--------------------------
I had a chance to give a ride to this musician after his concert . I was just curious when I asked his association with KVN and in general about him. Just documenting those before I forget it. paTTAbhirAma initially learnt from his mother nagarathnammA , and then from vallabham kalyAnasundaram (who is the sister of the vageyyakara mayuram vishwanAtha sAstri). Bangalore shankar is one of the finest disciples of smt vallabham and I think may be even Smt neelA rAmgOpAl may have had some guru -sishya connection.
paTTAbhirAmA some time in 80's when he was studying in 6th or 7th standard at that time told his father that he wants to learn and be a student of KVN. So pattAbhi and his father set out to madras and met KVN. KVN just did not say yes or no to him , but KVN wanted to test paTTabhi as to how serious student he was . For about 2 years or so , KVN when he came for concerts to bangalore used to summon pattAbhi and meet him. paTTAbhi fondly recollects how KVN first called him to one of his concerts in odakathur mutt in bangalore , paTTAbhi just followed KVN everywhere in that area he used to go with KVN to mysore etc. Incidentally paTTAbhi told me openly that in the early years he only knew telugu and kannada (telugu was his mother tongue) and KVN knowing thamizh and english , perhaps was difficult to communicate but I was wondering whether that was a blessing as musical training must have been predominant with KVN , instead of possibly going with any antha KAlathu ariya(rare)kudi anecdotes.
As paTTAbhi was recollecting and talking with me about KVN's preperatory tests, I just recollected ariyakudi did the same to KVN and to an extent KVN did the same to paTTAbhi though a bit smaller scale, kind of history repeats itself . Once when KVN was satisfied with the seriousness of paTTAbhirAma , KVN started intensely teaching him. paTTAbhi started travelling from bangalore to chennai and almost all weekends and summer holidays he came and joined KVN at madras.paTTabhi also told he was helped immensely by SVK of rAgasudha and for few years or months , pattabhi and vittal rAmamurthy stayed together in madras .
pattabhi must be close to 34, I am conjecturing that as he told he is 13 years experienced and hooray he is an IT professional working in a multinational in bangalore. pattabhi also made a lot of passing mention about KVN's wife Smt padmA. I particularly asked who are the others who learnt from KVN , he was mentioning hemmige Srivatsan and spoke very highly about him and said KVN's style is found maximum with that musician hemmige srivatsan who is a violinist too.(BTW is there a recording or a commercial album of hemmige srivatsan, no idea about his music ).
On a side note when you hear the recording of the concert of paTTabhi especially in khamas, tODi and kOkilapriyA, did you all notice that his style and more importantly his voice timbre is kind of overlapping a lot with TM KrishnA(not just KVN alone). I am pretty sure neither pattabhi nor TMK imitated the other , it is just Lord BrahmA creates a degree of repetition for different vidwans and so we have to first blame Lord brahmA


All said and done, paTTAbhi has immense guru bhakthi to KVN and in general a very humble musician.As I just dropped him in central, I got very comfortable with both his thamizh and English and asked him if he ever knew manam iRangAdha , a kvn popularized swarna venkatesha dikshitar krithi in mmgowlai,he said yes, I told him Dont forget the neraval in "pAdi thirindha bhakthan intha pArinilE uyArNdhAr", next time.