Lada Guruden Singh

Beyond Destiny :The Life and Times of Subbudu by Lada Guruden Singh
A book review
Before cable television, soap operas and media entertainment invaded the South Indian home, the newspaper (English and Tamil) and the music review column had great readership. Ruling this empire of a reviewer's world from the nation's capital of Delhi, like a colossus, strode the irascible and cantankerous Subbudu for decades.
Implacable, opinionated, arrogant, in turns truculent or amiable, guide-like or antagonistic, brief and scathing or turgid and fulsome, he was as much a force of nature as a columnist.
Yet he was read by lakhs.
His Tamil was pungent, and his English the kind of unkind, ironic satirical trash popular with readers of Indian newspapers to this day. (He wrote of one dancer who mimed carrying a pot over her head inappropriately to the lyrics of the dance, "I am only a reporter, but she played the porter")
The author has us believe that beneath the exterior of this man lay a deep connection with artistes, and that he could separate criticism of the performance from the personal.
However, judging from the litany of lawsuits and upset performers over decades, the alleged conclusion that most top performers kissed and made up with him is just not true. He had a son-in-law who was a lawyer who defended him (in later life) from libel suits.
Newspaper editors frrequently took his side, for he sold copy.
Sometimes a nasty and angry rebuttal would be published, as in the case of S.Balachander who took great offence.
Subbudu had an ongoing attack on Semmangudi Sreenivasa Iyer, going as far as to call his concerts video not audio events.
He differed with Padma Subramaniam the ground breaking researcher and choreographer and changer of Bharata Natyam. In early days he took issue that she performed Nrtyam not per the NatyaShastra. Later they became good friends. When he heard that a coterie of disgruntled people were going to bring a lawsuit against her Ph.D. dissertation(!) he agonized like a brother and called up her brother. Her legal advice told her there was nothing to worry about.
He was once manhandled by B.Rajam Iyer on the Music Academy premises for having written that the former should have left singing alone and taken up another profession.
He made enemies of Chandralekha, a dancer, ripping into her postmodern interpretation of Bharatanatyam. He could make or break careers, so influential was he.
Yamini Krishnamurthi, decorated dancer, wanted to sue him for Rs.50 lakhs.
He also ripped into Lakshmi Knight daughter of renowned Bharatanatyam dancer Balasaraswathi, ruining a family friendship.
He once wrote about a Kathakali troupe performing on YMCA grounds. The guys holding up the screen were dressed in pants and terylene shirts. Subbudu wrote "One of the screen holders indicated with a finger an abhinaya to a bystsnder which the bystander could not understand. When the situation was made clear, it seemed he had to leave to urinate." The next day the troupe was laying in wait for Subbudu, A man called him Nayeenda Mahane (dog's son) and was going to beat him up. It turned out the impoverished visiting troupe had to resort to local help to hold up the screen. "Of course a Dalda tin can was being hit, did Subbudu expect a silver plate?"
On the positive side, Subbudu respected Vasanthakumari. Once he was lost in a pancha nadai pallavi and saw four young girls keeping jatis and tala. He took them to the canteen bought them coffee if they would teach him the secret of the talas. Subbudu gave MLV a promise to mentor Sudha Raghunathan. He genuinely liked her music. He discovered prodigies like U.Srinivas and Bombay Jayashree. In dance, his criticism was supposedly based on his great grasp of Natya Sastra, but in practicality often debased itself as fat jokes.
Subbudu was larger than life and influenced decades of musicians, dancers and rasikas. He sold newspapers. He made enemies. Sometimes he made friends with them again.
In the long run, music reviews became irrelevant. Subbudu himself became irrelevant.
The last part of the book, detailing Rama Vaidhyanathan, and rounding out a few things becomes a bit anti-climactic and desultory.
Notwithstanding some drawbacks, this is an important and unbiased look into the animal spirits of concert review known as Subbuduness.
The book is accompanied by several black and white photographs, some of family, and some of felicitations featuring historic musical figures. There is a center double spread in color of Subbudu in various poses.… (más)