Amazing Grace

My Life Story 

This story of mine is a hodgepodge of anecdotes painting a tapestry of the many, many beautiful things that have occurred in my life. Even the things that are not so beautiful and sometimes even life-threatening have had a silver lining. So read on if you wish and I hope amongst all these ramblings, not necessarily in chronological order I might add, you may find some things that pique your interest or things you might be able to relate to. 

As the early part of this story is about my music college days in Chennai ( then Madras ), I will change the font if I write about aspects of the music I studied, namely, Carnatic Music. I have done this so that if this is of particular interest to you or it’s an art form you as a Westerner may wish to pursue, you may find some of my observations useful or of interest or relevant to you. 

Many events and memories come to mind in a rush when I think of my life thus far. Many things are not so palatable, and perhaps the worst memory is the betrayal by someone I always considered near and dear to me who one day did not hesitate to threaten my life. 

Not easy to digest, especially when it’s someone you have known since your late teens. 

Even in my most magnanimous moments, I still have difficulty comprehending such reprehensible behaviour from someone I once trusted so implicitly. 

Et tu Brutus! 

Anyway more of this much much later! 

There is nothing extraordinary about my life and yet many things are. It just depends on your perspective. At an esoteric and spiritual level, I cannot begin to imagine my absolute good fortune and why I have been considered worthy. 

If indeed I have decided to write about my life, it is most probably my innate desire to relive the past. 

Maybe to rekindle cherished memories. 

Maybe to place on record events and incidents that need to be placed on record. 

I used the word amazing a few lines ago. 

Consider this. 

Someone is born in Africa in 1951. More precisely in Johannesburg, South Africa, and at the age of 25 jets off to India to study at the feet of two of the last century’s greatest Carnatic vocalists.  

The vocalists? 

Padma Vibhushan Dr M Balamuralikrishna and Sangita Kalanidhi Sri K V Narayanaswamy. 

Amazing? 

I’d like to believe it is. 

The odds of me having been chosen from some five billion souls worldwide and from amongst forty-three million (1976) South Africans is not just amazing. It’s Amazing Grace. 

10 January 2016 

Before I reminisce about my musical journey, I must first say that my sojourn to India was not to become a great musician but more to satisfy myself that I could actually do it. It was a challenge. 

Does that mean I did not want to be good at it? Far from it. I wanted and needed to be the best I could be for myself. If that makes sense. 

Most people learn an art form with the hope that they will become recognized not only for their achievements but also for the public adoration they receive or maybe they have a strong competitive spirit and there can be tons of other reasons.   

For me it was different. It certainly was not about being better than someone else, but it was very definitely about being the very best at what I was capable of. 

Did I achieve that? Yes, I did.! Could I have done better? Of course! 

In many ways, I do believe that I did succeed in achieving what I set out to do for myself. Along the way, there have been those that have enjoyed or rather appreciated my musical efforts. That has been an added bonus. 

As a baby apparently, I cried a lot and at the top of my lungs at that. When my mum out of concern called the family doctor, Dr. Barris, in this regard, he told her not to worry as I would end up with a strong pair of lungs! 

So maybe that’s where my music really started! At two years old! Nature was doing some early preparations!

I used to sing as a child, but, my cousin, Gopal, son of my mother’s eldest sister, often told me that I was singing falsely as he put it. I now assume he meant off-pitch. Needless to say, this was a huge disincentive for me to sing. I became very self-conscious about singing and only sang when I was alone or in the bathroom! 

Nonetheless, in my mother’s house, I would sing at the top of my lungs and I remember when I was in standard five, our class teacher, Mr. Pather, planned on taking us all to Cape Town on a school excursion. My mom then told me that if I learnt a song in Tamil, I could go. At that time my musical life revolved around Cliff Richard, Simon and Garfunkel, Petula Clark, and the many other amazing musicians of that generation. 

Needless to say, I put in a sterling effort and can sing that song to this very day. 

Unfortunately, the Cape Town trip never materialized because our teacher was unable to generate sufficient numbers of students to make the trip viable. 

This I think was the very first time that music started taking hold of my psyche. 

On the matter of false notes, I possibly have to thank my cousin for his criticisms, because, a lifetime later when I was at the Tamil Nadu government music College, Greenways Road, Adyar in Chennai, many was the time when my guru Shree K V Narayanaswamy would ask me to sing the mel shadjam or upper tonic note, in our music class because my fellow students were not getting it right. To me, that was high praise indeed. My cousin’s criticism though hurtful at the time left such an indelible impression on my young mind that I suppose I started to unconsciously learn to pitch my voice more accurately.  

Some fifteen years later I was to learn to become even more aware of pitch and accuracy from the father of the now-famous flautist S Shashank. Shashank spent many a patient hour when he was just eight years old showing me where I was going wrong. Not in the pitching of my voice, but the microtonal sounds I was not producing or not producing accurately enough to be considered really good. That level of guidance is priceless and cannot be bought. I am indebted to Shashank and his Dad in no small measure. So, amazing grace indeed.   

