Imam Wapsoro's Lounge

Train House

2012-01-20T15:36:00.002+05:30

"Park your car in that corner, you won't be able to take it inside the street," the old lady said, hauling a mridangam from the back seat onto her shoulders. I parked the car, picked up the other mridangam, the heavier one, and followed her onto the street. With a sprightly gait that belied her age - she was seventy-two - and unmindful of the weight of the mridangam on her shoulder, she turned into the most invisible of gullies that led to this sprawling network of narrower gullies.

"They really should fix that streetlight," she said, pointing to this dark pole. It was eight-thirty in the evening, and it was too dark to even tell if there was supposed to be a light on that pole. Then she realised, "Oh, there's no power!"

She shined a torch from her phone, and took a right turn into an even narrower gap between two buildings only wide enough to admit a small motorcycle - even a malnourished Royal Enfield wouldn't make the cut. The buildings on that street were locked in a tight embrace, covering every inch of space, almost growing into one another, sharing walls, terraces, balconies and doors. Compound walls were forgotten as a concept, breathing space was given a go by, and the view from any window was only another one. Even in near darkness, I could sense that I had stepped into another age. I had to remind myself that I was still in Central Madras.

She stopped at a narrow iron gate leading to a long, tapering, snaking corridor lit by two tired bulbs and lined by three worn out motorcycles. "We have a small generator - I can use one light and one fan when the power is gone," she said. At the end of the corridor was a dull blue door that had surely seen happier times. When she opened that door, a new world unfolded behind it. I didn't realise that there was so much space behind that iron gate. Her torch light revealed more iron gates next to the one we entered, and I wondered if all of them hid worlds like this.

"I used to live closer to the tank, but the owner wanted the house back for his daughter's family," she said, "But this is not too far from the tank. I walk down, sometimes, but I'm growing a little old, no? I am looking for a house closer to the tank, though." I smiled. Civilisations grew around water bodies, I had read in my history classes, but I couldn't believe that proximity to a tank was still a prime consideration for choosing where one lived.

On the ground floor was another blue door, of the same construction as the one outside, and the indistinct hum of a Tamil serial - that mix of pounding background music and thundering melodrama - floated from behind it. I thought I heard a child scream, but that might have also been the serial.

In the corner of the corridor was a closeted flight of stairs that had been standing for half a century at least. I didn't ask her how old the building was, but the stone stairs had a particular kind of construction that suggested that era. "Thank you so much for coming. You see how difficult it would have been for me with two mridangams up these stairs." The stairs were steep, and the mridangam I was carrying was boring into my shoulder. If the walk were a little longer, I might have needed a little break. "You're carrying the big one," she said, "I can't even lift that anymore. It's that heavy. But that naadam..."

We reached a landing that was almost cruelly taken over by a large and incongruous asbestos door. She unlatched it, and led me into what used to be the landing - it had a tap in one corner, a chair and two pairs of slippers on a tiny wooden shelf - now converted into her sit-out. She kept up the chatter, as she fumbled through her handbag for the keys to the inside door. Her nephew, a well-known mridangam player himself, lived in the next street, she said. The neighbours here kept to themselves, she hardly knew who they were, she complained. "They don't even come and talk, you know," she moaned. She still gave me a fairly detailed biography of the family living in the house watching the Tamil serial.

The inside door said, "Mridangam and vocal classes" in a scribbly Tamil handwriting. No one could see this board when the asbestos door was shut. I wondered if that door was a new addition.

She found the key, finally, and opened the door and led me into a room that was not much wider than the door itself. On one side of the room was a wooden bench with two pillows on it. The other side of the room was a thin shelf that held a bewildering assortment of things. She put her mridangam on the bench, and I followed her. There were two more mridangams in that room, both standing proudly on their thoppis. I walked up to one and struck it. "Tom!" it rang across the house. I was quietly proud that even though I hadn't played one in three years, I could still get a clear tom out of it.

The narrow room ended in another door, beyond which there was a columnar kitchen, about two-thirds the length of the first room. "That's about the entire house," she said, proudly, "The first room is where I sleep and take mridangam classes. This is the kitchen. And there," she said, pointing to another hidden door on the right side of the kitchen, "Is a bathroom." The entire house was built like two coaches of a train with a toilet and bathroom in the vestibule.

A thought struck me - it would be nice to disappear into a house like this, in a gully like this for a few months. It was hidden away from the madness of mainstream Madras, but it was still right there, in the centre of it all.

"Sit down," she said, "I'll make coffee."
I had to go back to a friend's concert, I protested. I'll come back another day, definitely, I promised. "It will take me five minutes to make you the coffee," she insisted.
My friend would be most upset if I missed her concert, I said. Another day, one-hundred percent, I assured her.
"At least have some kali," she said, "Today is a special day for Nataraja. You know that, no?" My grandmother had mentioned something in the morning, and so, guiltlessly, I nodded. She hurriedly put some kali on a steel plate and handed it to me. Suddenly, she said excitedly, "Oh wait. I wanted to show you. I have Anna's photo here on the wall." I looked. It was her much more famous older brother, and it was the photograph most widely released to the press. "A very nice photo. He looks so happy!" She attended almost every one of his concerts in Madras, "I am not able to travel too far these days. You know, Anna plays in places like Madipakkam and Annanagar... Then I can't come. But otherwise, I come, somehow or the other." And she always sat in the front row, and enthusiastically kept taalam for the stage.

Next to her brother's, was her own photograph. She was with our dark-glassed leader in it, receiving an award. "Kalaimamani," she said, as I finished my kali and handed the plate to her, and added "I got that years ago. You can wash your hands in that sink," like the two were a part of the same thought. I looked closely at the photo. She did look younger, and so did our leader. I had heard strange things about that particular award, about when, why and to whom it was given, but she didn't look like she could pull any strings.

There was another photo next to it, a still from a popular Tamil film. I remembered that scene well - a bunch of mamis reinterpreting a popular Hindi song Carnatic style at the behest of a man dressed as a mami. There she was in that still, in the left-hand corner, playing the mridangam. I remember being amazed by the fact that they had actually found a mami to play the mridangam.

I smiled, as I bid her goodnight and walked out the door, but I couldn't help wondering, given her talent, if her life would have been different as a man.

Ideas for a Carnatic Music Bar

2012-01-06T19:07:00.003+05:30

I was at Zaras last night with some friends, sitting at the absolute edge of a table of nine people. I didn't hear a word of the conversation at the table. I was distracted by a little thought-breakthrough, an idea that took over my mind last evening, whose clouds will not leave for a while - not a full-blown cyclone, no, but a refreshing thunderstorm. But this post is not about that thought-breakthrough. I just worked it in to make myself sound posh. It is about another idea that intensified when I couldn't hear the conversation over the DJ-din last night.

Music at Zaras, and most other decent pub/bar/lounge-types in Madras, suffers from three issues. First, it's homogenous. It's the same kind of music everywhere. If you don't like that particular kind of music, you're stuck, you have no option (of course, there's Queens Bar in T.Nagar that plays SS Music, but those are exceptions). Second, it is usually too loud, yet not of danceable variety. So, you cannot talk, and you cannot dance. Which means you end up staring at each other with a rather silly expression on your face for most of the evening. Third, the music simply sucks. Last night, at Zaras, they were playing The Offspring. For Lord Kapaleeshwarar's sake, The Offspring! I count buying that cassette with Pretty Fly (For a white guy) in eighth standard amongst the most embarrassing moments of my life. Sheesh, Offspring!

So, I told my friend, a fellow Carnatic musician sitting next to me, "Dude, we should start a bar that plays Thodi raagam." He demonstrated an exaggerated Thodi, and I said, "Yes. Exactly."

Here are some preliminary thoughts:

1. Music: The music will be hardcore Carnatic - you are likely to hear Punnagavarali or Asaveri over Kurai onrum illai. There will be no songs in Marathi. There will be no Meera Bhajans in badly pronounced Hin-dee. We will play English Note, don't worry.

Of course, lots of Thodi will figure.

The evening will typically begin with some KV Narayanaswamy, and over the course of the night, it will progress through Brindamma's wailing padams, Mali's broken spurts of beauty, and S. Balachander's overwhelming raagamalika taanams. And then, after the waiter asks you for the last order and makes the lights a little brighter, and you're in that phase when you get up and realise you're drunker than you thought you were, we wind-down with MD Ramanathan's baritone that seems to emanate from the centre of the earth. It will give you a sense of balance and purpose.

There will be regular occasions, like November Nadaswaram Nights (ideally live, open-air, late night), February Fusion Week (we have to attract youngsters also), Mridangam Mondays (featuring extended tani avartanams where you will get free drinks for putting correct taalam), Tambura Tuesdays (Where you drink to the drone that somehow signifies the omkara, that primordial sound that contains a universe. Yes, yes. We have philosophical pretensions also.), Flute Fridays (cocktails will be served in a large flute the size of the table - you can put straws in each hole and drink), Violin Wednesdays (where if you tune a dummy violin correctly, you get extra sundal), and the occasional Seshagopalan Saturday or Sanjay Sunday. Cheesy things like playing music by musicians called Krishna or Krishnan or Krishnamurthy on Christmas will be encouraged. Occasionally, like the Music Academy, the bar will feature a Hindustani night (and the mama who comes there every week will identify every raga as Mishra-Maand) or a Ghazal night (which will be popular amongst those mamis who find Hariharan cute and his voice mellifluous, and amongst posh Sowcarpet residents and the Annanagar North Indians.)

For the sake of inclusiveness, themes like "Raga-based songs of Maestro Ilayaraaja" and "Golden Melodies of AR Rahman" will appear once a year.

The sound system will be uniformly bad, the recording quality worse.

2. Decor: The walls will be plastered with portraits of "doyens" of "yesteryears" who rendered "yeoman service" to Carnatic music, with appropriate flower garlands, incense sticks and a solitary, small, red zero-watt bulb. Drinks will be served in steel tumblers with davaras. Plates will look like kanjiras, spoons like morsings, straws like flutes (with fake holes, of course), pitchers like ghatams. Just so that the electronic tambura doesn't feel left out, one will be left on each table for no reason. You can irritate everyone at your table by constantly changing sruti. If they tell you off, tell them you're playing jazz.

3. Decorum: Decorum without rum is mere deco. Therefore, the worse you behave, the better the ambience is. You will be expected to let out an occasional "Mtch-mtch," or a "Tut-tut-tut-tut..." or a "Bhale" or a "Sabhaas". You are expected to noisily put taalam. You are expected to bring along a small raga book for ready reference.

If you wear shoes, you will be asked to remove them at the entrance (take that, Zaras!), if you wear a veshti, you will get extra ribbon pakoda, if your shirt is un-ironed and nondescript, you will get the title of Rasikar Vendhar along with some coconuts, bananas, a dilapidated orange, two suspect apples, a few betel leaves of no use to man or beast, two packets of pak, a shimmering ponnaadai that no human being can publicly wear, a citation and a purse of Rs. 101.

Men and women will be made to sit in separate enclosures (oh wait, they already do this at Bikes and Barrels). Then we won't do this, we don't want to copy. Like Kamal Hassan, we will be different.

4. Food and Beverage: While all the regular items will make an appearance, there will be some raga-based cocktails. The Gandharam Gargle is a tribute to Thodi's ga - its taste will be ambiguous yet heavy, and it will taste differently when drunk from different parts of the glass. A vodka-and-red-bull-based cocktail is planned for Kadanakuthoohalam's jumpiness. Prussian Blue, based on Neelambari's lullaby will lull you into comforting slumber. Piping hot filter coffee with a dash of brandy will be available.

As a tribute to the local, Vorion 6000 beer will be given prime importance.

Keera vadai, samosa, ribbon pakoda etc. will form the side eats. Special sundal during navaratri. Pongal and chakkarapongal during pongal. Adirasam, murukku and mixture from Suswaad, T. Nagar, throughout the year.

