 "adu dAn tyAgarAjasvAmi," is a favourite expression of
T K Govinda Rao.
I had an experience which has made me a firm convert. A travel quiz was held recently at Museum Theatre in Egmore, Chennai. I teamed up with a friend and together we made it to the finals. (We were one of six to make it out of 40 teams you know - brag!)
But there on stage our position was quite pathetic. At the end of two rounds we had not opened our accounts. While there was one team that appeared to have taken over a contract to answer all the questions fielded, the others were not very much far behind.
Came the buzzer round with the full threat of negative marks. My partner with the best of intentions decided to take the gamble and like Bingo Little’s horses in P G Wodehouse stories we managed to get five negative points as well at the end of this round. So there we were with '5' while all the others were racing ahead.
Then came a round where we were given three visuals or audio visual clues and we were to establish a link between the three. By then our hope was not very strong. When it came to our turn I was not even able to hear the question and all I could see was that the quiz master was grinning broadly and several others in the audience and on stage who knew of my association with Sangeetham were laughing. I then could hear Balamuralikrishna singing akshayalinga vibhO. That was clue 1.
 Then came clue 2 which was M S Subbulakshmi singing tEratIyagarAda. This was followed by a visual of Tirupati temple. By sheer chance I had drawn the only Carnatic question in the whole quiz! By then fully revived, I was able to answer that the first one was sung by Muttuswami Dikshitar when he was prevented entry into Kivalur temple and the second by Tyagaraja when he had the same experience at Tirupati. (Getting locked out of tourist attractions was the link, I suppose. A similar experience once happened to me at Fatehpur Sikri. But that is neither here nor there).
Applause, Applause as QM introduces self as the editor of Sangeetham - preen preen. We opened our score card with that and ended the quiz as the last team but with a respectable score of 20.
adu dAn tyAgarAja svAmi. Maybe adu dAn Muttuswami also!
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