At TGMC (Tamilnadu Govt Music College) I remember one day getting early to my class. I took the tamboura and tuned it. 

When my guru Shree K V Narayanaswamy, who at that time was not yet my guru, but our lecturer at the college, came into the class, he picked up the tamboura to tune it. 

He played the tamboura and did not tune the instrument. 

He then asked in Tamil, “Who tuned this instrument?” 

I replied that I had. Amazingly, he continued playing the instrument. I could not have got higher praise from anybody else. It simply meant that I have tuned the instrument very well indeed. 

This follows from the fact that whenever he came to class, he would sometimes spend several minutes tuning the tamboura. He was extremely meticulous about the tuning of this instrument. 

The same must also be said of my other lecturer Shree B Rajam Iyer under whom I took personalized tuition for approximately two years from 1977 to 1979. 

Both of them are disciples of Shri Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar. 

But I digress, so back to my story. 

Although my dad played the violin for the Browns band in Doornfontein in downtown Johannesburg, in the 1940s, ours was not a musical family in the sense of the late Sonny Pillay of KZN ( Kwa Zulu Natal) for example. He’s was a family steeped in music. 

My mum used to sing to us as children and to every child your mum’s voice is the best! 

The songs she sang and her ‘thalo’ lullaby still ring in my ears at 60! 

My brother Deva has a very refined ear for music and a deep appreciation of other fine arts, and certainly, as we were growing up, he displayed all those qualities of someone with a refined sense of taste. 

I, on the other hand, was into the Beatles, Cliff Richard, Elvis Presley and well, you know what I mean. 

I remember in my teens telling my father’s brother whom everybody called Socky, a school teacher, who was eventually to become a highly respected and venerated school principal at Nirvana high school, that I liked classical music.  

His interest was piqued and he asked me what items of music I was referring to. I mentioned one of Cliff Richard’s ballads. That sadly was my idea of classical! 

 He kept very quiet and said nothing. Years later, I realized just what I dunce I’d been! 

Around about that time, I think out of exasperation and dismay, my mother suggested that I learn to play a musical instrument. 

I joined a local band and brought their drum kit home. 

To start with, I had a dreadful sense of rhythm and timing and so you can just imagine the cacophony that emanated from my bedroom! 

My mother, bless her, tolerated that for possibly five minutes and then told me in no uncertain terms that I was certainly not going to learn to play the drums! 

 I then went to a lady called Madam Grace in Rainbow Valley, Lenasia, and learnt to play the piano taking lessons from her for about two years. 

My Mum bought me a Carl Otto baby grand for R4800. It was my pride and joy. When I went to India in ‘76 she sold my piano for R2500. When I came back to SA after my studies were completed, I discovered that my Mum had sold my piano. I was really upset. I went to the same store ( Lincoln Bros in Johannesburg)to price another one. They wanted R45000. 

If I have one regret, it is that I stopped playing the piano. 

 At that time a person who had come down from Asherville in Durban to study at the teachers training College in Johannesburg, by the name of Francis Pithambaram also took lessons at Madam Grace. 

We are friends to this day. 

While all this was going on, my brother Deva would play LPs of M S Subbulakshmi.  

He and I had a running battle in that I wanted it off and he wanted it on.  

The Suprabhatham sung by Smt. M S Subbulakshmi went on incessantly as it does in many parts of India to this day and indeed many parts of the world. 

One day he bought an LP of Dr. M Balamuralikrishna.  

When I listened to this music it was as if a light bulb had gone off in my head. I suppose a lot of people would have called it a Eureka moment. 

I was like a dog with a bone that would not let go. This music teased me intellectually and I was challenged. I was determined to win. 

At this time, in our circle of friends, was one Jeram Bhana, a very talented sculptor, sitar player, and flautist. 

Jerry,  as he was called, used to conduct music classes at Tolstoy farm just outside Lenasia. This is the same building that Mahatma Gandhi lived in when he was in South Africa.  

The Gandhi Foundation tried to restore the building, but it is now just a ruin, or it was the last time I saw it, having been vandalized. 

My very first initiation into Indian classical music was under the guidance of Jeram Bhana at the age of 24 when for the very very first time I learnt a scale in Indian music in the raga Mayamalavagowla. 

Up to that point, the only musical scale I knew was the Western scale in C major which most children learnt at school. In truth, I did not even know that it was called the C major scale. 

So, it would be perfectly truthful of me to say that whilst I had an interest in music and could sing after a fashion, I knew very little if next to nothing about music in the proper sense. Certainly, it was only after I got to India that some form of formal musical training began. 