5. Karaoke Night: Once a fortnight, there will be a Carnatic karaoke with live mridangam and violin. They will play the raga and song of your choice, which you will choose from an unmemorable yellow and pink printed file, to which you will be required to do elaborate neraval and swaram. Sometimes, there will be a Royal Challenger RTP Challenge where each table nominates one person, and the pallavi goes around the bar in sequence. Tables will be eliminated if they muff up their round. The eduppus and the ragams get tougher as each round progresses.

More ideas are welcome. This is a work-in-progress.
***

(I wish to acknowledge the occasional inebriated inputs from one Shri. Aditya Prakash (Los Angeles).)

∨™⏎§♬λ Ğ ę ¥ ₠ ⅞

2011-12-14T13:08:00.000+05:30

I sit before the computer screen,
My mind as blank as this page
Struggling to write some poetry
For it will give me an intellectual air.

I can't rhyme for nuts, or bolts.
(Though I can crack a bad joke, or two.)
So, poems with strict meter are out
And so is flowing, recitable verse.

I decide that the best scam to pull
The one that's the intellectualest
Is modern society's greatest invention:
Verse that's blank, free or simply random.

The trick to this, my research reveals,
Is to use language to weave webs.
Weld words into winding verse
To paint half-formed thoughts.

For if the thoughts are complete,
You tend to express them with clarity.
And even an amateur will tell you
A poem's success lies in ambiguity.

And so I wrote pages and pages
With
single-
word
lines,

And single-line stanzas

And that bizarre line, usually at the end of a stanza, that is much longer than the rest of the lines simply because it must be so.

I made patterns
               with tab stops
To give the poem
               a certain brokenness.

Then I thought,
why not take this a step further.

Why should the   space   between   two         words be           fixed?
Why should stanzas be separated by one line-break?

Words don't need to be completed
for you to comprehen?
You are intellig, aren yu?
Sentences can be left adhoora
(random Hindi words can be ghusaoed)

Ooh, I must make delibrate typoes,
Whee, this is sch funn!
And use RANDOM CAPITALISATION
and not capitalise when i use 'i'
or invert capitals when one talks of tHOMAS tHANGADURAI

Why should stanzas have words at all, when mere alphabets will do?
h
f
rr
j

But even alphabets can be superfluous sometimes:

(ah, that was my favourite stanza)

There must be the occasional profound thought, of course:
the banality of domesticity is pregnant.
it has a strange sort of poignancy.
pause. think.

And an out-of-the-blue reference to sex:
He liked behinds that were as crisp as a vada.

Before we get back to the madness.
Make up words bahustalically
Resort to utter gibberish like asfjherulism.
Write in code
aggtuk fhrein o polsrff!!
Go completely wild. The world is a free place!

Somewhere, when it gets shittier and shittier,
A barrier is breached
And it becomes art again:

∨™⏎§♬λ Ğ ę ¥ ₠ ⅞

Her Obviousness - V

2011-11-28T20:15:00.001+05:30

Sorry for the delay.
***

It is nearly two-thirty AM, and I am at the Chennai Central station. That unearthly humidity hangs in the air amidst moderate to not-so-moderate temperatures, the sea-breeze bids goodbye for the day with an unsaid promise to return tomorrow, the ineffective air-conditioning whirs, trying to drum up some enthusiasm. People lie in various levels of comatose, on steel chairs, plastic bucket-chairs, on suitcases, bags, dhurries, newspapers fashioned as dhurries, on hard concrete, or on the cool marble flooring in the new waiting room. Some are waiting for trains that should have come yesterday, others have trains to catch tomorrow. Some work here, others have no other place to sleep.

A nasal voice makes occasional announcements in three languages, the sort where some numbers, like six, are high-pitched, others, like three, are low-pitched, and the rest, like seven, are of medium pitch. Prefixed and suffixed by a gong, the whole thing sounds like a Vedic recitation.

Most of the shops are closed; a tea shop with an incongruously awake and alert shopkeeper is open, and so is another little hole in the wall that stocks chips, biscuits, fried knickknacks, chocolates, sweets, soda, and cup noodles. The noodles excite me, and I help myself to a cup. In my hurry to eat, I open the cup too early, and the noodles aren't boiled enough. But I am hungry, I gobble them up eagerly.

My idea of spending the night at the railway station doesn't seem very smart anymore. Gopal left last night, with Sundari, to Bangalore. Their train was at eleven-fifteen. Uma arrives, from Bangalore, by a train scheduled to arrive at four-thirty, but often arrives earlier. It sounded like the soundest of plans - drop Gopal, say bye, act like I'm going back home; once the train leaves, slip back into the waiting hall, and wait for Uma's train - but it isn't.

I have two hours to kill now. Sleeping is an option, and it sure seems like the most desirable option at the moment, but I fear that the sheer coolness of this exercise will be lost if I slept through it. I want to tell people, "You know, I once spent the night at the Central station, and there, I saw..." Somehow, "You know, I slept at the Central station one night," just doesn't cut it. It doesn't have the makings of a tellable story.

But staying awake hasn't given me any stories either. I'm sandwiched between a fat man who snores like an asthmatic rhinoceros and a drunk whose head has comfortably settled itself on my left shoulder. The station is lifeless. No, wait, it isn't lifeless, there is surprising amount of activity, but nothing worth reporting. People are doing what people do in a railway station - waiting for trains. This exercise is heading towards resounding flop.

The word 'flop' that passed fleetingly through my conscious makes me wonder if I'm spending the night in this station only because I want to tell this story to someone. If that is the reason, I could just make up a story - tell people that I saw a young couple who looked suspiciously like they had just eloped, or that there was this man who delivered a shady looking bag to another man who quickly tucked it within his t-shirt and disappeared. Real-life untrue stories are easy to invent - the art is in striking a balance between the reassuring boundaries of possibility and the subtle thrill of the marginally unordinary.

But this doesn't answer the original question - am I here for a narratable story, or am I here just for the experience? Do I want to tell myself that the station holds no apparent stories? I say "apparent", because each person here, in this newer waiting hall, must have a reason for why he or she is in the station. Some might have finished a job assignment of some sort, some might be visiting relatives. Someone might have come to Madras for a funeral, a wedding, an engagement, or one of those undefined "family functions" and someone else could be going somewhere for one.

One of these guys might be missing his girlfriend or wife terribly, and might be going back to see her. On a whim. Another might be going back to see some girl his parents have lined up for him. Overcome by shyness, he will probably look at her through the corner of his eyes, while his father asks her what her hobbies are. He will hope that she can sing. The old lady sleeping in the far corner might be visiting her son, she might be upset that her daughter-in-law, from another religion, cannot be bossed around - or she might be happy that her daughter-in-law has found a voice she never found.

For the vendor in that tea stall, afternoons might be as exciting as nights - he probably hasn't seen one in years. The afternoon air, like the night air to me, is alien to him. His sleeping self knows it well, but his consciousness is unaware. Lunch is like dinner, going for a matinee is like a night-show.

None of the people in the waiting hall look like holidayers, though, except the two foreigners I saw entering the AC waiting lounge. That is strange. Do Indians not go on holidays? Or do the Indians that go on holidays not wait in the halls of railway stations?

I wonder - am I here to ponder over these life-altering issues? Create stereotypes for sleeping people in the station? Am I here out of sheer laziness? Do I not want to drive up and down twice in five hours? But if I am lazy, I should sleep. So, I reject that idea. I guess I am here because I find an excitement in this, an adventure even. When Uma arrives, I will tell her that I've been here all night, and she will think I'm strange. I like people thinking I'm strange. But there I go again, defining myself in terms of how people will think of me. Is everything I do just for effect?

It is shocking how innocent boredom can lead one to rethink one's life.

I bury myself in the book that keeps me company - a collection of Raymond Chandler's not-so-short stories. The one I'm reading is called Trouble is my Business. Chandler writes in stereotypes. The men in his books come in five varieties - the gritty, world-weary, sarcastic, Philip Marlowe, who "collects blondes and bottles"; the rich old men with slightly dishonourable backgrounds, whose money the world is after; the smart, suave, smooth, big-time gangster, (though Marlowe eventually shows he's smarter, suaver, smoother) who has a convoluted plan to get the rich old man's fortunes; the honest, hardworking small-time crook, the sort that needs the money, the sort that is willing to work for it, the sort that's not wily enough to be the big-time gangster; aad lastly, the dumb small-time crook, who says stupid things and indulges in random acts of violence before sleeping the big sleep. The women in Chandler's books, they're from another world. A character says about one of them, "Every time I think of that dame, I have to go out and walk around the block,". He invented the femme fatale - the maddeningly alluring, coldly calculative, morbidly manipulative sort, whose only fault seems to be that she cannot keep her hands off Marlowe.

In a sense, he does just what I did a while ago - sees faces in a crowd, and categorises them into pigeon-holes he invents for himself, and writes stories around them. There is a joy in stereotyping, there is a joy in telling stories about caricatures.

The story simmers and rages to a chilling end. Marlowe ends up with the girl, but only briefly - he has to be available for the next girl in the next story. He says this girl was nice, but he doesn't have "the money, the clothes, the time or the manners". I smile. I'm like this, sometimes. I don't have the time, the money, the clothes or the manners. The only difference is that I hate to admit it to myself.

There are three stories left in the book, all enticingly dangerous, but I need a break. I get up to buy myself some tea. As I near the tea shop, I wonder if that's a good idea - it might affect my sleep. But again, how much will I sleep once Uma arrives?

I don't even know why she wants to spend the weekend here. She's getting married in the wee hours of next Sunday, there is a cocktail party the Saturday before, and a soporific reception on Sunday night. I am sure there are lots of things she has to do - shopping, planning, inviting. Maybe she needs space to do something she hasn't done enough of - pondering. She's unsure of Arun, or she's unsure of the permanence of marriage. But marriages are not necessarily permanent, she knows that. Maybe that's what worries her.

I'm being presumptuous, I know, she's probably tired and just wants to sleep. The more I think of it, the more convincing it sounds. She has had too much wedding planning over the last few months, and wants to get away for a weekend, think of other things, and go back to Bangalore fresh.

I amble to the tea shop, and ask for tea. And then I change my mind, hot milk might be a better idea. "No sugar," I tell him. He tells me in a grumpy mumble that the sugar is already in the milk. I give him six rupees, and take the paper cup from his hand. He asks, "What sir? Diabetes already?" much more brightly. I smile, "No, no. I just don't like sugar in milk." I sip on the milk, it isn't all that sweet after all.

He asks, "Are you Kannada?" I'm surprised, but he explains, "Your Tamil accent..." I nod. He adds, "Also, you are very fair. First, I thought you were a North Indian, after I heard you speak Tamil, I realised you might not be." I smile again. I take another sip from the paper cup, and feel the warmth go down to my stomach. I have no obligation to stand there, I know, but I remain. He continues, "You don't talk much, do you? I jabber away to everyone who comes to the shop - I have to stay awake, no?" I smile again, I really don't know what to add to this conversation.

He continues, undaunted, "I come here three days a week. You know, if you come here every day, it's not too bad. But when you come here three days a week, your sleep gets disturbed. Your body, you know, it has a clock inside it." This is where I switch off. He speaks for a while on body clocks, afternoon naps and various domestic issues that invariably end with him not being able put mutton on the table for his family. My cup is nearly empty, I keep up the polite nods and hmmm-s.

He asks, "Sir, what train are you taking?"
I say, "I'm just waiting for the Bangalore train... Have to pick up someone."
He looks at the large station clock, and his eyes widen, "Sir! You're too early! The train will not come for another half an hour."
I wonder if I should tell him that I've been waiting all night. I don't. I just make some noise that suggests that I know.
Like a bolt from the blue, he asks, with a twinkle in his eye, "Sir, girlfriend aa?" I glare. He grins. My glare turns to a smile, I put the empty cup of milk on the counter, and leave.

