The Radha Story: Lights & Shadows

It is the twelfth day of March in
1983. After a long interval
during which Madras had missed
the fluid finesse of her music,
M.S. Subbulakshmi is singing at
the auditorium of the Music
Academy in a programme to raise
funds for the Meenakshi Temple in
Houston, Texas. She has
mesmerised the audience with her
melody magic. Nonetheless, the
audience is poignantly aware of the
absence of Radha Viswanathan who
has been giving 'vocal support' to
her mother over the years. Most of
the listeners know that Radha,
struck months before by a severe
illness, had been hospitalised and
had in fact knocked at death's door,
and that her subsequent miraculous
recovery is still far from complete.