Tiger Varadachariar Anecdote

(Tiger Varadacharier & Vinjamuri to his extreme right)

Tiger and Kharaharapriya
(An anecdote as narrated by Sriman Vinjamuri Sreenivasa Chariar in the year 1972)

The music world owes a lot to Tiger, Veena Dhanammal and other stalwarts for their contributions to the field of Music. In fact, Tiger was said be responsible for the form of Kharaharapriya Ragam as it exists today.

Even in 1930's, Vinjamuri Varadaraja Iyengar and his older brother Vinjamuri Sreenivasa Chariar (Flute) would attend Veena Dhanmmal's house on Fridays during her Friday evening musician's gathering and also spend their time going to the house of other giants of music on a daily basis to listen to them. One day, Srinivasa Chariar seem to have gone to Tiger's house around 7 p.m. and asked him whether he was going to sing that night. Tiger had replied that he was not in a mood to sing. So, Srinivasa Chariar went back to his sister's (who lived close to the Anjaneyar temple in Mylapore and Tiger lived close to Vivekananda college road) and went bed that night by sleeping in the yard in the front of the house, as it was a hot summer night. At around 10.00 p.m. Srinivasa Chariar heard his name called out from the gate and woke up to find Tiger standing there. He was surprised and of course ran to Tiger to know the purpose of his visit at that late hour. Tiger's answer was " Sreenivasa Chariar, I am in a mood to sing now, would you like to come?" Of course, Srinivasa Chariar followed him to his house. Tiger sat down with his Tambura sruti and started singing Kharaharapriya Ragam. Time passed. It was 6.30 a.m. the next morning when Tiger's wife made coffee and demanded that he stop singing and take some rest. The whole night Tiger elaborated ONE raga Kharaharapriya and did not finish it even after roughly 8 hours. Such was his talent. Such was his simplicity too in respecting a rasika to go call him at his residence.