The train chugs in purposefully almost exactly half an hour after I finish my milk, just like the tea-stall vendor predicted. Pairs and pairs of groggy eyes stare out the grilled windows, the enthusiastic stand at the door (in a tearing hurry to alight, of course), and the lazy will wake up only when the porters wake them up.

Uma emerges from one of the air-conditioned compartments in a loose t-shirt and bright orange pyjamas, hair tied-up in a haphazard bun, carrying a backpack and another little bag. She sees me, smiles, and her step quickens in my direction.

"I've missed you," I say, hugging her. She doesn't say anything, not even a hi. A smile of contentment fixes itself on her face and she clutches my arm fondly as we walk to the car, wordlessly holding hands. This was the typical Uma emotion - a muffled sort of joy.

We reach the car when she breaks her silence, "New car?"
I look at the grey WagonR - I only bought it to bring a modicum of respectability into my existence - with stifled pride, and say, "Yeah. Like it?"
She throws her bag into the backseat, settles down in front and says, her voice barely betraying emotion, "It is a little uncle-ji..."
Only Uma can talk like this - say something that someone else might have said with a twinkling eye, a wink or tongue firmly in cheek in the most inexpressive manner.

The parking fee comes to seventy-five rupees for six hours, and I rummage in my wallet for change when Uma asks, "When did parking at this station become this expensive?"
Avoiding her eye, I say,"I spent the night at the station." She doesn't ask me for an explanation, but I find myself constrained to offer one, "I dropped Gopal and that girl..."
"Can't bring yourself to say her name?" she asks, again, in that same distant tone.
"Nothing like that! Pah!"
She smiles. "What is he up to in life?"
"Gopal?"
"Yes."
"He's writing a book of some sort."
She stares out of the window for a long time, observing early morning Madras. I don't think this city is especially pretty. Large parts of it are just dusty brownish grey buildings and dusty brownish grey roads. She throws her hands out and feels the wind against her arms. Then, she asks, "Fiction?"
I have forgotten what we were talking about. She asks again, "Gopal's book - is it fiction?"
"God, no." I say, cackling. She looks at me questioningly. "He tried writing this novel some time ago... I told you."
"Oh. That one," she says, with her hands still outside the window, "I was surprised when you told me it was bad. He wrote some really good plays, you know."
"I thought he only acted."

Uma first saw Gopal at a rehearsal for a play for which she designed costumes and sets. He played an odd character whom nobody, not even the playwright, fully understood. The character was on stage even as the audience were settling in and sat on a high stool at the back of the stage, looking around expectantly, checking his watch a couple of times, not too fidgety, not too dispirited - just like a person waiting for a show to start. The play started. Gopal's character, who had no name, reacted to the play like the audience - he laughed at the jokes, he gasped when he was surprised, he frowned when he was confused and nearly cried at the climax. He didn't speak a word, he didn't get off the stool or get involved in the story.

No one was told what or who he was, but everyone remembered him.

A reviewer, who noted that a couple of characters in the play referred to the eyes of God always watching over men and their actions, wrote that "Gopalakrishnan as God watching over us, was an eerie presence." Someone else called Gopal a mirror, "...an interesting device to show the audience who they are." A third review said, "The unsettling story was accentuated by an unexplained panopticon-like person scrutinising the proceedings."

At the rehearsals, for days, Uma did not even know Gopal was a character in the play. He sat on the stool for the three hours as actors rehearsed and re-rehearsed their lines, blocked their movements, the director stopped the play every now and then to issue orders or discuss something, the backstage crew figured out their parts. And when it ended, he got off the stool, hung around in the background for a couple of minutes, and without saying a word, left. It was like he was in character throughout. Only ten days before the show, when he asked Uma what he should wear did she realise he was actually going to do on stage what he did every day in the rehearsals.

After four shows, one afternoon, Uma came to the rehearsal to see Gopal engaged in an enthusiastic debate with the director over the finer points of a new script. "Uma, can you read this and tell me if you like it?" the director asked, "This guy here, Gopal, he wrote it." Uma gave him a searching look, but he hardly reacted.

Soon, the rest of the players arrived, and the rehearsal proceeded as usual. When they were leaving, the director called Uma aside and said, "I think the play is brilliant, but I have a crush on this guy and I want someone to read it objectively." Uma smiled.

The play is set in the drawing room of a bare Brahmin-looking house somewhere in Madras. A woman, a violinist, waits for her brother, who was once a child-prodigy Carnatic violinist, to come home after fifteen years. She has a little argument with the help who insists she has been too jumpy all morning. Their stern father, a legendary violinist himself, is barely alive - the world doesn't know if he even comprehends life around him. Everyone hopes the return of his favourite son will help.

The son, now a photographer living anonymously in Delhi, arrives. We learn that the son ran away from his talents years ago. The reasons are ambiguous - a combination of his father's over-disciplining, pressures of being constantly reminded of his genius, and an aversion to incessant travelling is hinted at.

His sister says, "Appa was jealous of him, I think. He told me, 'I spent two years learning to play that raagam perfectly. He took two hours.' It wasn't a vindictive sort of jealousy. No. But it made him push my brother more than he should have been pushed. The jealousy drove my father to want to be a part of my brother's genius, by moulding him and mentoring him too much."

The son shows little interest in his father who invisibly disintegrates, but takes a fancy for his young student - a girl from the US. Their repartee, musical and conversational, culminates in a tender moment where the son reveals a story he had been hiding within himself for years.

"When I was fourteen, I had a concert in a town near Ernakulam," he starts, "I can't remember the name of the place now. It was in the evening, and when I reached the station in the morning, there was an unexpected thunderstorm. The venue for the concert was an open air place and I expected the concert to be cancelled. But it wasn't - this was Kerala, right? A fairly decent audience showed up, and stood in the rain holing umbrellas.

"This sort of thing should have inspired me, but it didn't. I played horribly, losing focus, trying strange ideas that I never tried before, being very fractured and insipid. It was like I was deliberately trying to get rid of the audience. But they refused to leave. Every single one of them stayed till the end and left silently.

"When the concert ended, I had this thought that I wasn't able to get out of my head - that the entire trip had been slightly wrong. My mother usually saw me off when I left for the railway station. This time, she was asleep. There was too much salt in the curd rice she packed for the journey. I usually called her before every concert, to discuss the concert plan with her, but the rain meant that there was no working telephone around. I usually called her after every concert again, but I couldn't.

"I had another concert after this. In Bangalore. And I was supposed to take a train from Ernakulam. On the way from this town to Ernakulam by taxi, the rain suddenly stopped. It was unseasonal rain, and the driver said it was just a passing cloud.

"I tried to sleep, but I couldn't. On the way, I saw a hill with a temple on top that took my fancy. The hill was not very tall, and it stood out in the flat coastal landscape. There was this bright light coming from the temple - someone had lit a really large fire. I asked the driver if I could go see it. My train was much later in the night, I had a lot of time to kill.

"The driver told me that there was a road two-thirds the way up the hill, but I had to climb the last stretch. I could do that, I told him. He asked me, 'Sir, don't you want to make that phone call home? You will not find a phone until the station now.' I considered that question for a second, because he delivered it like it was some kind of warning.

"But I ignored him, and asked him to go. We snaked up the hill road through some really dense forests - the vegetation did not look that dense from the bottom. There was one thing, though. We could see the light from every part of the road. At one point, the road just ended. The driver said, 'I'm too old to climb, sir. But just follow the mud path. It is a little steep towards the end, but you should be able to manage fine.'

"I trudged along the path that climbed gradually, and it was much like the road - snaking around the hill carefully. It was very unlike a path made by people on foot, which tend to cut corners and go through little crannies. It was as if someone deliberately wanted you to be able to see the light until you reached the top.

"At some point, the path narrowed and led itself into this shrubbery of sorts. The path was lined by four feet of dense bushes on each side. It got steeper, but never too tiring. It was getting slightly darker as I climbed, and the light shined even brighter.

"I tripped over a stone, after which I tread carefully, my eyes glued to the little road. The last part of the path led into a rock-formation tunnel, which was hardly fifteen feet long, and when I emerged from it, I was at the top. The climb was rather easy, and I wondered why the driver said he was too old to make it.

"It took me a couple of seconds to realise that there was something wrong - the light had been put out. There was light, but that was from the fading day. The temple was deserted, the door was locked with an old padlock that looked like it hadn't been disturbed in decades. There was no smoke, no sign of any flame having been lit anywhere.

"Dejected, and frankly, quite spooked, I hurried down the path, through the rock-tunnel, the shrubbery and the forest back to the taxi. The driver was fast asleep, and I woke him up. I told him what I saw, and unfazed, he said, 'Oh, they lock it after six, I think. The fire would have gone out once the firewood ran out.' It was a completely plausible explanation, but there was one flaw. There was no other way down from the hill, and I saw no one pass me while I climbed up. The driver remained silent when I asked him about this. Something in his silence suggested that I shouldn't probe more.

"I reached the station by around ten at night. By this time, the phone booth was also closed. Again, that thought struck me - that something was amiss. I bought myself a pack of biscuits and a cup of tea for dinner, and got on to the train to Bangalore.

"I reached Bangalore in the morning, not having slept for most of the night, and found the sabha secretary and his wife at the station. They were to send their driver, but they came. Instead of being pleasantly surprised by their presence, I was disconcerted. This trip was not going to plan at all. I got down from the train, and they asked me to sit down on a nearby bench. I asked them what was happening. The lady merely asked me to drink some coffee. The secretary told me that my mother was seriously unwell, and handed me a train ticket to Bangalore - the train was to leave in minutes.

"I rushed to Madras to find out that my mother died even before I reached Ernakulam.

"My father didn't know how to contact the sabha in that small town... No one even remembered the name of the town. When they finally found out the details, they couldn't contact the place because the phone lines were down and it was impossible for anyone from Ernakulam to travel in that rain. The messenger set out as soon as the rain stopped, but by the time he reached, I had left for the station. My father was forced to contact the sabha secretary in Bangalore."

He paused for a long time, before saying, "I felt I had to run away that day. And I did."

At the end of this story, the young girl hugs the son comfortingly, and soon, the hug evolves into a kiss and the lights fade out.

Next morning, a lady arrives at the house and declares herself to be the son's live-in girlfriend. They even have a two-year-old daughter.

Here, the script that Uma read said, "Interval." She put it down, picked up her phone, called the director and said, "Do the play."
***

To continue.

Photograph

2011-11-20T13:45:00.001+05:30

He reacts to most photographs of himself in his gruff, growling voice, "Kandraavi." And adds, "Aiye. No one should take photos of me anymore. Chi, chi."

And then he saw this photograph of him like an Emperor ensconced on a throne, in a vast hall, lording over his surroundings, and said, with obvious pride, "Parava illiye! I look younger."

She sees the photo, nods and quickly moves on to others in the album. When she's finished with the album, he asks, "You didn't say anything about how I look..."

She looks at him, and at the photo, and back at him, and says, in a resigned tone, "Great." There is a moment or two of silence before they cackle heartily.

Aap Kaa Surroor v. Rockstar

2011-11-15T11:11:00.001+05:30

A comparative examination of the dialectic dinchak discourses and discombobulated lumpen demetia.
***

Fifteen years ago, if someone told me that there would soon be two movies about Indian rockstars singing in Hindi who are wildly popular in Europe, I would've said sarcastically, "Yeah. And Govinda and Navjot Sidhu will end up as Members of Parliament." At that point in time, the only non-English singers to achieve mass hysteria were Ricky Martin and Las Ketchup, and neither was a rockstar in the Himesh Reshammiya or Ranbir Kapoor mould.

