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Andavan Picchai was born in Mylapore, Madras, on September 6th 1899. Her birth name was Maragathavalli, and she was the second child of T. Sankaranarayana Sastri and Sitalakshmi. About three years later her mother, Sitalakshmi died and her husband remarried shortly afterwards. However, it seems that he did not have much time either for his new wife or his children since he was perpetually engrossed in his studies and his spiritual practices. The children spent a lot of time with his brother, Venkatasubbiar, who developed a great love for his niece Maragathavalli..
One day [during this Navaratri visit to her father] when she was lying down near her grandmother, she beheld a vision. In that she saw Lord Muruga, as a young boy of twelve, come to her slowly and reluctantly, gently playing with His peacock. He playfully took her hand in His own, lest she should get frightened of Him. He pressed it with love and told her, ‘I love you very much’... He asked her to talk to Him. Being very shy she kept quiet, waving her hand in the negative. He asked her to open her mouth. He pulled her tongue out and wrote ‘Om’ on it with His vel or spear. He then initiated her into the Shadakshari Mantra, viz., ‘Saravanabhava’. He vanished that instant saying that He would meet her again some other time. From then on she felt Him in her heart, from where He started prompting her to sing. She narrated this incident to her grandmother and asked her to keep it a secret and be silent about it. Her grandmother was, however, very happy to hear Maragathavalli talk and sing so fluently. She then asked her to go and see her father. The girl rushed to the father in the library, where, as usual, he was busy reading. He was surprised to see his daughter there as she had never been to the library room before. He took Maragathamma on his lap and enquired of her the reason for coming there.
The girl told him that she wished to talk to him. This made the father very happy as she had never expressed anything like that to him before. As a matter of fact, until then, she used to talk like a small baby, with a little lisp. That day was the first occasion when she talked normally. Then she sang her first poem before him. It was so beautiful and so full of profound meaning that Sankaranarayana asked her who had taught her that. She told him it was that ‘payyan’ [boy] whom they all worshipped as Lord Muruga. The gist of the poem, which was in chaste Tamil, was: ‘In the beginning there was only one; this one became three, which again multiplied into many.’ The father was so overjoyed to hear her describe this great truth, he called out to his brother to listen to her. His brother too was extremely happy. Sastri then asked her to compose a song on Muruga, then one on her husband, and later on her parents. She spontaneously sang all of them. She composed and sang songs on Avvaiyar and Lilavati of Bijaganit fame (daughter of Bhaskaracharya). They were all so immensely pleased that they dressed her up as Goddess Gayatri and took pictures of her in several poses. After this incident, Maragathamma became unattached to everything except the memory of the vision of Lord Muruga which remained in her heart; and she revelled in him.
In the years that followed Maragathamma became fully immersed in family life. Her husband Narasimhan became a lawyer, and she gave birth to many children. Her first pregnancy ended with a still-born child. She was less than thirteen years old at the time. A few years later she gave birth to Guruswamy (born 1917), Shankar (1919), Kalpagam (1921) Ganapathi (19230 and Seshadri (1924).
Two days after the birth of Seshadri she had another vision of Muruga. She went into a kind of trance and ended up singing over 600 verses extolling Muruga in the form of ‘aandi’ a beggar. Her flow was stopped only when she heard the cry of her baby, begging for food. Apparently, Seshadri had been crying for food for quite some time before Maragathamma became aware of his needs. The nurse who was attending her scolded her for neglecting her baby while she was absorbed in her devotional singing. This precipitated a minor crisis in the family because the nurse told Maragathamma’s mother-in-law, Kaveriamma, about the event.Andavan Pichhai, reborn into a saintly life after a momentary death experience, lived this incredible second life of song and devotion. She composed many a song, of high lyrical and musical value. She died in 1998.
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