A Chance, Revelation, Simplicity, and Longing
A reflection on music, memory and the inheritance of human values
On 18 October 2026, on the day of Durga Ashtami, we went to Tanjavur with a simple wish: to offer the three svarajatis of Shyama Shastri in Bhairavi, Todi, and Yadukula Kambhoji at his ancestral home, behind the Bangaru Kamakshi temple.
Was it chance, or some divine prompting? I leave that to the reader. To me, it felt like an invitation.
A week before, we went to Tanjavur home to ask permission from the person who oversaw it. We walked along the narrow streets behind the temple looking for the house. Two pillars, with a pial on either side, caught our attention. The modest frontage seemed to announce itself without a signboard. Could this really be the home in which Shyama Shastri had lived some two hundred years ago? Its doors were ajar. We entered quietly, with a feeling of reverence. Here, music, devotion, and everyday life seemed to have belonged to one another. We met Visalam Ammal, a seventh-generation descendant of the composer deeply engrossed in making a garland for the Kamakshi Amman, it looked. Visalam Ammal looked quite busy sorting flowers for puja. When I approached her, she told me plainly that she was preparing to go to the temple and had no time. I had barely begun to sit when I stood up again! I did not take it as discourtesy. She was simply telling me what mattered most to her at that moment. There was no pretence.
Permission was given by her, and we returned to the house on 18 October. Visalam Ammal’s warmth made us feel not like visiting performers but like members of her household.
The room was small. Four vinas could just be accommodated in two facing pairs, with room for only a few others on the floor. At about 4:30 in the afternoon we began our offering, without ceremony. The simplicity of the setting seemed to give the music a special intimacy.
Just before we played, I looked towards the little puja room. There sat Visalam Ammal, partly hidden from view. In a flash I was carried back to my childhood. I saw my grandaunt, Sugunta Kundalambal Ammal, sitting quietly in the kitchen after preparing the neivedyam for the worship of Goddess Tripurasundari. My granduncle, Karaikudi Vina Sambasiva Iyer, invoked HER presence in the Srichakra. How vividly that scene returned to me!
These two women had never met. Yet, across the years, I saw in them the same quiet devotion, sense of responsibility, modesty, and care. Neither sought attention. Both sustained a world of values through the most ordinary acts of daily life. It was a revelation to me.
We speak of preserving a musical tradition through great musicians, compositions, temples, books, and institutions. All these are important. But what about the people who quietly sustain the atmosphere in which such traditions live? The mother in the kitchen, the elder in the puja room, the welcome offered to a guest, the concern shown without being asked. These are not small matters. They are part of the invisible inheritance of a civilization.
After playing the three svarajatis, we stepped outside. My students wanted photographs, and I sat on the pial. As I looked down the street, another feeling arose within me, a deep longing. I imagined what this neighbourhood might once have been: temple bells, the sound of mantras, footsteps, conversations, and the unhurried movements of daily life. Perhaps the sacred and the ordinary were not separated as sharply as they often are today. Then I looked at the street before me. Motorcycles crowded the narrow passage. Engines roared, smoke drifted, and vehicles struggled to pass. The house was still there. The temple was still there. The composer’s name lived on. But how much of the atmosphere that had nourished his music remained?
The changing rhythms of life have made these transformations inevitable. I could not help but dream, though. If only it had been possible to preserve something of the old Tanjavur – the very soil that nurtured the musical offerings of the Trinity. Not to create a lifeless museum or a picturesque show for tourists, but a living neighbourhood in which music, devotion, craftsmanship, architecture and human relationships could be experienced together. What a sight it would have been!
It may be an impossible dream. Still, why should we dismiss the longing behind it? We have become very skilled at celebrating the visible signs of heritage. We restore monuments, photograph old houses, honour famous names, and organise grand events. But are we equally attentive to the human values that once gave these things meaning?
We live in an age when display can so easily overshadow substance. Noise is mistaken for vitality, publicity for achievement, and flamboyance for beauty. I am not opposed to change, nor do I wish to condemn the young for living in a world different from mine. Every generation must discover its own ways. But surely we need the discrimination to recognise what is merely fashionable and what is genuinely valuable.
Simplicity is not poverty. Reverence is not superstition. Tradition is not the refusal to change. Nor is progress the destruction of everything that came before us. We must be able to question the past, recognise its limitations, and still cherish the wisdom and humanity it has left us.
How do we pass these values on? Not by instructing children endlessly to respect tradition. Respect cannot be commanded. It grows through experience. A child who receives genuine hospitality learns something no textbook can fully teach. A young musician who plays in the humble home of a great composer may discover something that no grand concert hall can reveal. A quiet elderly woman preparing flowers for worship may teach us more about devotion than many speeches.
I returned from Tanjavur fulfilled, yet troubled by a question. We had gone there to offer music. We came away having received something far more intimate. Visalam Ammal, sitting quietly in her puja room, had brought my grandmother back into my life. Two ordinary scenes, separated by time, revealed to me the extraordinary continuity of human values. The street outside reminded me how easily their setting can disappear.
I do not want the next generation merely to imitate its ancestors nor hail them as supreme. I want young people to know them, understand them, question them, and carry forward what is humane, beautiful, and worthy of preservation. They must be free to build a new world, but why should that freedom require them to forget the best of the old one?
What is the purpose of inheriting a civilisation if we cannot enrich it and pass it on? And what is the meaning of progress if, in our eagerness to move forward, we lose the sensitivity that makes life worth living?
That afternoon began as a chance. It became a revelation through the simplicity of a home and the quiet dignity of a woman. And it left me with a longing: not to bring back the past as it was, but to keep alive our capacity to recognise its human worth, and to share that capacity with generations yet to come.
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