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 A few mamas, each important in his own way, also spoke. Each of them used the choicest words available in the Tamil language to abuse Subbudu. One of them said, "Avan varattum inge. enna gatiaaran pathudalam (Let him, Subbudu, come here; we shall see the end of him)." Another particularly tipsy mama roared into the mike, "Avana enna panren paaru, dei, dhairyam irunda inge vada! (See what I do to him; hey, if you have the guts, come here)." The mAmIs, in their choicest silks and perfumes, were no less furious. All of them would have together killed Subbudu had he appeared there. Dr V Raghavan and
S Parthasarathi also spoke.
A few mamas, each important in his own way, also spoke. Each of them used the choicest words available in Tamil to abuse
Subbudu.
Semmangudi and TMT competed with each other in inhaling snuff, and the shriller the abuse into the mike became, the more furious became the snuffing. The sishya, for once, got ahead of the guru in inhaling. Of course, both guru and sishya exhaled fire. 'Indian Express' was abused by others too. Some worthies pompously offered to talk to the great Ramnath Goenka (the publisher) himself.
Did Goenka think that Semmangudi was Indira Gandhi to be attacked in this manner, asked someone. A resolution was passed and 'Express' was threatened that if it didn’t publish this, they had better beware. And so the meeting ended by hailing the valuable contributions of Semmangudi to the cause of music as also the havoc criticism was causing to music. By a show of hands, the captive audience expressed its solidarity to the beleaguered Semmangudi. The Music Academy could really do nothing else. So, what began as a storm, ended in a whimper.
After the meeting, a sizable portion of the crowd went to the canteen for bondas and coffee. Canteen Krishnamurti had a tough time managing the irate crowd, which not being able to thrash Subbudu then and there, abused the poor waiters for the delay in serving. In their anxiety to preserve the Pitamaha’s dignity, some of the respectable mamas and a few mamis too walked past the counter without paying and had to be pulled up by Krishnamurti and made to cough up for what they had gobbled.
And for the rest of the season, Subbudu was nowhere to be found in the Mylapore area. It was rumoured that he had taken the first available flight back to Delhi. For sheer musico-political rioting, this incident took the cake. That day in December ’77 was a real treat. One does not get to have such fun these days in the season.
Well, those were the days, the days of Semmangudi and Balamurali, of TMT and Balachander, of Nangavaram Ambi and ‘Auto Parts’ Kannan and others of their ilk. Most of them have left the scene, the others have retired, fed up with the goody-goody crowd that now throngs the Academy and believes in proper behaviour, whatever that means!
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