The Love Theme in Ritigowla - Part III

"You mustn't shake your head while singing," my teacher told the my nine-year-old self as whiff of paan wafted in my general direction, "You can do that when you're a great singer."
"But, sir, I'm not able to sing this Ni without tilting my head to one side."
He held my head with his two hands, and commanded, "Sing!"
I started the avarohana of Kambhoji, "Sa-ni..."
"Wrong. Again."
"Sa," and my head titled despite the strength in my teacher's hands, "ni,". I grinned mischievously. I was right.
"Don't tilt your head. Sing again."
"Sa-n-ni..."
"Again. Why are you bleating like a goat?"
"Sa Ri..."
"What are you singing?! Arjun, you sing it for him."
Anna sang, his head as stiff as a flagstaff. He sang it right. And, as always, he seemed over-earnest and serious about the whole affair. The teacher beamed at him.
I repeated soon after, tilting my head alternately to either side impishly, inviting the teacher to hold my head again in anger. "Don't play with me! Sing properly!"
Over the next one hour, I tried in vain to sing the Ni without tilting my head. Instead of getting better, I only got worse. My teacher's grip over my head tightened with each mistake, but my grip over the note didn't. A coffee arrived for the teacher. He instructed Anna to hold my head, and made him sing, as the teacher cooled the coffee by pouring it back and forth from his tumbler to his davara. I began to get worse. Tears stood at the brink of my eyes. When the tumbler was drained of the last dregs of the coffee, and I still hadn't sung it right, the teacher announced, "Okay, enough for today. Keep practising this same thing. Arjun, hold his head when he practises. I'll see you on Thursday."

I woke up the next morning, with my neck feeling unusually stiff. To my surprise, my teacher was sitting in the drawing room with Appa, the noxious mixture of paan and coffee making its way down his system. I wondered if I had slept for three days, and it was Thursday already.

"I think Anil should learn an instrument."
"But he sings well," Appa tried.
"The boy couldn't sing Mandaradhaare, how will he handle Evarimaata?"

Appa, who had great faith in my musical abilities, strangely, gave in. It must have been the Kambhoji dialogue. Appa was obsessed with the raagam. The same teacher was a mridangist, and so, mridangam classes started soon. Anna joined too, as Amma felt that it was good for even a vocalist to have a good grip on taalam. This meant that, again, for two days a week, I was subject to the same cocktail - of the stench of paan, the foam of the filter coffee as it fell from the tumbler into the davara, the rudeness, and Anna's sincerity.

But on the day that I was branded a non-singer, something else happened. I was telling you about my stiff neck. It turned out that I'd sprained it. My neck was strapped up. While settling disputes with Anna over an intense game of Mortal Kombat 2, I sang Kambhoji in despair. To my amazement, I sang it right. And, my strapped up neck meant that I hadn't tilted it at all! It took a sprained neck and Liu Kang losing to Sonja for me to get a taste of the beauty of the Kaishiki Nishaadam.

Vocal lessons continued, although not as strictly as earlier, for a percussionist must know the music he plays percussion for. I dreaded them. Anna's voice broke first, when he was just thirteen, and he gave up signing during this transformation period. Around the same time, his mridangam-playing was noticed by some Sabha secretaries who gave him his first chances. Soon, he played for people far senior to him, and the "little boy who never smiled" became a regular fixture at music festivals, always escorted by his father and his mischievous younger brother.

The mischievous brother, on the other hand, was falling in love. Not with a movie actress or a cricket player, as eleven-year-olds do, but with one of the sixteen notes - the Kaishiki nishaadam. First, I learnt its use in BIlahari. What was until then an up-and-down raagam with a fixed scale, suddenly acquired a quirk. A rare, elevating quirk that broke the monotony of its recurring phrases; at the same time, a quirk that devalued the feel of the raagam when used too often. The ni fascinated me even more when I encountered Bhairavi. There, it hardly had a fixed spot - it was an amorphous mix of the most wondrous sounds, each carefully picked to suit the mood around it. Then I learnt, in quick succession, Thodi, Ritigowla, Sriranjani, Madhyamavathi, Mukhari. It wasn't a note anymore, it could never be: it was a person, and I was in love with her.

Each day, I wrote letters to Kaishiki - some short, some long, some happy, some angsty, some admiringly, some lovingly, some like she was an unattainable goddess, and others like she was a lover nestled in my arms. I told her everything one tells a loved one, and his from her just what one hides from them. But she wasn't like any other love - she travelled with me wherever I went. She was, quite literally, the song on my lips. And so, I had this feeling that she perceived anything that I didn't tell her - celestial concepts like herself have these ways of knowing.

Amma, on the other hand, grew worried. It wasn't natural for an eleven year old boy to write a diary. The fact that I was frequently talking to myself worried her even more - snippets of my soliloquies that my mother heard, like, "Will I ever find one as beautiful as you?" and, "Why are you acting up this morning? I controlled you fine last evening," weren't encouraging words to parental ears at any age. Anna was the first to tell me about my madness. He asked me if I had a crush on Priya who lived down the road. I was spending too much time with her, he said, and reminded me that she was much too old for me. I found out many years later that Anna liked her, and had even told her at the age of sixteen that he wanted to marry her. They were boyfriend and girlfriend for a while, whatever that meant in the tenth standard.

