In conferring the Bharat Ratna on Madurai Shanmugavadivu Subbulakshmi in 1998, the Indian state was not merely paying a tribute to the "queen of song", as Jawaharlal Nehru once described her. It was, in fact, more than that; it was also a recognition of her as an icon of Indian womanhood. For ever since her marriage to T. Sadasivam in 1940, she had most unselfconsciously slipped into the personas of traditional Indian heroines like Meera and Savitri.

Sadasivam was a freedom fighter and an advertising executive associated with the Tamil weekly Kalki, who knew how to influence people and win friends. He took upon himself the task of guiding Subbulakshmi in her musical career and shaping her public image. She in turn accepted him unreservedly as her mentor and even listed him among her three gurus, the other two being Madurai Shanmugavadivu, her veena vidushi of a mother, and Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer, the grand old man of Carnatic music.

But Sadasivam did not weave public-relations magic out of nothing. MS had in her the stuff of greatness and what her mentor did was to project her in such a way that she became a cult figure bracketed with Mahatma Gandhi, who once said that he would rather listen to Subbulakshmi reading out his favourite hymn than anyone else, howsoever accomplished, singing it; Nehru who asked rhetorically: "Who am I, a mere prime minister, before this queen of song?"; Indira Gandhi who, as the empress of India, offered MS and her husband a palatial residence in the capital; Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom who came up to MS after a Festival of India performance in London and voiced her admiration; Rajaji who had deep and abiding affection for her and her husband; and, last but not least, the sage of Kanchi, the late Chandrasekhara Saraswati hailed as a Paramacharya, who took her and Sadasivam under his spiritual wing.

MS has not sung on the stage after her husband's demise in 1997. But her voice can be heard, virtually every day, in thousands of homes, here in India and as well as abroad, wherever Indians have settled down. There are many recordings of hers which are played and played again -- recordings not only of classical music but also devotional numbers like bhajans and slokas. The latter include "Sree Venkateswara Suprabhatam", slokas in praise of Balaji of Tirupati; "Sree Vishnu Sahasranamam", the thousand names of Vishnu; "Meera Bhajans" and the "Hanuman Chalisa".

She has given voice, with professional skill and great warmth, to the musical compositions of the Carnatic music trinity -- Tyagaraja, Muthuswami Dikshitar and Syama Sastry -- and others. And in diverse languages. Bhakti -- devotion to music and veneration of the great savants who have bequeathed a treasury of musical works -- has been the hallmark of her music. Contributing to her stupendous popularity were her appearances as a singing star in three films -- Sakuntalai and Savitri in Tamil and Meera, which was a Tamil as well as a Hindi blockbuster. Her role as Meera made her a national icon; she played the part to such perfection, identifying herself with the Mewar queen, that many began to see MS as a reflection of the saintly devotee of Krishna. Her bhakti, her real-life modesty and her munificence -- she and her husband have given away or helped raise huge funds for worthy causes -- have burnished this image of hers.

Subbulakshmi also contributed to the elevation of the status of women classical musicians. Prior to her advent as a performer, the classical music stage was dominated by men who, by and large, were chauvinists. Subbulakshmi along with D.K. Pattammal, a peer of hers who is a couple of years younger, and M.L. Vasanthakumari, who alas is no more, made all but the incorrigible chauvinists concede that women singers could not only match them but also excel them.

Doing the rounds lately in Tamil Nadu is a presentation of Subbulakshmi's life, career and achievements, in the Harikatha -- performance of mythological and legendary stories with classical music and histrionics -- mode. Produced by the Sruti Foundation and delivered by musician and actress Revathy Sankkaran, this Harikatha projects MS, with literary licence, as the human embodiment of goddess Saraswati's own veena, and Sadasivam as the manifestation of Siva, persuaded by his heavenly consort to go down to the earth and protect the "human" veena. The presentation has been a hit. And in her 84th year, this petite, bright-eyed lady smiles shyly, as if bemused by her fans' zealousness as she carries on gracefully with her ordinary middle-class existence in Chennai.

N. Pattabhi Raman is editor-in-chief, Sruti