The parallels between Rockstar and Aap ka Surroor - the Moviee - the Real Love storyyy are plain for everyone to see. An Indian rockstar, with humble roots and extreme angst caused by flimsy reasons, rises to the top of the Indian music firmament, and in a totally unexpected turn of events, has wild shows in Europe. He gets arrested. He romances some woman who cannot act. There's a spunky other woman whose love he cannot reciprocate. He sports a stubble. He pontificates in Urdu.

(Oh man, Himesh should think of a copyright suit!)

A detailed point-by-point analysis is required.

Name
Himesh is just called HR. Human Resources. Human Rights. High Risk. Hrithik Roshan. Heart Rate. An html code that creates a horizontal line...
There's a gilt-edged glitz to it. A starry shiny feel. It's the sort of name that can inspire and conspire (and the name rhymes with TR, who rhymed many things with many things).

Ranbir is called Jordan. Jordan? Why would you want to share your name with a Hashemete Kingdom, a retired basketball champ and an erstwhile pornstar? And dude, you're from Pitampura. Face it.

AKS: 1. Rockstar: 0.

War Cry
A no-brainer.

"Jai mata di. Let's rock!" versus "Sadda Haq!" The former is traditional with modern outlook. The latter sounds like a burly Pakistani middle order batsman's genial brother.

AKS: 2. Rockstar: 0

Lead star costume and make-up
This is a toughie.

Himesh's wardrobe included the bizarre Hrithik Roshan inspired black see-through banian showing off his insides in gory detail, the Neo-from-the-Matrix-trenchcoat with an incongruous red baseball cap, and a red turtleneck sweater I'll never forget for as long as I live. But let's face it, the costume was monotonous. And you couldn't see his hair, which just eliminates so many possibilities.

Ranbir wore a Sgt. Peppers' jacket and a Subhash Chandra Bose topi for one concert. For merging these two influences, and showing that the rebel can be a patriot (or a fan of Balakrishna, who famously wore the topi in this mind-warping, soul-twisting, brain-hurting video) Rockstar deserves an award. Those harem pants, those strange things hanging from his neck (sources tell me they included one item from the dargah, one from the temple and a miniature samosa), the I'm-a-turban-I'm-not-a-turban... Rockstar had some incomparable gems. And the hairdo - when Nargis is in coma, Ranbir's hair simply transforms from shoulder-length to middle-of-back length, and he grows a Craig McMillan moustache. Magical realism only.

AKS: 2. Rockstar: 1.

Pained expression of lead star
Himesh was the definition of pained. Even when he woos Hansika with a song, he looks pained. When he is arrested, he looks like someone pinched his nipples with tweezers. And when he asserts his innocence with the legendary, "It's a mistaaaake!" the German prison establishment's hearts melt and they allow him to be rescued by some auto-rickshaws.

Ranbir's expression somehow didn't convey the requisite pain required to be a rockstar. When he played with those Sufi people, for large swathes of the song, he looked bored, not troubled. I guess there's only that much pain you can convey about missing Nargis Fakhri.

AKS: 3. Rockstar: 1.

Lady love
Nargis Fakhri made me wish Genelia played this role - she is that bad. Her mouth is always in the wrong position, her eyes look eternally glazed, and her body is stiffer than Sadagopan Ramesh's feet.

On the other hand, Hansika Motwani deserves every accolade for playing her role with rare elan and panache. She had to act like she was in love with Himesh Reshammiya and repeatedly refer to him as HR. She also gets additional points for holding a cello like it was Himesh Reshammiya, and holding Himesh Reshammiya like she should have been holding the cello.

AKS: 4. Rockstar: 1.

Supporting female characters
Ah. Mallika Sherawat, called "Ruby James", in love with Himesh Reshammiya (this gives men of all shapes and sizes hope). Plus, she's a lawyer and I have professional bias. Plus, she dances to Mehbooba o Mehbooba sung by Himesh in all his nasally overwhelming voice.

Aditi Rao Hydari's ultimate dollness on the other hand.

Hmmmm. Difficult. Hmmmm.
Ok. The sheer yumminess of Aditi Rao wins this. But it is a close call, very very close.

AKS: 4. Rockstar: 2.

Sufi-based song
Gun Faya is a great song, and I love the way the guitar blends into it. Somehow, that part of the movie reminded me of the story about The Beatles at Hamburg. But that's a subject of a different post. Gun Faya is superlative, and the only thing going against it is that in English those words sound like someone setting off some ammunition.

Listening to any of Himesh's songs is like going down the Carrollian rabbit hole. But have you heard Assalam Valekum in an indefinite loop on a still, quiet night, alone in a hostel room through booming speakers and felt a brown creeper growing from beneath your feet, crackling as it wraps itself around you, digging its knife-like thorns into your flesh until the pain becomes your friend and puts you to restful dreamless sleep?

AKS: 5. Rockstar: 2.

Climax
Rockstar's climax is poetic, with that execrably translated Rumi verse about someone meeting someone else in a field and the ambiguity surrounding her death - there's one perplexing shot of her in coma with her bosoms heaving. But she's waiting. On "the field". For him. Really, she should give him better directions.

Aap Kaa Surroor, on the other hand, had a climax that even Kidnap couldn't compare to, where the villain's confession is surreptitiously recorded on a mobile phone and beamed live on a large screen. And what does the villain confess to doing? In Wikipedia's words, "Khurana reveals that he wore a face mask to appear like HR and committed the murder to frame him."

We have a winner.

AKS: 6. Rockstar: 2.

The Best Movie about Indian Rockstar in Europe Award goes to...

(As a consolation, we give (posthumously) Shammi Kapoor the Best Fake Shehnai Playing Award.)

Gaze

2011-11-12T15:07:00.001+05:30

At a lecture on native language and Indian English writing, I first felt his gaze upon me. It had this reassuring warmth, as if I were sitting at the perfect distance from a campfire in mild winter. It came from three rows in front of me combating the harsh air-conditioning, enclosing me in its cosiness - it was like he picked the ideal spot to get a clear view. The gaze was distant, but pointed; it was welcoming I smiled at him, once, and he turned away immediately. After that, I pretended not to notice, and he pretended not to look. The gaze followed me after the lecture, as I walked through the lobby, down the stairs and into an auto.

A week later, I felt the gaze on my neck, from behind me, at a book launch. I was surprised to see him, and that manifested itself in a smile. He was bolder now, he smiled.

I remember his face vaguely - it was shaped like an elongated egg and punctuated by a round nose that ended almost as soon as it started. His hair could only be described the word nondescript. His eyes were as genial as his gaze. He wore a dangling earring in one ear - but that was a fashion fiasco I could live with (or eliminate).

There was this moment, after the launch, when we passed each other, a colony of butterflies fluttering in my tummy, when I hoped he would say something. He didn't.

The gaze was upon me frequently over the next few weeks, at a concert here, a play there, at the beach, even at a bookstore. He often moved in my direction, exciting those butterflies each time, but never said hello.

I am in a concert now, and I feel a warmth that I only vaguely remember now. I turn around, to see an elongated egghead and nondescript hair. I am in the blanket of his gaze now. The earring has disappeared - perhaps he works in a cultured atmosphere - and his eyes look tired, but the gaze still envelops me snugly, and I can still feel it upon me even when I'm not looking.

The concert starts, I drown in the tambura's drone and melt into the song.

The concert ends, I head out into the cavernous lobby. He approaches me, with purpose this time. The butterflies wake up from a six year slumber.

He talks, finally, in a baritone warmer than his gaze, with clarity of expression that suggests he has practiced this speech, "Some years ago, I came across a short story by Haruki Murakami. About this guy and girl who walk past each other, but don't make conversation."
I say, smiling, "They know they are 100% perfect for each other..."
"And yet, they don't talk. They just walk past."
"And the guy says he knows exactly what he would have told her had he walked past her now."
"Yeah. He'd tell her a story."
"One that starts with 'Once upon a time...' and ends with, 'A sad story, don't you think?'"
"Yes... That story."

We pause, breathlessly, and I say, "Sorry for ruining your speech."
He says, "I like the way it went." He pauses, and says, "You disappeared." He wants an explanation, I think.
"I moved. I don't live here now. I'm only visiting..."
"Oh," he says, indeterminately. If he intends to convey sadness, he fails. He asks, "Coffee?"
I cannot, I know, but I make it look like I'm giving it some thought before saying, "I should be going, I'm in a hurry."

I walk away, leaving him jolted. The gaze is on the back of my neck until I disappear amidst the crowd. I walk out to the blustery evening, and wait on the pavement until a car pulls up. My daughter waves at me from behind the glass. I open the door, hurry into the warmth of the car-heating, and close my eyes. The car stereo starts - I drown in the tambura's drone and melt into the song.

How to Murakamify a regular story

2011-11-07T22:53:00.000+05:30

Normal Story:
A guy drifts along, not too happy with his life but not unhappy enough to do something about it, until one day he wonders if he should. He quits his job, and embarks on a novel about a guy in love with two sisters and unable to decide which one he loves more.

He likes a girl, a lot, but he isn't sure she has any feelings for him. Let's call her W. They go on long walks, they discuss movies, books, art, music. His crush on her intensifies, but she is vague in her responses to him.

Dawdling on the internet, he comes across X, a girl who makes him laugh. A romance ensues. X and he meet, finally, and they fall in love. He forgets W. X goes back to the country she came from, but their romance remains.

His novel gets rejected by various publishers. One tells him it has too many big words. He practices darts on a photograph of Chetan Bhagat.

X decides she cannot romance him on the internet, and finds herself a guy closer home. By the time he comes back to W, she has moved on.

He travels to Rajahmundry, and throws the manuscript of his novel down the Godavari. He finds himself another job.

Murakamification:
A guy drifts along, not too happy with his life but not unhappy enough to do something about it, until one day, he has a dream where he has furious sex with an Amar Chitra Katha character who comes alive. The next night, he dreams of being seduced in a bizarre manner by the character's sister. He decides to quit his job and write a novel about this.

A girl, W, who has the most perfect set of teeth, and he go on long walks for days. He likes her, but he's too intense to do anything about it. He only stares at her teeth. One day, he has his Amar Chitra Katha character dream again, and when it ends, he realises the girl is W. W mentions something vague that suggests to him that his dream might not just be a dream, but he's not sure if what she said means what he thinks she said.

The next day, he decides he must read the relevant Amar Chitra Katha, and Googles it. He comes across various threads where a mysterious woman, X, represented only by a stick-figure cartoon, writes Freudian interpretations of the stories. She makes him laugh. He responds, they correspond. His dreams now involve him having furious sex with the stick-figure cartoon. He locks himself up in a dark room to think. He can only think of furious sex with the stick-figure cartoon. Occasionally, W's teeth make an appearance, but they're quickly forgotten. Finally, the stick-figure cartoon begins filling out, until it becomes the sister of the Amar Chitra Katha character that W turned into. His fantasies now only involve the sister and not the original character.

His novel closely recounting these adventures is rejected by various publishers because it isn't translated from Japanese. He finds a translator who tells him gory stories of the Indo-Bangladesh war, but doesn't translate the novel. His translator commits suicide.

X disappears from the internet altogether - from the threads on Amar Chitra Katha, from his inbox, his chat-transcripts. Her facebook profile is missing, her twitter account is empty. He looks for her everywhere, but it is like she never existed. He only gets a mail with a singular attachment containing a cartoon drawing of the Amar Chitra Katha woman's navel.

W has also disappeared from the real world. All that is left behind is a photograph of her navel in his house.

After meandering along the Kerala coast for weeks, meeting a man who thinks he is a rhinoceros, a yogi who might be a fraud, a hotel owner who is a Geeta Dutt fan, he finds out where W and X have gone. He opens the pages of his manuscript and delves into it.
***

It goes without saying - I've pre-ordered 1Q84 and I can't wait for it!

