State award for Thanjavur veena artisan

N. Rajendran, a fourth-generation veena maker, won the Poompuhar State Award this year

It was a proud moment for N. Rajendran, 63, a fourth generation maker of the veena in Thanjavur, when he received the Poompuhar State Awards of the Tamil Nadu Handicrafts Development Corporation Limited from Chief Minister M.K.Stalin at the Secretariat in Chennai this week.

“Nobody in my family has won an award for this craft before — this is an honour for both me and my forefathers,” Mr. Rajendran told The Hindu.

Thanjavur’s veena got a Geographical Indications (GI) tag in 2014, and engages around 150 artisan families in its production.

The veteran craftsman was one among 10 recipients of the Poompuhar award on Wednesday. The state honour consists of a four-gram gold medal, a ‘thamirapathiram’, a certificate and a cash component of ₹.50,000.

Mr. Rajendran makes bespoke string instruments like the Saraswathi Veena, Ekantha Veena, Rudra Veena and Tanpura in his home-based workshop in the temple town’s Srinivasapuram neighbourhood.

“I had to spend a few weeks filming the making of a veena from scratch, for official scrutiny,” said Mr. Rajendran. Known to have a yen for fusion designs, his winning entry was a veena with peacock feather-style embellishments on the resonator and stem. Earlier last year, he was in the news for creating a ‘Mayuri Yaazh’, an ancient open-stringed harp of Tamil music with the resonator base shaped like a peacock.

“I try to adapt heritage styles to blend in with a modern sound. It’s an ongoing experiment with every veena,” he said.