

Can a school’s worth be measured in onions?



To answer that question, take a road trip to Gadag, a modest trading town in north Karnataka. Ask for Veereshwara Punyashrama, the school led for 66 years by Puttaraj Gawai, a musical prodigy and revered guru whose death in 2010 prompted a





tidal wave of mourners. This is probably the only school in India that received Rs 12 lakh worth of onions last year. Donations also included 600 sacks of rice and maize and more than Rs 50 lakh in cash – some of it doled out in one rupee and five rupee coins. Despite their own hardships, the farmers clustered around Gadag still feel compelled to pitch in.



That’s a lot of onions. But peeling back the layers of devotion to Veereshwara Punyashrama requires a trip further back in time. Say, a hundred years. Imagine a young man who climbs up on a bullock cart and sets off to discover hidden talent in the villages along the road. He is only 22 years old, with round cheeks, a receding chin, and a mind-blowing memory. Rigorously trained in Carnatic music, he also relishes the Hindustani ragas that are just beginning to migrate south. By chance, he was born blind. So when he stops and asks villagers for a little water, he makes a special pitch: are there any blind children nearby who might enjoy learning music?



That was the scene in 1914. It was an age when most blind children in India were kept at home, denied any sort of education. But when the travelling music school came along, it presented a new world of possibilities. The blind pupils practiced their ragas alongside other children of various social backgrounds and physical abilities. Caste was ignored. Orphans were welcome.



The man on the bullock cart was Panchaxari Gawai, an inspired vocalist who subsequently nurtured the talent of the young Puttaraj. By 1938, the school evolved from its nomadic origins and found a home in Gadag, shifting to its present location in 1944.



Today, India can point to more than 300 specialized schools for the blind, most of them funded and run by state departments of social welfare. Countless other blind children have managed to integrate themselves into schools designed for the general population. But there is only one Veereshwara Punyashrama: a school galvanized by the defining insight that music holds the key to self reliance and social integration.



Over the years, numerous graduates have found jobs as teachers and radio performers. Puttaraj, who died at age 97, was known as an affectionate yet serious guru who insisted on long hours of practice. He asked his brightest students to sing to him for five hours at a stretch. Today, the sounds of the harmonium waft from the windows from early morning to evening, testament to discipline and beauty.



The school’s annual Jatra Mahotsava, which culminates on June 17 this year, features overnight concerts from some of the most celebrated Hindustani musicians of the south. The event could often become a bit chaotic. “Hundreds of musicians were ready to perform, one after the other,” recalls flute maestro Pravin Godkhindi, who began visiting Gadag as a child and whose father tapped some of the school’s graduates to join All India Radio. One of the most loyal performers at the Mahotsava is vocalist Venkatesh Kumar, whose father – an impoverished puppeteer and folk singer – deposited him at the school at age 13. “It was round-the-clock music,” says Kumar, who recalls rising at 4am to start a day of constant practice. He spent 11 years there.



For the surrounding community, it’s not just a matter of music. Piety comes to the fore. Both Panchaxari and Puttaraj are worshipped as saints. (If Mother Teresa could sing, play tabla and perform on a dozen other instruments, she might have given them a run for their onions.) They remain uniquely revered figures in the history of Hindustani music, although Carnatic fans can point to their own sanctified trinity, including composer-saint Tyagaraja.



The devotees come to pray in a room filled with relics. A glass case holds Puttaraj’s instruments, never to be played by another soul: a violin, sarangi, santoor, sitar, mandolin, tabla, rudra veena, harmonium, and tanpura.



A soldier kisses the doorway to the room. “I feel calm here,” says 22-year-old Ramesh Pantar, explaining his monthly pilgrimages over the last four years.



For Annapurna, a 64-year old grandmother dressed in a red flowered sari, the room holds happiness and hope. Lately she prayed that her son, a bus conductor in Bangalore, would be forgiven for a troubling incident on the job. In awe of the miracles reportedly performed by the guru, Annapurna recounts that Puttaraj once paid a visit to her family’s fields and coax water into a bore well that had gone dry.



The guru would never see that water. Yet Puttaraj was not born blind. In a 2004 book titled Karnataka’s Hindustani Musicians, author Sadanand Kanavalli recounts that a misguided attempt to cure the six-month old baby of failing eyesight ended in disaster. A country doctor recommended that his mother dangle gad flies over his eyes, to remedy his sight. “Everyone was struck by the lustre of the eyes of the babe,” Kanavalli writes. “But alas! Not for long. As ill luck would have it, the gad flies slipped off her fingers and fell into Puttayya’s eyes. And they ate up the eyes. Puttayya became blind, but was destined to be the light of the world.”



That gruesome scene has been re-enacted in a new Kannada movie, along with other incidents drawn from the guru’s life of music and social service. Budgeted at Rs 2 crore and slated for commercial release in August, the biopic Shivayogi Puttaiyyajja features actor Vijay Raghavendra. Devotees and students were encouraged to be extras in the film.



In full make-up, saffron turban and beads, Raghavendra managed a remarkable resemblance. “I would have ten or fifteen people falling at my feet. I was a little embarrassed,” the actor recalls. “They said, ‘You are like him, you are him, for us.” Meanwhile, the Punyashrama staff kept a tight watch on the production, advising Raghavendra to avoid any improvisations not in keeping with their memories of the guru’s behavior.