Parking

2011-09-23T07:30:00.000+05:30

There's a dead crow on my street where I park my car,
So I parked my car a few feet away.
This got me thinking:

How long will the crow carcass remain there?
Will someone clear it? Who?
When can I park my car in its usual place?

What happens to dead crows in this city?
Do they burn them or bury them?
Or do they just let them rot?

And what of the street dogs and cats?
And bandicoots and cows and buffaloes?
Do they have a squad that does the dirty work?

And what of all those men and women
Who have nowhere to die, no one to bury;
Who will put them away in a safe place
So that I can peacefully park my car?

Wikipedia, milaard!

2011-09-07T07:57:00.002+05:30

So, at the last hearing of a tax appeal, a lawyer appearing for the Government relied on something from Wikipedia. This page, specifically.

Yesterday, Porus Kaka, a lawyer from Bombay arguing for the taxpayer, brought a printout of the same page, submitted it to the judges, and said, "My Lords, this is the same Wikipedia page the Revenue was relying on last time. I have made a few changes to this webpage to suit my case." Dramatic pause. "I'm not casting any aspersions on my Learned Friend, I'm only showing My Lords how Wikipedia works."

The judge smiled, and said, "No, Mr. Kaka. We weren't going to rely on this anyway."
***

When will our Supreme Court stop using Wikipedia?
(See here, here, here, here, here and here.)

Certainty, Remorse and the Death Penalty

2011-08-29T08:09:00.004+05:30

By the time you read this, Ram Jethmalani would most likely have walked away with a stay of the execution of three assassins of Rajiv Gandhi. You might not hear of it in the English and Hindi news channels - they're too busy monitoring Anna's health - but the Tamil media is crawling with news, analysis and opinions. Opinion is divided, obviously, for the issue is rather thorny. Is there a case for showing any mercy to three persons convicted of assassinating the Prime Minister and taking the lives of at least fourteen bystanders, even after the President has rejected their clemency petition?

I was reminded, yesterday, of a passage from Dosteovsky's The Idiot (It is a long passage, bear with me):

But here I should imagine the most terrible part of the whole punishment is, not the bodily pain at all—but the certain knowledge that in an hour,—then in ten minutes, then in half a minute, then now—this very instant soul must quit your body and that you will no longer be a man— and that this is certain, CERTAIN! That’s the point—the certainty of it. Just that instant when you place your head on the block and hear the iron grate over your head—then—that quarter of a second is the most awful of all.

‘This is not my own fantastical opinion—many people have thought the same; but I feel it so deeply that I’ll tell you what I think. I believe that to execute a man for murder is to punish him immeasurably more dreadfully than is equivalent to his crime. A murder by sentence is far more dreadful than a murder committed by a criminal. The man who is attacked by robbers at night, in a dark wood, or anywhere, undoubtedly hopes and hopes that he may yet escape until the very moment of his death. There are plenty of instances of a man running away, or imploring for mercy—at all events hoping on in some degree—even after his throat was cut. But in the case of an execution, that last hope—having which it is so immeasurably less dreadful to die,—is taken away from the wretch and CERTAINTY substituted in its place! There is his sentence, and with it that terrible certainty that he cannot possibly escape death—which, I consider, must be the most dreadful anguish in the world. You may place a soldier before a cannon’s mouth in battle, and fire upon him—and he will still hope. But read to that same soldier his death-sentence, and he will either go mad or burst into tears. Who dares to say that any man can suffer this without going mad? No, no! it is an abuse, a shame, it is unnecessary—why should such a thing exist? Doubtless there may be men who have been sentenced, who have suffered this mental anguish for a while and then have been reprieved; perhaps such men may have been able to relate their feelings afterwards. Our Lord Christ spoke of this anguish and dread. No! no! no! No man should be treated so, no man, no man!’

What these three prisoners have faced is far worse. The Supreme Court confirmed their death sentences in 2000 - eleven years ago. They filed a petition for clemency before the President immediately. With no discernible timeline for when the President would consider and pass an order on their application, they have been waking up for eleven years without knowing if they will be alive in the evening. Every book they read, they aren't sure if it will be their last. Every meal they eat, every piece of music they hear, every sunrise they witness, they wonder if they will once more. Surely, this is a far worse punishment than death itself.

These are people willing to die for a cause, yes. They have shown no remorse, yes. They are still considered heroes amongst their ilk. If twenty years of jail and twenty years of uncertainty of existence hasn't reformed them, what will?

But then, our criminal justice system doesn't deal with remorse. Our strongest justification for the death penalty is still retribution. Let me use the cruder term - revenge. Is it possible to feel remorse when an avenger hovers over you, holds you captive and takes painfully long to shut every exit door? We aren't giving our criminals the space to feel remorse.

What of the families of the victims in Sriperumbudur? A friend who did a report on them says they are all struggling to make ends meet, that they are still recovering from the loss. Our criminal justice system has nothing to make them a part of the process; a crime is seen as an offence against the state and not against an individual or a community. The state acts coldly, the state even eliminates the victim from the process, except as witnesses. How can Murugan feel sorry for his actions when he doesn't know what suffering he has caused? Our system doesn't make an offender face up to his wrongs, it only gives him a chance to defend himself against them. Telling a victim that you did nothing wrong is much harder than telling the State that you did nothing wrong.

The 187th Law Commission Report speaks of the death penalty in the most scathing terms, it tells us of everything that is wrong with it. It also deals with this issue - of prisoners on death row, for interminable periods. Our Supreme Court has dealt with cases like this in the past in favour of the offender, but these are quick-fix solutions. Cases where clemency petitions are pending with the President for decades are not unknown.

The first step we need to take is to recognise that revenge cannot and should not justify criminal punishments anymore. The death penalty is heinous, it is violent, it is morally unjustifiable, and it is random. It must go.

Father, Child and Holy Dinosaurs

2011-08-11T11:34:00.005+05:30

In the last five days, I have watched two movies that portrayed a father-child relationship and featured dinosaurs. Apart from this superficial and slightly freakish similarity, I think I can confidently state that Deivathirumagal and The Tree of Life come from two different universes.

The former approaches the subject like a sugarcane juicer would approach sugarcane, extracting every little drop of sugary sweetness it can from the story of a childish father and an too-smart-for-her-age child. The latter, ah, well... The latter approaches the subject with a microscope, a syringe and fine piece of forceps; digging into the cane, showing you little nuances, droplets of saccharine, strands of rough fibre and unexpectedly zooming out, to explore the existence and relevance of the sugarcane itself. Deivathirumagal is about the unordinary, it is about special people in special circumstances, but it is told in the most ordinary of manners, milking the specialness of the situation for every cheap teardrop, being needlessly cute, needlessly melodramatic, needlessly obvious, needlessly over-the-top. The Tree of Life, on the other hand, is about normal people, everyday relationships, regular emotions, jealousies, happinesses and freedoms, but it is about finding the magic in that normality, and still asking questions of it, it is about valuing those emotions, validating them, almost, but still placing them amidst a tremendous canvas. The Tree of Life is a meditation, it is a probing, self-indulgent journey, it is an artist's quest to understand his own emotions, and their place in the cosmos around him.

In Deivathirumagal, as a result, there is constant chatter, the father and daughter have a family-whistle, they have cute duet acts, he tells her stories, and gets proud of her reciting nursery rhymes. In trying to show that special people are normal, the movie forgets that normal people don't have any of this. The love between a parent and a child manifests itself far more subtly, in the way parents look at their children, in the way they discipline them, in their inherent protectiveness, in their pride, their disappointments and their desires; in the warmth of their touch, in the way they hold their them, in quiet intimacy. The Tree of Life captures that - and this is its greatest achievement.

Ultimately, The Tree of Life is Syama Sastry asking Goddess Meenakshi difficult questions in Ahiri; Deivathirumagal is the Backstreet Boys telling you which way they want it.

Twenty-buck Meal

2011-08-09T15:39:00.003+05:30

Apparently, there is a regulation in Tamil Nadu, which makes it mandatory for restaurant owners (from what I gather, the regulation applies to the Bhavans - Saravana Bhavan, Vasanta Bhavan, Balaji Bhavan and so on) to supply some "meals" for Rs. 20. (Just as an aside, the word "meals" is always plural. "Oru meals kudunga." "Have you taken your meals?" "Meals saapudlaama?" Even the menus in the restaurant offer only "Chennai Meals", "Banjabi Meals", "Chineese Meals". This is like caste names. "Saar, neenga Brahmins aa?" I'm tempted to say, "Ille saar. Naa oru Brahmin daan.") Today, instead of ordering "Limited Meals" (misleading name, the meals have enough food to cure famine in a small village), I order the twenty-buck meals. It felt a little cheap, initially, but when the food came, I was very satisfied.

The "Limited Meals" features a mound of rice that's as big as (and looks like) one hemisphere of a football on a plate. The plate also has various (replenishable) bowls of poriyal, kootu, karakozhambu, sambar, rasam, two sweets, buttermilk, curd and more-molaga. Oh, I forgot the appalam. When I finish eating this, I usually come back to office and collapse for a while. It is a highly satisfying meal, I agree, but sometimes it feels too satisfying. Priced at Rs. 55, it is an overwhelming avalanche of food. It makes you feel like one of those vaadyars who has to attend, conduct and eat food at weddings everyday.

The twenty-buck meal is perfect. The rice is about half the amount. There's only a sambar, rasam, kootu and buttermilk (and I suspect these bowls aren't bottomless). A mini-coffee at the end of it, and the world seemed like a good place to be. I know I'll feel hungry in some time (the Limited Meals makes me run away from food for the rest of the day), but there are yummy momos close by.

This is what I love the Tamil Nadu Government for. Things like the 10-buck movie tickets - if you didn't know, you can walk into any movie theatre in Tamil Nadu and ask for a 10-buck ticket. Yes, any theatre, even the Sathyams, the Inoxes and the PVRs of the world. Free mixies, grinders, laptops, TVs, 4 gms of gold (for marriageable women - I'm neither a woman, nor marriageable, but still), free cattle (I'm not kidding you)... What a great place to live!

In the end analysis, this twenty-buck meal is good for my waistline. People describe me today as "well-built", and I can sense that they're politely implying that I'm plump. I don't want them to graduate to saying "plump" when they mean "fat", or "fat" when they mean "gargantuan".

Sammy and Friends

2011-07-09T11:06:00.005+05:30

This is now on cricinfo.
***

There is a theory doing the rounds that with Sammy in the eleven, the Windies will always be either one batsman short, or one bowler short. It is an easy argument to make. Sammy, the batsman, struggles to make an impact because he does not have the defensive technique to play a long innings. Sammy, the bowler, is a holder, and he cannot be more than that at his pace. The only successful attacking Test Match bowler at Sammy's pace in recent memory is Shaun Pollock, and Sammy doesn't have the skill or the control to be Shaun Pollock.

On the afternoon of the first day of the Third Test match, I prayed that West Indies would have the courage to play one batsman less, and pick Kemar Roach to bowl with Edwards, Rampaul, Sammy and Bishoo. In this series, every time the West Indies had the Indian batting on the mat, the batsmen found a passage of uninspiring bowling to capitalise on - Harbhajan and Raina did it in the First Test, Laxman and Raina in the Second. A fifth bowler might have helped, I thought; a fresh pair of legs, some variety. Moreover, the extra batsman hasn't done much at all. Yesterday, with Rampaul missing - an unfortunate, unforeseeable tragedy - the Windies still had India in trouble, at 18 for 2 and at 172 for 5, and both times, the bowlers who were doing the damage were too tired to continue. A fifth bowler might really have helped.

But with Sammy in the fold, a fifth bowler means a batsman less. It means that Baugh bats at six, and Sammy at seven - not confidence-inspiring at all. Which brings us to that easy argument again - that Sammy is the fielder, not good enough as a bowler or batsman.

