It was the same terminal they had sat together the last time Dr M. Balamuralikrishna came to Kochi. Carnatic musician Rama Varma remembers, sitting in the Mumbai airport, a day after his guru of 20 years had passed away. He talks of an interview he did of the great musician about 15 years ago for a Malayalam television channel. Rama Varma was a nervous wreck but then Balamuralikrishna had this habit of putting people at ease in seconds. Questions came on music and improvisation, and his Kerala connection. Balamuralikrishna had said, “Many many songs I have sung for the Malayalam film industry. But no one knows about it now, I have become old, no?” And then he laughs his trademark open laugh.
Rama Varma also remembers his guru telling him once, he has sung everywhere in Kerala — every temple, every political function, every Sangeetha Sabha — and then he pauses and says ‘except in palace’. This was a long time ago. It was in fact Rama Varma who first called him to sing at the Kowdiar Palace in Thiruvananthapuram. So the guru then goes on to say, “And now, I sing only in palace.” He has sung for Rama Varma’s birthday at the palace. And at AKG Centre in Thiruvananthapuram for his own 75th birthday.
It was in Tripunithura in 1942 that Balamuralikrishna had his first concert in Kerala. He was 12 years old then. “But then he had been going everywhere in South India ever since he started singing at the age of six. He was this kid who became an instant celebrity as soon as he opened his mouth as a six year old to sing,” Rama Varma says. He has many stories of observing the guru’s incredible talents in front of him. “I have heard how Mozart would be playing billiards and drinking with friends as a composition would form in his head. He would then go and write it and it would look like a fair copy without a scratch. That such kind of spontaneity is possible, I understood on watching Balamuralikrishna sir in action. He was a Vaggeyakara like Tyagaraja, like Swathi Thirunal — words and music would erupt out of him at the same time, and he writes it out without thinking for a second.”
The spontaneity came also in his words and comments, Varma says. Many times when they share a room together while travelling, Balamuralikrishna would sit changing channels and pass spontaneous and funny comments on the spur of the moment. Another memory is of recording songs that he would sing during the lessons, and even as he took long breaks in between, he continued singing in the same pitch. “The shruthi or pitch is inside him. It is extraordinary what comes out of him,” says the shishya.
