VV Carnatic Detective Agency Case Files — 23/001
In search of ‘dee-na-naa-pai’
The mission
In the late morning this past Saturday, 25th February 2023, I received this message on Whatsapp:
There’s a krithi, part of which I recall with a line descending with the words ‘dee naa naa pai’. This phrase is repeated many times and may be the last notes of a pallavi line. It could be in Kambhoji. Would you readily recall a famous and weighty krithi, probably Thyagaraja’s, Vishnu?
[Any guesses yet?]
A little later, I called the dispatcher of this message, who happened to be my father. “What is this mysterious snatch of a song?” I asked. He elaborated, slightly sheepishly. He had woken up with this snatch in his head. It was in the voice of SR Janakiraman. He was quite sure it was from a Kambhoji song, but may have also been from a song in Begada. The syllables were spread out, almost evenly spaced, and descended from a high note, maybe Sa. “Dee-naa-naa-pai”. He tried to sing and reproduce it for my benefit but was not satisfied with his effort. What he sang sounded alien to me — the syllables were so evenly and widely spaced as to sound odd, like this clumsy sentence.
First Stab
I recalled that Abhimanamennadu Galgu Rama in Begada, by Patnam Subramanya Iyer had its pallavi ending with the word napai. I looked up the lyrics to confirm, and sure enough the second line of the pallavi is ‘Amarendra vandita paada napai’. So that evening suggested to my dad that that this was the song, even though the line did not quite match the ‘deena napai’ brief. It was a half-hearted suggestion, a lazy opening gambit. In the meantime, my dad had re-listened to the SR Janakiraman concert on his hard disk drive and confirmed that it did not contain any song that matched the snatch in his head. If he was wrong about having heard it in an SRJ concert, should we loosen the search parameters, I wondered. Perhaps go beyond Kambhoji and Begada, perhaps focus only on ‘deena’ and not ‘napai’?
Warmer, warmer
The work week started, got busy. Occasionally I would look up the lyrics of plausible kritis in line with the newly loosened parameters. On Wednesday, my father messaged, this time to mark the first death anniversary of one of his all-time favourite pet cats. It didn’t seem the right time to send him my latest guess, besides, I hadn’t come up with anything.
On Thursday, on the way to work, I was listening to Vaak’s latest ‘Nadopasana’ offering — a 1954 wedding concert recording of GN Balasubramaniam. I suggested Dikshitar’s Subramanyaya Namaste in Kambhoji as possibility. The pallavi ends with ‘deena sharanya’. Though I acknowledged that the cadence of deena sharanya was not emphatic in the manner that he described dee-naa-naa-pai.
Later that evening, I recalled that the pallavi of Syama Sastri’s majestic Meenalochana Brova in Dhanyasi ended with deena janavana…Amba. I did a quick Google search to confirm and listened to my most recent encounter with the song — a DK Jayaraman rendition. And indeed, it seemed like a strong fit. Granted, it was not in Kambhoji or Begada, but both raga and song fit the “weighty” criterion. More importantly, dee-na ja-naa va-na were spaced out in line with the original brief, landed with emphasis and was repeated often.
Low point
Then, in what must have been a moment of complete desperation, I suggested that the song in question may be Thyagaraja’s Dinamani Vamsa in Harikambhoji. It met precisely zero parameters of the original brief, other than starting with Dina. This is what I offered by way of explanation, rather weakly: “One of the latter sangatis comes down as Dee-naa-maa-nii, usually accentuated by the mridangam. Especially in the Semmandgudi baani.” To be fair to me, I did preface all of this with “There is also a very small possibility that it is…”. Nonetheless, there is no excuse for this weak submission.
Back to Square One and does ‘deena napai’ even make sense?
Friday brought a rare after-work drinks gathering. I had foolishly driven to work despite being aware of said gathering, so I was done early. On the drive home, I was listening to Ramnad Krishnan, which again brought back to mind Abhimanamennadu Galgu Rama (my favorite rendition of the song is by Krishnan). I listened to it again. I was also beginning to wonder about the phrase ‘deena napai’ — from my limited understanding of Telugu, it didn’t make sense.
Later that night, I was ready with my final salvo, which was also my first salvo, but with much more conviction. I sent my dad a link to Ramnad Krishnan singing Abhimanamennadu Galgu Rama, with a six-point thesis.
- ‘Vandita paada naapai’ when sung is split vann-diiita paada napai, with the “dita pada napai” quite pronounced.
- Krishnan’s pronounciation is many renditions is unclear, making ‘dita paada napai’ sound a lot like ‘deena natha napai’ which could have been mistaken by my dad as ‘deena napai’.
- The song is in Begada, one of the two ragas in the original consideration set.
- Ramnad Krishnan’s voice is a bit husky, perhaps not to the same extent as SR Janakiraman’s, but somewhat similar in quality.
- I have featured Krishnan’s rendition of Abhimanamennadu Galgu Rama in a few of my blogposts, which is perhaps why it was familiar to him and bubbled up from his subconscious mind.
And finally, based on a bunch of Googling of Thyagaraja kritis with the word ‘napai’ in it:
6. ‘Deena napai’ per se does not quite make sense. Napai means “on me” or “to me”. So you would expect it to be associated with a bestowal of a noun, e.g. ‘napai daya leda?’ = ‘do you not have compassion for me?’ Or a verb, e.g. Kanna Tandri Napai = Father (Tandri) who bore / created (kanna) me. Or more likely both noun and verb, where napai is the qualifier of the action. E.g. Nennarunchara napai literally = Place (unchara) kindness (nennaru) on me (napai) or “show kindness to me”. ‘Deena’ on the other hand is an adjective meaning humble / meek / weak / helpless. So it doesn’t go with ‘napai’. It doesn’t make sense since deena is a descriptor, neither a noun that maybe bestowed nor a verb that ‘napai’ can qualify.
My work was done. I had the power of bullet points behind me. I had the power of Telugu grammar behind me (I hoped). It had to be Abhimanamennadu Galgu Rama.
During the course of this hunt, I had done all sorts of Google searches. I tried one last search, more to delve a little deeper into and confirm my ‘deena napai’ thesis. The simplest search of them all: ‘napai Carnatic’. And then many scrolls down, after several links to the famous Todi varnam Era Napai something catches my eye:
Say what? Quick Googling. Yes, it is in Kambhoji. A krithi by Veena Kuppier. Then listening — what a majestic ‘weighty’ song — multiple sangatis of the opening line, with an accentuated ‘di-na na-pai’. Finishing it off. I send the links of MS Subbulakshmi and Sanjay Subrahmanyan singing the song. I don’t wait, I call my dad and tell him to ignore the previous thesis I had just sent, “this is it”, I tell him, “this is it”. I am ecstatic. And indeed, this was it.
My father listened to it and about ten minutes later, the confirmation:
Yes Vishnu, this is it !!! Congratulations!!! Super Vishnu. I thought I would never find it. Thanks a million Vishnu!!!
And that, folks, is how the first case of the VV Carnatic Detective Agency was closed at 11.41 pm on Friday, 3 March 2022.
