The music teacher

RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE

Browsing through old college magazines, I came across a sepia-toned photograph of Chennamma, who was the music teacher in Maharani’s College in the Fifties. She was seated on a multicolour striped carpet with her students. It must have been the Annual Day celebrations of that institution. The “music department” consisted of two dark, ill-ventilated rooms in a narrow corridor from where you could hear strains of the veena, violin, flute and harmonium competing with the shrill voices of Chennamma’s students vying for a place in the sun.

Maharani’s was a popular women’s college among middle-class families in those days. Located centrally on the Palace Road, it attracted young women from various suburbs of Bangalore. Its music department, where Chennamma taught the rudiments of Carnatic melody, was its greatest appeal.

It was a feat that she performed every day — a single-teacher class that trained students to master assorted instruments in addition to singing the lofty compositions of great composers in a crescendo of childish voices. This teacher could be credited for marrying off hundreds of young girls from conservative families by the sheer force of her music which they demonstrated to other conservative families by coaxing a few tuneful notes from a violin or a veena.

She was a rare teacher. An institution in herself. No function was complete without her presence. Dressed in a white khaddar sari, and hair drawn back into a severe bun, her portly figure formed part of the college backdrop. I can still see her trudging all the way to her class where she would take her drowsy students through the rigmarole of “saralevarases” and “jantevarases” on hot summer afternoons. Her senior students, Kanthi and Prabhamani were the “stalwarts” who sang with her at public functions. Years later, when I heard them sing "Seetha kalyanam, aibhogame…" during an oonjal ceremony, I saw once again that small, dingy music department of the college where Chennamma worked her magic.

Sometimes, the principal — Sundari Krishnaswamy — would slowly walk down the corridor, stopping at the music room to observe how the class was progressing. Chennamma would remain unfazed and continue banging on her battered harmonium while her young students sang woefully out of tune. The music room and its stern teacher were impervious to principals and their supervision. They belonged to another age where your profession was your pride and you did your duty not because someone was watching.

The music teacher of Maharani’s College died decades ago. So did the principal and many of her students. The music department became a mass of stone and rubble. But the sepia photograph in that tattered college magazine was a reminder of the great teachers of another era.