathur Brothers, Ariyakudi, G.N.B., and Semmangudi. Not so in North Indian music where the tabla player adhered to his own style for all performers. "anyway that is my impression" he added with his habitual modesty.

Why is it that most of the mridangam players did not seem to have bothered to tune the left-hand (bass) end of the mridangam to the exact lower octave? With one single air-chamber to serve both ends, wouldn't there be a dissonance created inside, adversely affecting the tonal quality ? "There is a correlation between the two". he said. "If you keep the left end pressed gently, the right end would produce a clearer tone. But this should be done judiciously, otherwise it could raise the pitch of the right hand. The left end need not necessarily be tuned to the exact lower octave but its pitch has a definite influence on the tonal quality of the mridangam".

Mani did not think that it would help to improve the tone of the left-hand end, say, by having the choru on it, as on the bahan of the tabla. He did concede, however, that vertical position in which the bahan is played as well as the thinner membrane used on it gave the player more scope; he could also use more fingers. He was also positive that any attempt to alter the style or structure of the mridangam by changing the type of the wood, for instance, or the diameter or width of the membrane or its thickness would be a 'blunder'. "the mridangam as it is today, is a perfectly designed instrument and should not be tampered with". No doubt the size has changed from the 20-inch length to the 22-inch, and even the 25-inch long ones (which can be quite a strain to play).

While talking about laya in his son's house, Mani brought out a metronome and turned it on. It was a logical piece for time keeping to be expected in the house of a percussionist. After asking us to listen to it for a while, he declared quite candidly that he found the steady, unremitting, precise ticking just superhuman! He evidently felt that such deadly precision was beyond human ability and would not jell simply. Mani had accepted unquestionably that there was a certain mystique about Carnatic music which took into account the fallibility of human nature and yet remained inscrutably enjoyable.

There is no doubt that the same can be said of Mani's style too. Here was an accompanist who from the very incipient stages of his career, had dominated any concert neither by sheer thunder nor by deliberate upstaging. His was the style for all seasons; he could make it suit any vocalist, any tala, any kriti. He could sail along pellucidly with the vocalist who had Mani's seal of approval. Sometimes, with the younger artists, he would guide them, goad them to greater heights. Occasionally if the tala was not the particular artist's forte, he would camouflage an errant culmination with a deliberate flourish on the mridangam to save the young man from a thousand deaths.

When Mani was the accompanist at a concert, the commencement of a kriti was the cue that the audience was waiting for. the maestro would sit with an expression of total expressionlessness almost amounting to indifference. First, the eduppu from the vocalist; Mani is still impassive but there is a barely preceptible sign of animation suggestive of his alertness. His own metronome inside him has started ticking. then a soft, resonant, tentative touches and, after a pause, the precisely timed dramatic entry. The kriti and the concert would then suddenly come alive. Quite unlike the mechanical metronome, his playing was not unremitting. There would be moments of significant inactivity, perhaps just a few beats, enabling the vocalist to highlight the nuances in the composition. But the tala and the laya would flow, now soft, now strident but always in such perfect consonance as to make one feel that this was what the kriti was all about. We were conscious that we were in the presence of a legend in his own life time, and with supreme mastery over an instrument which had been handed down to us from time immemorial. But, according to Mani, the mridangam, as we know it today, is of recent origin, probably the generation before him - that of Narayanaswamy Appa perhaps.

He did clarify that his objection applied only to public concerts. He was practical enough to realise that a mike was indispensable for radio broadcasts and recordings. His conviction was based on the belief that if mikes and amplification came in, audience participation went out. For any concert to click, he said, there should be the right combination of several factors - the vocalist, the violinist, the mridangist, the hall, an audience listening with the inner ear and their response. Only then could the artiste give of his best. with an amplifier on, listeners would tend to talk amongst themselves and make no real effort to listen, when music was being 'injected into their ears'. Without it they would sit closer and transfer their response to those behind. Very valid reasons, admittedly. But the irony is that future generations will get to know what Mani's artistry was like solely through the instrumentality of what was latterly anathema to him, the microphone. He probably didn't care. The enigma that was Palghat Mani Iyer would never be holly solved.