The Bhaktas: The People Who Made Tirumala Immortal
Four creators, four dilemmas every creator still faces. Annamacharya had to decide whether his 32,000 songs were for sale. Vengamamba had to decide whether to quit when the temple establishment pushed her out. Hathiram Bhavaji arrived an outsider with nothing but conviction, and his mutt ended up administering the temple for ninety years, from 1843 until the TTD Act. The composers had no distribution except the quality of the songs themselves.
Lessons in this chapter
- Annamacharya: 32,000 Songs — The composer who refused a king and the copper plates that slept in a temple vault for four hundred years
- Tarigonda Vengamamba — The woman poet who out-stubborned the temple establishment, and whose lamp still closes the god's day
- Hathiram Bhavaji: The Dice Player — The legend of the sadhu who played dice with the god, the sugarcane test, and the mutt that ran the temple for ninety years
- The Composers' Court — Purandara Dasa, Tyagaraja, and how Carnatic music carried Venkateswara across the South with no patron and no press