Let's look at the tougher argument for a moment.

That the West Indies have been struggling to compete in Test matches is trite, it is obvious for all to see. They won a Test match after two years against Pakistan earlier this year. They ignominiously lost to Bangladesh at home some time ago when their top players walked out on the series. The Board and the Players Association are locked in a battle that resembles a socialist trade union struggle for better pay and better working conditions. There are player strikes, suspensions, mysterious selection decisions, rabid interviews, talks of corruption, mishandling, unnecessary interference. For ten years now, since Walsh retired, the West Indies have been a collection of talent fissured and fractured by politics.

Sammy's appointment as captain - he's known as a Board man, rather than the Player Association man his predecessor Gayle was - happened in this context. He was never a regular in the Test side, and in the shorter versions, his report card read, "Can do better". His appointment came as a bolt in the blue. And it was well understood that he is role as a captain is similar to his role as a bowler - hold until the next guy is fit and ready.

Sammy has done a lot more.

Before Sammy, there were flashes of team-play, in that unexpected Champions Trophy win, for instance. Fans of the team, like myself, have consoled ourselves in individual brilliance - Lara's exploits against Murali, Chanderpaul's invincible runs of attrition, Chris Gayle's random, merciless attacks, and Jerome Taylor's freak spell.

For the first time in ten years, under Sammy, the West Indies are playing like a team, pooling in collective resources to punch above their weight - in a manner that reminds one of the way New Zealand play their cricket. In this home season, they drew with Pakistan, and have troubled India more than India would've imagined possible. Yesterday, with Rampaul out of the eleven, it would have been easy for the West Indies to bend over and submit. But two bowlers and Sammy - who, by the way, always bowls better than he looks like he's bowling - all carrying niggles, made India fight for their runs. Except in that last hour, when the bowlers were too tired to make an impact, they traded on equal terms with the Indian batting line up.

Sammy has brought this will to toil to the team, he has brought heart and commitment. When he's badgered in the press conferences, his responses are never tired, they are honest. When he is asked about his own merit, he responds with belief. When asked about selection, Gayle's for instance, he responds with a shrug, it's not his job to comment. And that is exactly how he plays his cricket, and how he captains the side - with enthusiasm and devotion that belies his natural talents. Maintaining his morale, his conviction amidst this pressure from the media and the players is admirable enough; that he infects his teammates with this courage is the sign of a truly great leader.

This generation of West Indian cricketers are still only discovering how to win, and Sammy is pushing them to discover it together, as a team.

Sammy is still doing a holding job, he knows that. When Bravo, Bishoo or Barath are ready, he will, most probably, make way. But he is doing a lot more than he was expected to do - it is just a question of time, and a little luck, before results follow.

2011-06-12T15:21:00.003+05:30

On a train from Edinburgh to Stirling, Scotland's endless, easy-on-the-eye landscapes reminded me of a Robert Louis Stevenson poem we read in school. Then, I realised that Stevenson, being Scottish, might have been describing this very scenery in his poem:

From a Railway Carriage.
Faster than fairies, faster than witches,
Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;
And charging along like troops in a battle
All through the meadows the horses and cattle:

All of the sights of the hill and the plain
Fly as thick as driving rain;
And ever again, in the wink of an eye,
Painted stations whistle by.

Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,
All by himself and gathering brambles;
Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;
And here is the green for stringing the daisies!

Here is a cart runaway in the road
Lumping along with man and load;
And here is a mill, and there is a river:
Each a glimpse and gone forever!

***

Her Obviousness - Part IV

2011-05-21T15:40:00.003+05:30

Chandni Kedar floats around the terrace, the melody forms a part of the atmosphere, its phrases, the pulse of the teentaal bandish I picked up from that recording rings in the air.

My music isn't deep, ever. Even when I ponder, like I often do, I only ponder the notes, only ponder the glides, the connections, the phrases of the raag. I read of music and its higher purposes in many books; for me, music is what it is, my purpose is the raag, my contemplation is the ornateness of the notes that make it up. I wonder if my music lacks pathos as a result. I have a feel for music, I know; my haphazard training has meant that it has developed primarily through feel and not through mechanised training. I wonder if I should, for instance, contemplate the moonlight as I play Chandni Kedar, make the listener feel its softness through the music. But then, if I just meditate on the raag, shouldn't its natural construction emit the feel it is supposed to?

It's not like I haven't tried. I meditated on a radiant light while I played Deepak, but the raag suffered. I tried playing like the rain when I played Megh Malhar, but I realised that I could play many raags like the pitter-patter of the rain or the pounding of a thunderstorm. I wonder if these purposes are too obvious. What is the purpose, say, of Bhairavi? Or Gaud Saarang?

Sundari keeps beat with the drut teentaal in the Carnatic style. In some ways, I like it, it gives me a framework to play within. But it distracts me. I finish the drut with two long rounds of improvisation, and end with a complicated set-piece of threes. Even Gopal, hard as he is to impress with music, seems suitably soothed.

I am out of practice, though, I can feel it. Some phrases don't come out the way I want them to, some don't have the right feel, others don't pack the right punch. The stresses are a little off and the clarity of expression doesn't match the clarity of my thought. In improvisational music, what you imagine and what you execute must be a part of the same transaction; you must not be able to tell one from another, each must flow from the other, each must push the other. If your physical faculties struggle to keep up with your imagination, cyclically, your imagination suffers. Today, after this downward-spiraling internal tussle between idea and expression, I know that I not only have a long way to go, I also have to re-traverse the path I have un-traversed in the last month.

If you ask me why I haven't played the sarod for a month, I won't be able to give you a satisfactory answer. I haven't been all that busy, I admit - I am at home on most days by seven, on some days, even earlier. But I've spent my evenings vegetating on obscure sites on the internet, solving crossword puzzles, reading conflicting opinions on socio-economic-political issues (often ones that have no relevance to my existence - like the healthcare systems in the United States), going through blogs and profiles of women I will never meet, watching videos of cute babies, virtuoso musicians, mimicry artistes, ridiculous Sandalwood song-and-dance routines. I have spent them getting lost amongst cheap plots in cheap novels of espionage, intrigue, thrill, women of otherworldly allure, popular science, popularly wrong or popularly misleading science, ingenious methods of mass destruction, imagined motives, imagined communities, imagined realities.

Somewhere, it begins with a laziness to pick up the instrument and sit down with it. This laziness slowly transforms itself into guilt, and every evening, when I come back, a voice inside my head tells me to play, and I plead with the voice for some time to let my mind calm down after work. Before I know it, time evaporates from under my nose, I droop off, and wake up the next morning. My mind turns numb to the pricking of this guilt in a few days, and soon, the musiclessness becomes a part of my routine.

The sarod, unlike some other instruments, requires a proper sit-down session - it needs space, physically and mentally, it needs time, it needs a single-minded devotion. I told myself, over the last month, that my job did not give me this space, and that my music would, naturally, erode and die. How easy it is to lie to yourself.

All that was until I encountered Viayat Khan's Chandni Kedar recording, Live at the Taj, the cover says, accompanied by his brother, Imrat Khan on the surbahar, an instrument with a hauntingly deep, low, bass timbre. Here was a Kedar with a quirk, the komal nishad that made fleeting appearances to liven up proceedings. And every time I played it, Sundari opened her twinkling eyes, and gave me a look of pleasant surprise.

"Too beautiful!" Sundari says, when I finish my rendition.
"Thanks."

There is a long silence, only punctuated by Gopal's incessant fiddling with his phone. Avantika sips her glass of water poignantly, and I suspect it might not just be water.
"Who is your teacher?" she asks.

Avantika laughs, "Tell her," and turns to Sundari, "This is his favourite story."

I am flushed, it is my favourite story. It is the only thing I'm proud of.

"No one taught me," I say. "One of my uncles," the one who made that prophecy, "Is a collector of musical instruments. During a trip to Benaras, he discovered this sarod made in a style that was abandoned a hundred years ago for the newer model. He wanted to buy it, but the guy who owned the shop refused to sell it. He offered to make one in the same model, though. My uncle brought that replica back, proudly, and showed it off to everyone. I just picked it up, and started fiddling around... I was around eleven then, you know. In six months, I began playing some small tunes - film songs and stuff, you know, Didi tera dewar...
"No one taught the sarod in Mangalore - that's where I grew up - so, I learnt from another uncle, who is a vocalist, mimicking whatever he did on the voice on the instrument."

"His technique is almost blasphemous sometimes," Avantika juts in, "It shocks sarod players' consciences. I've seen that look on some of their faces, it's too funny!"

"That is super-cool!" Sundari says, "As in, you learnt all the instrument techniques from scratch? All by yourself?"
"Yeah, pretty much."
"Impressive, man."
Gopal says, suddenly jumping into the conversation from the corner of the terrace, "This Uji only looks like an unimpressive bumpkin. He's actually a dude. In other words, he's the opposite of what I am!"
This is Gopal fishing for a compliment. I don't react, but Sundari falls for the bait, "What are you saying? You're really a stud, man! You're doing a cool fellowship, you write so well, you're on TV all the time..."
"I live in a little shit-hole in T.Nagar with an aged uncle. I have no job, I have nothing I want to do." He is taking this too far now, but Sundari laughs this bait off.

"Are you guys drinking vodka?" I ask.
Avantika laughs, "Yeah. Want some?"
I walk into the apartment, and holler from inside, "Yo! What are you guys drinking this with?" I know that my fridge has no soft-drinks or juices.
"Cold water!" Gopal says. That is disgusting, vodka with cold water. I fish out some whiskey from my cupboard and fix myself a drink with ice.

Just then, I get an SMS, from Uma, "Awake?"

I call her back immediately, "Hello!"
"What's up!" she exclaims in a way in which only she can, mixing the excitement with a slice of restraint.
"I'm just drinking whiskey! What's up with you?" I ask, sipping my whiskey. It is a single-malt, bootlegged from Pondicherry, and goes down my parched gullet eagerly.
"Coming for the wedding, no?" Uma asks, sounding slightly tense.
"Of course! Why are you even asking?"
"Generally..." She pauses. I sense that she wants to tell me something else, but doesn't know how to. I wait for a few seconds for her to say something, before changing the topic to my eccentric guests, and the mini-performance on the terrace.
"The girl must be cute!" she says.
"Gopal has his eyes on her," I say, dryly. Then I add, remembering suddenly, "You remember that party where I first met you?"
"Vaguely!" she says, sounding vague.
"Yeah. So, I met this girl there. I even spoke to her for some time. But she doesn't remember me at all!"
"You reminded her of your conversation?" she asks, matter-of-factly.
"No! But we spoke for quite a while. And I remember her so clearly."
"Uji, did you say, 'Hey! Remember, we met at that party?'" she says, imitating my voice alarmingly accurately.
"No, man!" It is a ridiculous question to ask, I'm sure.
"Well, then how do you know she doesn't remember you?"
"She spoke about that party, she spoke about seeing Gopal there. Hell, she remembers you!"
"Hmmm," Uma says.

There is another pause, again awkward, where I sense Uma wants to tell me why she called, but she isn't able to bring herself to. We speak of other things. We discuss each other's jobs for a while. She writes on films and drama for a living, and she tells me that she has this idea for a book of famous stills from Indian cinema, with some comments on each of them. Her choices veer between the cliched and the eccentric. She has the immortal beam of light from Kaagaz ke phool in mind, she also thinks of the last freeze-frame in Charulata. From Sholay, she tells me of a shot of Jaya on the balcony - I don't recollect it, but she assures me it is worth it. She wants to include a couple of shots from an Adoor Gopalakrishnan movie I haven't seen. "Gopal was named after him, you know?" she says. We discuss this and more for a bit, until I get through many more sips of my whiskey, before I get impatient, "Listen, Uma. You didn't call me for this chit-chat, did you? Because I have to go back to my guests at some point."

