Overview
One of Keerthana's favorite melodies is Kurai Onrum Illai, specifically in M.S. Subbulakshmi's rendition, sung in Tamil. "My mother's language, her sisters', and Patti's. My mother sings it at poojas that we occasionally attend, but I’ve never attempted it. I’m scared it will make me cry."
I have spent much of my time in hospitals. Although recently I’ve been on the caregiving side, growing up, I was always the one being looked after. We went hospital-hopping through Hyderabad, my reasons rotating with the seasons: anaphylactic attacks, appendicitis, gastritis, a dog bite that warranted plastic surgery. The beeping of heart monitors is forever ingrained in my memory. A litany of staccatos, steady and tireless, the same note bouncing off every wall in every ward I was ever wheeled into, in India, in the United States, wherever.
Almost always B.
I knew this because of my years of singing, composing, playing, conducting; I was a mere product of my family’s adoration for music. My maternal grandmother, affectionately called “Patti”, was gifted enough that her own singing teacher would sit her in front of the younger students and let her lead as a substitute. My mother never had formal instruction, but she was also fond of singing. Fond enough that my sister and I are named after types of South Indian Carnatic classical styles: Krithi and Keerthana.
When I visit my parents, I am woken up on the weekends by M.S. Subbulakshmi’s entire catalog, queued by my father. Music has been the secret invisible relative that snuck into every reunion; at some point during every family gathering, I am made to sing and demonstrate what I had learnt from my years of Carnatic and Hindustani music classes, most of which I have forgotten now. The keys of the piano that I had once memorized like a map are strangers to me. The voice that my teachers, or gurus, hoped I’d hone no longer responds to what I want to come out, straining toward the high notes I once hit effortlessly. Yet, my body responds to music like a reflex; what’s called “perfect pitch” intrudes into my thoughts to tell me what key a song is in or how off-pitch the singer is. It was the same with those heart monitors.
Of the M.S. Subbulakshmi repertoire that Krithi and I have spent decades growing familiar with—so much so that I know the melodies to songs I have never been taught—we have favorites. Mine is one of these: Kurai Onrum Illai, specifically in M.S. Subbulakshmi’s rendition, sung in Tamil. My mother’s language, her sisters’, and Patti’s. My mother sings it at poojas that we occasionally attend, but I’ve never attempted it. I’m scared it will make me cry.
I’ve always been known as a crybaby. I’ve sobbed all night in the back seat as my parents drove through Hyderabad looking for a hospital open at midnight, my appendix quietly betraying me. Every time I accidentally ate nuts, I cried in anticipation of the vomiting, the stabbing stomach pains, the feeling that something was deeply wrong.
But on the other side of the patient bed, I could not cry. I have never cried in front of a patient. Even as a nurse aide, even as a volunteer, the recipe for this line of work is equal parts stoicism and a tempered empathy, carefully measured; don’t let anything spill over. Stability is the key ingredient, not solidarity. It felt strange, then, to volunteer in hospice and watch family members fall apart in the hallway, in the waiting room, in the middle of sentences. All I could do was hold the grieving person, feel the tears soaking into my clothes, and make sure they weren’t mine;, I learned to choke them back. I knew, with a certainty I couldn’t explain, that if I were on the other end—the patient end, the waiting end—I would be the one coming undone. But I wasn’t. So I didn’t.
A double life.
I suppose, in some way, I had been practicing. I used to cry at everything: reality show eliminations, characters dying in books, strangers crying on screen. Eventually, I realized I had to get better at holding it back. I practiced the poker face until it stuck: a dash of a smile, a touch of sympathy. Nothing more, nothing less. For each dead character. For each time my mother wept as she dropped me off at college, freshman year through senior year. For each time she cried after singing Kurai Onrum Illai.
It’s an emotional song. I didn’t know this until I recently looked up the lyrics. My Tamil isn’t the best. While I could barely decipher the song’s meaning, I knew there was a reason that my mother cried while singing it. What struck me, when I finally looked it up, was that Kurai Onrum Illai is not a song of sorrow. It describes a state of pure contentment, of wanting nothing, of simply being in the presence of God. No lamenting, no asking for favors. Just gratitude.
During one of our moves within Hyderabad, we had a housewarming for the new house. They built a fire pit for the homam, a fire ritual for the new home. As we gathered around it and the priest finished his mantras, the floor opened for devotional songs. Of course, I was volunteered, so I sang. Then my mother, her three sisters, and Patti sang Kurai Onrum Illai. None of them made it through without stopping, voices wavering, to recollect themselves. Not one of them had a dry eye.
I don’t remember shedding a tear. But the fire stung my eyes.
The song feels almost reserved for them, in a way. I sing it privately to myself. I attempted to sing it once for my guru, who shut me down, saying I wasn’t singing it right. At the time, I’m sure she meant I lacked the technique for the part where it slides to a low note—which I can do just fine now—but maybe I lack whatever emotional connection they’ve built with the song. My guru felt that connection with a different song, one of my favorite ones that she taught me, called Tulasi Dalamulache. It describes almost the same state of mind as Kurai Onrum Illai: a soul absorbed entirely in blissful worship, needing nothing beyond the act of devotion itself. I had been singing the same song, just in different languages and words, without knowing.
I was asked to sing at the hospice I volunteered at when an old man was on his last breath; it was his last wish. As I sang Tulasi Dalamulache, I saw his face soften for a brief moment. Then it rapidly contorted when he was taken off the oxygen and the agonal gasps began, and I was rushed out by the nurses who told me that I was “too young to see that” and it was “too disturbing”. I internally protested. I was 20, and somehow still too young for everything.
I stood in the hallway, thinking about what I had just sung as his life was slipping away. Was he, too, experiencing the simplicity of bliss?
Patti still sings despite her Parkinson’s. I don’t know when, or if, I’ll earn the honor or have the courage to sing Kurai Onrum Illai with her and her daughters. Unless they invite me, in which case I have no choice but to oblige. And even if their voices waver, I hope that I’ve cultivated the strength to continue without stopping.
But I’ve cried to the song’s first note before, as a patient in hospitals across the world. I wonder how far I’ll get.
After all, the first note is a B.