Jeram Bhana realized, that what I wanted to achieve, was outside of his ambit, as he had studied Hindustani music and not South Indian music or the Carnatic tradition. He then suggested to me that the best way forward was to go to India. 

That then was the seed planted which in a few short months delivered me to the shores of India.  

The year I set foot on Indian soil, my ancestral home, was Feb. 1976. 

As an aside, my great-grandparents on my mother’s side come from a village in South India called Thillaiyadi near Mayavaram. My grandfather on my father’s side I believe also came from Mayavaram. 

I visited Thillaiyadi sometime toward the end of the ‘90s or early 2000s. It was a beautiful single-street village at the time with lush green agricultural land as far as the eye could see. There was a temple at one end of the street as I remember, although there may have been more temples, and looking at Google maps recently, 2018, it seems there has been much development in the area. 

It nonetheless would have been very a beautiful countryside during the time my great-granny lived there. Follow the money as the saying goes is what she fortunately or unfortunately did, depending on your point of view, and shipped herself off to Mauritius in search of greener pastures. She was a fascinating lady, and I will devote a few paragraphs to her later in this narrative. 

 

22 January 2016 

I MAKE PREPARATIONS. 

Things moved very quickly from that point in 1975 and within a few short months, many within the family got to know that I was going to India. My granny, on my mother’s side, was particularly happy to learn that I was going to India. In fact, to say that she was happy is an understatement and it would be more accurate to say that she was over the moon and overjoyed. 

At some point in 1975, that inspirational vocalist Pithukuli Murugadas visited South Africa and was a storming success. Through my uncle Ken Padiyatchi, an uncle of Dr. Pungie Lingam, I was briefly introduced to the musician and his accompanists, namely, Vasudeva Rao, a tabla player, and Sikkil  Vadivel, a mrudangist. 

Little did I know at the time that Pithukuli Murugadas and Vasudeva Rao would play no small part in my stay in India.  But their involvement in my life was still many months away.  

Initially, I experienced a sense of great elation, and I must admit that my heart certainly beat faster when I just thought about what I was about to embark upon. Then the preparations began in earnest, getting a passport, making enquiries about inoculations, and getting the necessary inoculations to travel to a country where yellow fever was a compulsory inoculation and of course, it was necessary to have a typhoid injection, malaria tablets, and as I was told at the time, when traveling to India, to take water purifying tablets amongst a zillion other things! 

About eight weeks before I was to leave for India, the family gave me a really beautiful farewell party. My granny was there, many of my cousins and many many close family friends. I remember Ruth and Robert Hurwitz were there and Ruth gave me a very posh beautiful travel bag for my cosmetics. I still have it to this very day, and it travels with me wherever I go. 

There are without a doubt many people who gave me things to make my journey and my stay in India a comfortable one and one of the other items that I still have this very day and still use is a pair of Ray ban sunglasses that were given to me by my aunt Dolly! 

When my uncle Ken Padiayatchi learnt that I was going to India, he invited me home to a really lovely supper prepared by his lovely wife Aunty Neela, and gave me a pair of excellent Uher microphones which I too have to this day!  

I used those microphones to record my tutor Shri B Rajam Iyer live in concert, one of my early tutors Guruvayur Ponnamal who sang some songs for my brother’s wedding and many many years later to record the child prodigy S Shashank at age 8/9 playing the flute accompanied by Trichur Narendran. 

I always believe that when something is given with good intentions and in good faith it will always produce only positive results. The sunglasses the microphones and the travel bag must have been given to me with such love and affection that it has stayed with me for more than 45 years! and I still use those very same sunglasses here in the UK! 

I left for India in February 1976.

I spent three weeks in the ashram of my Spiritual Guru at a place called Dera in the Punjab.

I then left on the Grand Trunk Express, fondly called the GT express in those days, to Madras, now Chennai, a journey of one and a half days.

 

21.6.2018 

It has taken a long time for me to get back to this story of mine. 
My various websites were hosted by Hostmonster. For nine years.
Through their negligence and the incompetence of their support staff, my websites, seven in all, were destroyed. I got some of my money back but no compensation for what was their error.
I paid for a product called Backup Pro. Do you notice the work Pro? When I asked for my site to be restored, they said that the backup software had not been working. It did not stop them from collecting money from me every month for some years for this Backup Pro. When I spoke to their supervisor or manager in support, he said that it was common for that software not to work.
When I said that I was really angry at their incompetence, he said that he would not be angry because he responded to such situations more rationally. How smooth. The sod.
At about the same time my Mac died on me, and Apple went out of its way to get me up and going again. I found some of the files associated with my websites on the Hostmonster server but the above article was gone! I will never use Hostmonster again.
I searched all my hard drives but could not find a copy.
The thought of rewriting from scratch just turned off too many buttons in my head!
Lo and behold while trawling through a very old drive that had no right to have a copy of this on it, it did!
So, the sun is shining. I am smiling and all is good again!
My story of Amazing Grace will rise once more!
 