Uma laughs nervously, and says, "Ok. Listen. I am getting really nervous about this wedding."
"Next Sunday, right? Isn't it a little late to be getting nervous?"
"Better now than after, I think."
I laugh, and ask, "What are you nervous about?"
"Random things, you know. I've been seeing Arun for a year-and-a-half, yes? But living with him is a completely different deal, no?" Before I can react, she continues, "I mean, who knows what I'll discover about him, what habits will irritate me... I mean, it's all okay to love someone, and I love him, okay? But I'm getting a little tense about the permanence attached to this wedding."
"Why don't you live with him for a while before marrying him?"
"Yeah, right."
"I'm serious."
"Dude, we still live in India, as much as we try denying it."
It is time now for falsely confident advice. "Hey, it'll all be perfectly fine! I mean, he's a great guy, you love him... Yeah, you'll probably find some things about him that you don't like - and you'll never discover these things unless you live with him. But those are just small compromises, right?" I don't know Arun too well at all. I have this theory, that you can never know a person unless you drop societal niceties when you talk to them, and I've met him only twice, in very civil, very social circumstances. But this is cliched advice, I don't need to know Arun, or even Uma, to give this speech. Like the horoscope advice in the papers, "Control your temper to avoid confrontation", it is applicable to any person, of any persuasion, on any day of the week.

She reacts with silence. I drone on along the same lines, telling her of stability, long-term vision, and lasting relationships. I morph into a nondescript self-help book.

She says, suddenly, "Can I come and stay with you for a couple of days?" She pauses, and continues, "I just need to get away from this world for a bit."
I am taken aback, but I don't let it get in the way of my response, "Yeah, sure!"
"Thanks!" she says, sounding relieved. And she adds again, "Listen, no Gopal for those two or three days, please?"
I almost saw that request coming.

Some time ago, Uma came to Chennai for a weekend. She wanted to get away from her work, her extended family introducing her to various eligible boys, and her boss who was developing a dangerous crush on her. I didn't live in Chennai then, I would move there a couple of weeks later. She stayed with Gopal at his uncle's house. Conveniently, Gopal's uncle was out of town.

I have heard this story from both parties, and my version is a little muddled.

Uma told me on the phone, the evening I told her that I had met Gopal after years, "It was too much fun, you know. We walked all around Madras, going on aimless walks on the beach, around Georgetown, in the bylanes around the Central station. We came back home, drank lots, watched art movies, read poetry to each other... It was a lot of fun. It felt like we had finally gotten over the fact that we had broken up."

Gopal, on the other hand, said, "So, she came one afternoon. I picked her up from the station and showed her around the by-lanes. We saw all sorts of stuff, we bought strange books off pavements. Then I took her to Georgetown, bought her Burmese noodles. We went to the beach, we drank, we watched movies. It was highly romantic.
"We did some hanky-panky at night," he added, "And she promised to come back next weekend. But she didn't. And she didn't come on the weekend after either. Then, one day, out of the blue, she called me and said she was seeing this other guy. Some fucker called Arun. He's a lawyer, apparently. Sounds like a bloody bore, no?"

Uma had a different version of Arun, "You remember this guy I told you about? The cute, fair, tall, slightly plump guy..." I remembered her mentioning some such. "So, I'm seeing him now."

Gopal said, "He has a fascination for cars, apparently. So hackneyed, man. I'm sure he's a James Bond fan. She deserves better, dude, don't you think?"

"He's so refreshing," Uma told me, a month into the relationship, "Never tired, never irritated, never complains of work, or the pressures of the world. He's a big-shot in his law firm, but it doesn't affect what he's like outside. Such a breath of fresh air, to be around him in the evenings!"

"They seem very settled, man," Gopal said, resignedly, "I'm not saying she should dump him for me, but she really should find someone better. Anyway, thank god she never found out that I was getting some relapse of feelings." Uma found out, soon enough. She ignored Gopal completely for a while - and that was the least she could do for his well-being, give him that little distance from her - and Gopal eventually stopped talking of Arun and his mainstream-ness.

It was in this context that I re-connected with Gopal - he saw me as a window to Uma, and he tried, in convoluted ways, to gaze through it. Sadly for him, she closed the curtains firmly. In this second-coming, I saw a Gopal who was a faint shadow of his earlier self. He got drunk and sobbed about his failed party, he withdrew into his uncle's house and buried himself in writing some fiction. He showed me a few chapters of the book, they were stultifying beyond belief. I don't know if you can describe it as fiction at all, much of the book seemed like a pompous autobiography masquerading as a novel about a young student leader getting disillusioned by a nasty system. The novel was unbecoming of someone of Gopal's intelligence - it was biased, the characters were dreadfully two-dimensional. I thought of Gopal's understanding of people as so perceptive and nuanced, that I couldn't digest this drivel. I wondered if his circumstances had forced him to paint his characters in such clearly black-or-white shades. The writing was boring, the character arcs were predictable, he segued too often into political sermons and morality tales. In short, it was the opposite of unputdownable - unpickupable.

I don't know how the novel ended, because he never finished it. He found the strength, somehow, to be objective about the book, and gave up.

What intrigued me the most during this time, was that Gopal managed to maintain his regular media appearances. He remained a much-wanted talking head on TV and wrote columns for newspapers and magazines. His opinions still leaned as leftwards as they had when he was in the party, but because be fashioned himself as an academic, and not a politician, they were seen as having more credibility.

Gopal and I became each other's only close friends in the last year or so, walking around the bazaar, drinking tea and whiskey, riding around the city on his bike, and making whimsical trips to places around Chennai. Gopal has vast interlocking networks of politicians, academics, writers and dramatists, who hang out in my balcony often. He uses my apartment as his lounge, and I don't complain; I don't have too many visitors otherwise.

I don't know how I will handle Uma's request. It will be impossible to tell Gopal that Uma will come, but she doesn't want to meet him. If I tell him that I'm going out of town, and he finds out I'm here, he'll get very upset. He has a house key, he might even try taking advantage of an empty apartment.

But then, Uma will come only on that condition. "Yeah, sure. No Gopal for those days," I concede.
Uma says, "Great! See you next weekend?"
It is Thursday today, "You mean day after tomorrow?"
She checks something and says, "Oh yeah! Yes, day after tomorrow."
"Done."

I walk back to the terrace to find my three guests locked in what looks like a fierce debate, but on closer inspection, turns out to be merely a dissection of Gopal's rebel-plan for Sundari. "Mussolini had a greater respect for human liberties than your parents!" Gopal says. She seems a little uncomfortable with the statement, but says nothing.

Gopal then plans a weekend getaway, to Bangalore, and lays it down like it is a military operation, "Tell your parents that you're going with a couple of friends, and come. Even if they refuse, just leave. Drastic action is the order of the day."
"Which weekend are you planning this?" I ask, hopefully.
"Tomorrow night," he says.
"You're also going?" I ask, with more hope in my voice.
"I am." I am relieved now. Uma can come without fearing of bumping into Gopal.

"Come along?" Sundari asks me, with those pleading eyebrows of hers - in two words, turning my solution into a whole new conundrum.
***

Have had a very tough two weeks. Too many night show movies, concerts, partying, a trip to Bangalore and work. And, I'm off westward today - for the first time in my life, beyond Jaisalmer. Back in two weeks to tell you more of this story.

Her Obviousness - Part III

2011-05-03T13:36:00.003+05:30

Continued from here. All parts together, are here.
***

"How is Uma?" Gopal asks. He asks me this question every time we talk of her. In the time when I was Gopal's understudy-cum-manfriday, I developed an unclassifiable love for Uma. She was a whole five years older than me, she had a job, and lived in a world that I barely comprehended at the time. It strikes me that she was, then, as old as I am now. Through the eyes of a eighteen-year-old, twenty-four did seem like an eternity away - it is that natural feeling, isn't it, where ages seem older until you actually live them.

Uma accompanied Gopal to most of his rallies and meetings, and because he spent most of his time hobnobbing with the bigwigs, we spent most of our time talking to each other. There was always an aura of melancholy about Uma; but it was an assured melancholy, as if she was very happy being like that. She was social, sometimes, too social for her own good, had multifarious friends in multifarious surroundings, but she never fit right into anything - there was a removedness about her involvement. Even when she spoke to me, in conversations that were often preciously private, she never looked at me - seemed to be addressing a third person who invisibly sat in front of her eyes.

We didn't use Gopal as a crutch to hang out together for much longer, we met independently of him. Afternoons, when I rarely had class, were spent together inhaling book-dust in Bangalore's cubbyhole bookshops, and drinking diluted beer in its gloomy pubs listening to lazy music. If you ask me what we spoke about on those afternoons, I will struggle to tell you. We spoke about books, I think, we loved very similar authors - the Americans, Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Steinbeck, and the Indians - Ghosh, Seth and Narayan. Often, we walked down MG Road, when it still had its boulevard, slightly buzzed, slightly melancholic, completely silent and absolutely content being in each other's company.

She was from a family that heard a lot of Carnatic music, though she didn't know much, and I remember conversations about Hindustani and Carnatic music. We both loved O.P. Nayyar, and despised A.R.Rahman, and went on long drives in her car, listening to and singing along with old Hindi music cassettes.
"How do you know all these songs?" she asked me, once.
"My father," I said, "Was a fanatic." My family didn't like my father's obsession, because they came from a family of Hindustani vocalists, all descendants of my great-grandfather, who was a close friend of the legendary Ustad Abdul Karim Khan, in addition to being a respected doctor. My grand-uncle had an indelible impact on Yakshagana music, being one of the pioneers who gave it a Hindustani music twist. Uma's grandfather was a leading concert-organiser of his time, and her family, who viewed me as an adorable kid who was, perhaps, in love with her, organised two concerts for me that year.

The end of Gopal's relationship with her came quite inevitably - he was too busy to spend enough time with her, and she was too irritated with his unpredictable schedule and his increasing involvement with the Party. "The Party is his only girlfriend," she said, unwittingly echoing what Bhagat Singh once said about independence being his bride. "If I have a boyfriend, I should be able to talk to him at least once in two days, no?" she asked, tiredly.

I was in a strange position, being a close confidante of both parties. "She's too clingy, man," Gopal said, "I mean, if I go to a village with no network for a couple of days, I'm dead." I wanted to tell him that landline phones were everywhere, and that he could call her once in a while, wherever he was, but, unlike now, our relationship wasn't one of equals then.

This break-up upset me a little more than I thought it would. Gopal and Uma seemed so naturally to fit into each other's lives. Uma's modelling gave her an aura of being stupid, but she wasn't. Sometimes, her intelligence and depth of emotion dwarfed Gopal's. Gopal came across as someone who was all about impact, but even he had an inherent intellectualism about him. He was someone who found justifications for his living, however indefensible his ways were, and went to great lengths, reading, thinking and writing about these theories. She saw through him, and I knew he liked that.

They understood each other in quiet ways that I haven't seen much in couples. They spoke very little, and communicated without any fuss. They never had a misunderstanding that I knew of - and being a close friend of both of them, I knew a lot. The end came because they just drifted apart, they felt very little need for each other. They got each other so well that they never had a break-up conversation. One evening, they had a normal conversation in my presence at his apartment, and by the end of it, they knew it was time to break-up.

I begged Gopal many times to talk to her, and get back together with her. He said, "Your being upset with this is most bizarre. Both Uma and I think you're in love with her, and now when your coast is clear, you're getting upset about it. We are fine, we've moved on. I think you should too."