As it happens, the actor was previously tapped to play the young Panchaxari in a 1995 biopic – a film titled Ganayogi Panchakshari Gavayi, which also starred Girish Karnad and Lokesh. Perhaps those saintly roles brought him a bit of extra luck. During a break in the 2013 Gadag shoot, Raghavendra was called away to appear in the TV reality show Bigg Boss, emerging as the winner with a Rs 50 lakh prize. He happily returned to Gadag to complete the movie.



Puttaraj Gawai’sstory has no shortage of drama. Born in 1914, the 8-year old boy was handed over to Panchaxari and groomed as his successor. To raise money for the music school, a theater company was created to tour the countryside – a troupe that survives today. Men still play all the women’s roles.



And under the tutelage of Puttaraj, Veerashwara Punyashrama expanded its scope and spawned 13 affiliated institutions, included a highly regarded college of music. (About half of these educational institutions do get regular government funding, which the school for the blind does not receive.) About 20 percent of students at the college started their training at the Punyashrama, which now accepts pupils between the ages of six and 12. This year, 635 students are enrolled in the Punyashrama, including 125 blind pupils, 20 with other physical challenges, and others from poor families.



They occupy a dilapidated dormitory, sleeping ten to a room on bare mats. Heavy metal trunks are parked along the walls. The school did commission a new building on the outskirts of town, but nobody wanted to move there. It was too far away from the familiar rooms of the guru.









































































Bridge between old and new





Some things have changed since the demise of Puttaraj. Students no longer shave their heads, nor wear simple white cotton. “The seniors asked the juniors to shave, but they won’t do it,” says Kumar Hiremath, a 25-year old vocal student from Bijapur district who has spent the last decade in Gadag. At the moment, he wears a Bob Marley t-shirt and stylish red glasses with a red watch band to match – a far cry from the austere ashram look of yesteryear. But there is still no talk of accepting girls to study in this traditional male preserve.



In future, in addition to mastering Braille, students will be encouraged to learn how to use computers. It’s a bid to improve their job prospects, according to Ravindra Koppar, a philosophy professor who recently took over as administrator of the school and its affiliates. “Change is taking place in society,” Koppar says. “Sometimes music alone can’t feed the stomach.”



But during those years of study, the food is nutritious and plentiful, cooked in a communal kitchen in giant steel pots. It’s a powerful symbol of belief in the school’s future. A van makes daily rounds of surrounding villages, soliciting rice and maize. In the countryside, television coverage of the guru’s funeral left a lingering impression. “Now, they are giving more,” says 60-year old Hanumanthappa, a worker who travels with the van. “They have seen on TV the achievements of the swamiji.” Some Karnataka businessmen remain equally committed to the school, arranging donations on their birthdays or other major family events.



There is a new man who wears the saffron turban now. Children kiss his feet and offer him candies, which he hands out to other visitors. He came to the school as a 15-year old student, and was anointed Puttaraj’s successor in 2006, assuming the top spot four years later. Why was he chosen? “It was the intuition of the guru,” responds 41-year old Kallayya Veerayya, known to devotees as Kallayyajja. With round cheeks and a gentle demeanor, he does bear some physical resemblance to a portrait of Panchaxari that is displayed in a temple within the school complex.



Like Puttaraj, Kallayya was not born blind. But his large farming family in Kallur village could do little for him when his eyesight began dimming at age 11. They brought him to a few rural healers but feared the expense of more modern, private treatment. If not for the Punyashrama, “I would have gotten anxious and frustrated. I would have died,” he says.



From 5am to 7am, Kallayya sits before his caramel-hued harmonium and sings alone in his bedroom. In school, he teaches the harmonium and tabla. Much of the day he is away for functions, in private homes or public gatherings, a continual flow of blessings and bathed feet. Like his predecessor, he raises funds by having himself weighed in the traditional “tulavera” ceremony. Devotees place coins or farm produce on the other side of the balance. So far he has been weighed 330 times. (At present, he weighs 55 kilos, about 10 kilos less than his predecessor.)



In one recent ceremony, a local college sponsored the distribution of 50 Braille slates. A cluster of blind students played for Kallayya and his guests. Other pupils, seated in the audience, sang along softly with the ragas. “When the leader is blind, he can feel the pulse of the blind,” said college principal MM Maragund.



Around Gadag, there is a certain reticence in speaking about the new guru. Talk automatically veers to praise of Puttaraj. Anticipation comes with restrained expectations. Yet Koppar, the school administrator, is surprisingly blunt. “This man is not a musician of any great order. He is a simple man. Quite disciplined, and good. As far as my impression goes, the devotees have accepted him as the successor,” he says. Koppar has his own theory about Puttaraj’s thinking in the selection process. “Probably, he wanted to continue the tradition of his guru. And he thought a man with vision would become corrupt.”



Asked to identify his goals for the school, Kallayya says he would like to build a good auditorium, as well as a lodge for visitors. But he is not one to speak of conquering obstacles, or setting a new direction: what counts is continuity. “By the grace of this guru, and the generosity of the devotees, I don’t face any major challenges,” he says. “My wish is that there should be proper rain, good weather, and prosperity for all the devotees.” He, too, was impressed by the volume of onions that landed on his doorstep last year.



In this age of slick celebrity gurus, the Gadag school offers a rare lesson in simplicity. Succession can proceed quietly, as long as the garlands are fresh and the music lasts all night long.









































Margot Cohen is a writer from New York. Her interest in India follows previous reporting stints in Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines.