If you had few minutes please listen to my amma’s song that I uploaded in youtube recently. This is the 4th song of hers that I have uploaded so far. She wrote this song on Goddess Saraswathi. Ragam is Amruthavarshini.
In the creator/preserver/destructor triumvirate, the Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva mummoorthies, so to speak, lord Brahma is kind of like divine step child. You would want to assume that the creator, Lord Brahma would be as important as the other two, but for reasons unclear, the rest of them became a lot more popular than Lord Brahma. They got all the temples, all the offerings from the Bhakta jana (especially Vishnu getting such a fortune in Tirupati alone) while Brahma got nothing. Is the theory true that Hindu people favored those Gods that possessed weapons (such as Vishnu with his Sudarshana Chakra, and Shiva with his Trident) and since Brahma did not have any armamentarium, he got banned?
Or is it true that Lord Shiva cursed Brahma that he wouldn't have anybody in the world worship him? I guess we will never get to know the answer to this idiosyncratic discrimination of one of the most important Hindu Gods! It kind of sounds silly that Lord Shiva would curse him like that, but my amma, chose not to discriminate at all! She wrote this song on Lord Brahma’s wife, Goddess Saraswati!
Pallavi:
Veenai Aendhum Vaaniyae
vedham potrum puraaniyae!
Anupallavi:
Brahma devan paththini
kribai seidhennai rakshi nee!
Charanam:
Paadum paatin porulum nee
Aedum, aettin vadivam nee
Thaedum gnaana guruvum nee
Unai naadum enakku arula vaa!
Writers take the liberty in twisting existing words, change it into a new form and give it a new meaning. That is a matter of their creativity. Shakespeare is credited with creating about few thousand English words. I remember long ago reading a Tamil word in a popular writer's novel. He did something like that. The opposite of Tamil word “Iyarkai” (இயற்கை, meaning natural) is “seyarkai” (செயற்கை, meaning unnatural). I remember this Tamil writer to have coined a new word “un-iyarkai” (அனியர்கை). That is a polyglottic expression, mixing “un” from English and then adding “Iyarkai” (இயற்கை) from Tamil and then making a new, funny word out of it. I think it was in a Sujatha’s book that I read that. Once a word like this gets coined, then it is up to the public to use it or not. When shakespeare used “friended” instead of “befriended”, people could have ridiculed him for writing “wrong English”. But, Shakespeare knew better. What is right and what is wrong in this world! As long as it conveyed what he wished to express, then he must have gotten happy with it and not worried about the readers. Let them interpret it however they want to, and if they chose to call Shakespeare as a guy who didn’t know to write proper English, then so be it!
My amma did something like Shakespeare in this song. She chose to call Goddess Saraswati as “Puraani”, meaning, a Goddess that is described in “Puranam” (the scriptures), and also used it to denote “a Goddess belonging to the really really olden times” (Puranam means “old” as well). And then she took it upon her creativity to make that word into a feminine gender by calling her as “Puraani”! Then “Puraanaa" could probably be used to denote masculine gender - like for instance, Lord Brahma!
And talking about Amruthavarshini - it is funny how this raga got associated with its ability to align all the clouds right over your head and pour all its moisture content on you as torrential rain! Does that really happen? No, it doesn't! It is just a silly folklore! It is like believing that the Gods would reward the politicians for offering their prayers and "black money" dumped into the Tirupati Hundial! As though Clouds and Gods don’t have anything else to do! They are as much children of mother Nature, just like as we all are, and they pour their pleasing rain or reward when the “Fate maharaja” orders those events to happen! So, the real power-monger in this universe is not the God, or the Satan, but our illusive "Fate Maharaja". He is the real Dharma raja!
And now guys, pardon me for using this opportunity to start singing! But I couldn't help it. Since amma did her song in Amruthavarshini, I chose sing a closely related raga, and elaborated 1.5 minutes of raga alapana. I hope you will listen to this video that I uploaded and make it as a viral hit so that I can become like Gangam style Psy! I promise you, I will pay $ 10 for each and every person who listened to my youtube video! After you listen to it fully, send me your invoice and address and I will send you the money from my Mahatma Gandhi bank! After you listen to it, please go to the music quiz below.
A) What is the name of this raga?
B) What is its relationship to Amruthavarshini, and Vasantha?
C) What is its relationship to Hamsavinodhini and Sankarabharanam?
D) What is the physical (tonal) relationship between Amruthavarshini’s “Ma Pa Ni” and Revathi’s “Sa Ri Ma”?
E) And do you have any comments about the psychoacoustic similarity or dissimilarity of the above two phrases in question D?
You can gladly write your comments below in the blog. I will update this blog in few days to discuss the answers to the above questions.
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