An uncle, who was a shrink, examined me and found nothing wrong with me. It came as a huge relief for Amma, and as an eye-opener to me. I quickly learnt that to survive in a cynical, unromantic world, I had to learn the art of consciously keeping a part of my being completely private. I locked my fantasy world of a relationship with a woman who didn't exist, who wasn't actually a woman, who was so alluring that the real world unable to describe her beauty denoted her by a single note, in a dark corner of my mind where I lived and loved.

Suddenly, that evening, when I saw Ni on stage for the first time, my daydream played out in front of my eyes - there she was - Kaishiki in human form. I wondered if it was only a coincidence that her name was Nikhila, "Call me Ni".
***

I sat with Sharanya in the back row of the down-market but traditional Parthasarathy Swamy Sabha at the concert of a young singer whom Anna rated very highly when I saw Ni for the second time in my life. It had been seven months since she famously stood me up, and seven months of my flimsy relationship with Sharanya. She sat four rows ahead with this guy who resembled a large watermelon. It didn't help that he wore a billowing green and black kurta. Something made me want to take him to the top of a hill, push him and watch him roll down like a football.

Meanwhile, the singer started Teliyaledu Rama Bhakti Margamunu in Dhenuka.
"Not that we were going to do something if we knew," I whispered into Sharanya's ear.
"Huh?" I cowered.
At the same time, the Watermelon whispered excitedly in Ni's ear and she laughed. I turned to Sharanya and saw a blank expression on her face. It was unfair. Why wasn't I with someone who got the joke? Or at least cringed at its badness. Why was I with someone who wouldn't understand when I commented on a musician's learning curve when he sang Saraswathi? The pattern followed throughout the concert. I'd appreciate or make fun of something and turn to Sharanya, only to find her either dozing off or looking like a foreigner coming to terms with eating off a banana leaf. At the same time Pumpkin and Ni had many things to say to each other.

Then, it got worse. Ni rested her head on Watermelon's shoulder, and Sharanya, having noticed it, rested her head on mine. The world had turned into a cruel place. I felt like the geek in the underwear ad who screamed, "What's he got that I ain't got?"

"A nasty sense of humour," I heard Ni say as she passed us after the concert.
"Nikhila!" I gathered the courage to call out.
"Hey!" She recognised me almost immediately, which was a good sign. "I was hoping I'd bump into you!" she added.
"Yeah? Me too. I was hoping the other day also, at Murugan..."
She just laughed. There was nothing funny about it. Sharanya decided to jump into the conversation, "Hey! I'm Sharanya."
"Oh. This is Sharanya, my g-g..."
"Girlfriend."
"Yeah, girlfriend."
"Oh, hi! I'm Nikhila. I'm a violinist."
"And I'm Anand," Watermelon interjected.
"Yeah. This is Anand - he writes reviews..."
"Oh my god!" I said before I could stop myself, "Are you the one who wrote that really nasty one?"
Anand recognised me immediately, "Hard-hitter!"
He wasn't just a Watermelon anymore. He was a Slimy Watermelon. He was green on the inside. It was horrible.

"You guys know each other?"
"I reviewed one of his concerts. With the flute guy you really liked."
"Oh."
"Yeah. And he wrote a horrible review for a very good concert."
"I know - Anand hates him. I don't know why."
"Its because you think he's cute," Anand said. I couldn't tell if he was serious or joking. Nasty guys have this way of speaking that makes it hard to tell. The vision of him rolling down the hills flashed vividly before my eye.
"Oh, shut up."
"So, I'm sure you have some really nasty stuff to say about today's concert."
"No, I quite liked it."
"Even I liked some of the grooves," Sharanya added unsurely.
"Oh. No comments on the artistes' bladders?"
He laughed, "No!"
"Will you not write a review because there's nothing damaging to say?"
"Man, you were really upset about that, weren't you?"
"Have you ever tried being on the receiving end?"
"Anand sings very well..." Ni said. My blood boiled.
"Oh, you sing? Is your singing stately? Does it have 'bhakti-laden renderings'?"
Anand laughed even more. I didn't understand the guy at all. He was either stupid or supremely confident of his abilities. Often, the two are the same thing. But you could never be sure.
"Why don't you come and listen to a concert? Maybe you can write a review. I can ask my paper to let you publish the review."
"Anil writes really well. He doesn't tell people about it..."
"Yeah?" Ni asked.
"Yeah. He's also a music composer."
"Are your compositions like your mridangam playing?"
"Devoid of bhakti? Yes. I compose songs about love." I didn't know why I said something as daft as that. Everyone around me started laughing. Maybe it was the way I said it.
"Listen, we have to run to this other concert," said Ni, "Gimme your number. I'll give you a call."
I gave her my number. I hoped she would give me a call at least this time around.

"She's rather cute, isn't she?" Sharanya asked.
"Yeah. I cant believe she's with that guy!"
"He's okay."
"He's a green ball of nastiness..."
"Heh. They could just be friends. I mean, she didn't say what their relationship was."
For the first time that evening, I liked something she said. Just then, my phone beeped, and there was a message, "Sorry about the other day. I guess I owe you an explanation. Tomorrow? Tell me what concerts you're going for and we can figure."

I smiled.
***