26 March 2023

 

An accident.

Now a little bit about why I chose the title Amazing Grace and possibly the main reason for doing so.

In 1972 my dad, sister, and I left for Durban in the province of Natal, now Kwa-Zulu Natal.

We were on our way to attend the wedding of my cousin Shamala, my dad’s younger brother’s daughter.

Just outside of Pietermaritzburg, about 5 miles (8KM) or so, some roadworks were taking place.

A five-ton roadworks vehicle started crossing the highway from left to right in the path of oncoming traffic.

My Ford Capri Perana (now a collector’s item) was about 250 meters away and I was traveling at about 70 mph (120 km/hr).

There was no chance of avoiding contact.

My car was severely damaged. I lost four front teeth and a severed tongue.

Mercifully my dad and sister were unharmed.

My tongue was stitched back by a trainee nurse. Sadly, she did not have the skills to match my nerves back correctly.

That would have been the task of a surgeon.

The result was that for many years thereafter, my speech was severely impaired.

To this day, singing a descending scale, especially containing flat notes, more so at speed, is a challenge. Singing in the upper octave too became a huge challenge.

All of this I could do effortlessly prior to the accident. 

The tip of the tongue is hugely important for proper pronunciation in many languages worldwide and just as important in all Indian languages like Sanskrit, Tamil, Telegu, Malayalam, and Hindi.

For more than 20 years pronouncing the letter R was extremely difficult and initially after the accident almost impossible and sounded rather comical!

It also interfered with how I sang and produced a kind of muscular obstruction that made it difficult to produce some sounds and words that started or had the letter R in them.

All of the above mandatory requirements for a student of South Indian classical music.

This is what made my decision to go to India so irrational in a way with the speech impediment I now had.

Therefore, when listening to recordings that I have uploaded to this site, please be mindful when sitting in judgement or when commenting! It’s been a challenging journey that required immense effort. My zero to 60 time was five years from sa ri ga ma or doh ray mi if you like, to these recordings.

That I was able to go on to learn the art form I did, is only by His Amazing Grace. I feel more fortunate than I could possibly put into words.

 

A mother’s Love

 I lose a Friend….8 April 2024

Harish.       Harishchandra Maharaj 15.1.1949 -15.12.2023

 

I first met Harish Maharaj (Harry to many of his friends) on a school bus in 1963/64. It was a Friday. On Fridays I went to Johannesburg by school bus after school to help my parents in the dry-cleaning business my parents owned. It was how I earned my pocket money.

The Nirvana High School Putco school bus would go from Lenasia to Ophirton and Fordsburg and then on to downtown Johannesburg where my parents’ business was located.

I remember standing next to him on that day as there was no seating and the bus was choc full of school goers going home after school.

We became friends that day and remained friends until the day he died on 15^th December 2023.

A very special friendship that lasted 60 years.

Harish was a gentle soul with a lovely sense of humour.

He was inciteful and held very firm views on many things.

He either liked you or he didn’tWe travelled on that school bus every Friday for many years.

In fact, until his family moved to Lenasia as part of the separate development Act of the Apartheid regime.

His parents bought a house in Plover street in Lenasia and I would spend many hours there talking about everything from the Bhagavat Gita and Indian politics to cars like the Chrysler Gas Turbine and everything in-between.

He interpreted a Meera Bhajan for me ( Hare Tum Haro)  when I was abought 14.

No one I asked was able to interpret it as accurately as he did as I later found out.

He’s ability, at his age, to interpret the spiritual element of this bhajan was quite extraordinary.

I was fortunate enough to sing this bhajan to my spiritual guru some 50 years later at Haynes Park in the UK and I am so grateful that Harish helped me understand the meaning of this intense Meera Bhajan.

We started a little woodworking shop together which ended very quickly as he lost the tips of four of his fingers on our radial arm saw.

It was amazing that every time we went off to do something, like when he went to India for a few months or when went to India for several years, we would reconnect and continue conversations as if we had not been away!

He went on to open a business in the printing industry.

He was meticulous in his work and his clients stayed loyal to him until the day he died.

When I located to the UK, I had occasion to call him to him for assistance many times as he collected my mail from my postbox from 2008 till his death.

He always got it done, whatever it may be, without ever saying he could not or was too busy. Always a smile in his voice.

Such an extraordinary human being!

About a month before he died, I called him because I had a nagging inside my head.

When I got through, he said that he had been desperately ill for some weeks.

This is what I must have picked up on.

He said he was feeling much better and that left me quite relived.

A month later he was no more.

I learnt so many things from Harish and I considered him to be more than a brother to me.

There are times in our lives when something special happens.

Harish was something special that happened to me.

I will miss him dearly.