Uma said, "Uji, I sometimes think you were in love with Gopal and me as a concept, and not the two of us individually."
I disagreed, "No. I'm only in love with you, I'll admit that. But I have no chances whatsoever, I'll admit that also. But it will pass, I think. It is a question of finding someone else."
She laughed, "Then stop getting upset about this."
"But you guys were so perfect..."
"I was in that relationship, Uji," she said, with an air of finality, "Not you."

They kept in touch, I think, for some time, although I lost all contact with Gopal. Every now and then, I'd see her reply to an SMS with the her Gopal-expression, and walk away to a corner when she got a call, like she did when Gopal called. When he came back to Bangalore, for weekends, they would make plans to meet, and occasionally, these plans fructified. But their relationship faded away completely within six months, leaving behind hazy memories that are half-true, half-fantasy, and the satisfaction, Uma told me, of knowing someone as lovely as Gopal.

By the end of my second year in college, my life was so meshed with Uma's, that people presumed she was my girlfriend. In college, that made me a cool guy, I was Gopal's successor in every way. Amongst her friends, though, it made her highly uncomfortable. From the cosy comfort of a close friendship, I watched her draw harsh lines that just made us good friends, then friends, and eventually old-friends-who-say-hi-occasionally. "Oh, each time we meet, we pick up right where we left off, like we've always been that way," we say, to other people. Only we know how untrue that is.

Gopal never fails to ask me, "How is Uma?" every time we talk of her, like he has done just now. Initially, I doubted the genuineness of his question, but of late, I'm convinced that he is actually concerned. She never asks me about him, unless I bring him up in conversation.
"I spoke to her yesterday," I say, "She's getting a little tense about all the wedding planning."
"The wedding planning? Or getting married?"
"A bit of both, I think."

"Who next?" Sundari asks, excited by this conversation.
Gopal goes into a ponderous silence for a few seconds and declares, "There was this other girl, Mandavi..." Gopal stops, and I know why he does. He has confessed to me that this relationship lasted only for a few weeks, and that he is embarrassed about remembering precious little about it. "I don't even remember where we first kissed!" he told me once. He said, "I'm telling you what happened and how, so that the two of us can reconstruct it later."

I wonder if one can forget an entire relationship, however unserious it was.

"But that didn't last long," Gopal said, "Ended as abruptly as it started."

There is an awkward silence - everyone expects Gopal to say something more about Mandavi, but he doesn't, he has nothing to say.
Avantika breaks the silence with, "Anyone wants chai?" She will offer to make some now, but I don't want her chai, it lacks punch, it is too subtle for me.
"Let's walk down to the tea shop at the end of the road?" I ask, and everyone seems more enthusiastic.

Gopal empties the bowl of fruits on to his hand, distributes them amongst us, fairly and equally, in his communist manner, and leads us out of the doorway, down the stairs and through the front gate.

I live in T. Nagar, where South India buys bling sarees and davanis for bling weddings, in what used to be a quiet lane behind the immortal Pondy Bazaar. My mother told me, when I was a kid, that it was called Pondy Bazaar because most of the goods came from Pondicherry. Recently, a book put that theory to rest for me - the name came as a corruption of Soundara Pandy Bazaar, named after a certain Soundarapandian Nadar, whose statue proudly stood at one end of the bazaar.

On weekends, only the brave denizens of the neighbourhood venture out on foot, and only the foolish take their cars outside the safety of their apartment's minuscule parking lots. Pondy Bazaar is frighteningly crowded, and frighteningly popular. You cannot walk three feet without bumping into a bargain or overhearing one. You can buy anything for a little less than half the price he quotes for it, you can find spare parts for anything you own, you can find someone to repair every kind of machinery. In a year and a bit, Pondy Bazaar hasn't disappointed me even once.

But once the shutters fall down on the mega-shops, the gaudy, flashing neon lights rest for the day, their employees work their way into jam-packed buses to their suburbs, the roadside hawkers throw tarpaulin over their little shops, the area acquires a different glow. The roads are bathed in orange, from the hazy lights that dot the roadside, the pavements are taken over by small omelette and tea sellers, a few drunks walk to and from the local wine shop, families and shoppers gather at the eateries for dinner, the occasional bike speeds by, a few cars sail along the street. Strange city maintenance vehicles trundle along - the garbage trucks that make half-hearted attempts at cleaning the streets, another one that emits some spray that apparently de-mosquitoes the area, tow trucks that had a busy day making small money off parking violators, assorted cranes from frenetic construction sites make their way back to their nightly resting places.

We trudge down my street and take the right turn on to the Bazaar. Gopal and Sundari walk a little behind Avantika and me. They are engrossed in a conversation about some play she acted in last week. Gopal is giving her some kind of feedback, I gather.

Avantika says, "Pretty girl, no?" I nod. "I think there's something going on," she adds.
"You're meeting both of them for the first time, and you still want to gossip."
"I'm just speculating, pah!"

We congregate around the tea shop, an open air set-up made entirely of tyres, plastic drums and plywood. A young boy sits behind this plywood counter and takes orders, and doles out cigarettes and crunchies along with the tea. We get four teas for the four of us, and I help myself to a cigarette. Gopal gives me a look, and I say, "Dude, I told you, once a week. The habit's on its way out."

I take a strip of glossy paper kept on a plastic plate, ignite it in a small lamp kept for the purpose, and light my cigarette with it. I ask Sundari, "So, why are you being hidden from your parents?" Her non-recognition has made it very difficult for me to talk to her, and this question has taken some courage.

She giggles and says, "Long story, man."
Gopal butts in, "So, some guy was supposed to come and see her today, even though she made it very clear to her parents that she was not interested in this sort of thing."
"So," she continues, "We made a plan. I left home in the morning, and haven't gone back since... My parents know most of my friends, and they would have started looking by lunch time. But they don't know Gopal, so I'm hiding with him. I send them messages from STD booths telling them I'm alive, and that I'm only protesting."
Avantika laughs. I say, "This plan smacks of Gopal."
Sundari beams at him, "Yes. Gopal is planning a rebellion for me."
"That's a bit extreme, no?" I ask him, "Even with your background?"
"You don't know her parents, Uji," he says, "She can't leave the house after seven, unless she is at a concert or a performance."
"Or at a friend's house they approve of." she adds.
"Yeah. It's too oppressive... She's not a kid, right?"
"You know, they didn't even ask me before beginning this matrimony process. Suddenly, I find a guy's matrimony profile in my inbox, and when I ask my Appa, he coolly tells me that he has sent out my profile along with my email address to many eligible boys. I am checking my desktop for something, and there's a folder with my photos - in different poses, different clothes, singing, acting, dancing, at home, with my parents, with my brother, with cousins, grandparents. And, to top it all, a zip-file with all these photos in it! God knows which creep or his father has been checking me out.
"Two weeks ago, they met this aunty and uncle, who saw me act in a play and fell in love with me. So, their son, some boring engineering dude, with some boring engineering job, in some boring software company was supposed to turn up this evening to check me out."
"You decided you'd rather have Gopal check you out," I say.
She giggles again, "Yeah, why not! He's good-looking, and, from what I gather, rather smart also."

Gopal says, "You're the only one who thinks I'm good-looking."
He is lying. Uma always told me she thought Gopal was handsome. Hell, even I think he is handsome.
Gopal is interested in this girl, and he is making it uncharacteristically obvious to everyone.

"Okay, you're not a John Abraham with mass appeal," Sundari laughs, "But you have an appeal about you."
"Yeah. His mass appeals to some people," I say, punching Gopal on his tummy.
"I'm working on it, dude. Strict diets, walks around the neighbourhood... It's all happening."

"Tell me," Sundari says suddenly, "Don't you think this John Abraham looks like his face has been photoshopped on to the rest of his body? Or, like one of those photos you take with that cutout on which you add your face..."
We laugh, and she says, "I was watching him for an hour on Koffee with Karan this morning, and that is the only thought that came to my mind. I didn't even hear what he was saying." We laugh some more.

Avantika is the first to finish her tea, and she asks for another one. We finish slowly, and are happy with one. I stub out my half-finished cigarette. The fact that I don't enjoy it anymore is encouraging.
Trudging back to my house, Sundari walks with me. She asks, "Will you play for us when we go back?"
"I haven't played in a month, I've almost stopped, you know," I tell her. She looks a bit disappointed, so I add, "But I'll play." I make a theatrical look towards the skies, and declare, "I'll play this raag called Chandni Kedar?"
"Like the moonlight?" she asks.
"Yes," I say. I am such a fraud; the moonlight has little to do with my choice of raag, I have just spent the last week listening to a Vilayat Khan recording of it. I like listening to classical music recordings over weeks, they take time to seep in, they take time to get under your skin, possess you and push you to want to recreate the magic. The Chandni Kedar, a raag I never learnt formally, is nearly ripe now.
"I don't know much about Hindustani music," she says, "Although I can identify some raags. Is Chandni Kedar like Kedar? I think I can identify that..."
"Oh yeah, it is. The differences are very small," I say.

We are home, and I bring my sarod out to the terrace, along with my tanpura box. Once the drone begins, I start the arduous task of tuning an unused sarod. The instrument, like most, hates being neglected, and has to be coaxed back into civil behaviour. It takes a half an hour to get the twenty-three strings in shape, and fingers warmed up and ready to play. Avantika and Gopal don't have the patience, and have retreated back into the house, while Sundari watches me tune silently with no comment.

I look up at her, and say, "Ok, I'm ready." She nods, smiling, and shouts, "Gopal! He's ready." Gopal makes some noise from inside the house. She says, "Start, they'll come."

I start, plucking the sa string, and adding a layer of the raag on it with the sympathetic strings. I repeat, until I am sure of the sa. I begin adding notes to the sa now, the ri, the pa. Small phrases, a twang of the support strings, another small phrase, another twang. Then I let out a couple of phrases, very typical of the Kedars. She smiles, I play the phrases again, just to see that smile again. She imitates the curve of the phrase with her hand.

Gopal and Avantika join us in the terrace, with glasses of water in their hands. Sundari whispers to Gopal, "Raag Chandni Kedar." Gopal nods, cluelessly. Avantika says, "Hmmm," to a phrase I play.

The alaap continues, meandering in the lower registers, setting a platform for the raag. I am more unhurried than I usually am, a sign that the raag has made some inroads into my system. Sundari likes the two ma-s in succession, the phrase pa-ma-ma brings that smile to her face each time. I use it more often that I normally would.

She gets a message on her phone, she looks at it, smiles, turns to Gopal and smiles again. I noticed Gopal fiddling with his phone just a few seconds ago. This happens again, and again. I close my eyes, and concentrate on the raag, nothing else can soothe me now.
***

To continue.

Her Obviousness - Part II

2011-04-28T20:30:00.003+05:30

Continued from here.
***

Avantika, my cousin, and I, sit on the open terrace in my apartment eating a bowl of fruits. Her eyes are closed, but she isn't asleep, she's listening to me hum a Carnatic raag I heard on the radio this afternoon - the announcer called it Neelambari. I think I have heard an Ilayaraaja song in this raag, or a Rahman song, but I can't place it. I punctuate my nervous explorations in the new raag with electric snaps from my cheery yellow mosquito-bat - necessary mild violence amidst musical serenity. Sometimes, the snap is occasional, sudden and singularly violent, and at other times, when the mosquito gets caught within the wires of the bat, it is a continuous streak that tapers off like an automatic weapon. The smell of the freshly cut fruits is joined by a faint burnt smell of electrocuted mosquitoes.

"Hmmm," Avantika says, "You're getting stuck - same phrases again and again."
"Show me some lenience! I only heard it for ten minutes this afternoon," I reply, popping a papaya into my mouth. I remember suddenly that I once bought a book that listed many Carnatic raags with their outlines. "Wait," I tell her, "Let me get this raga book I have and see what I can do!"

Just as I stand up, I hear the gate of my apartment complex opening, and see a bike making its way into the parking lot. On the bike, is a girl dressed like a Taliban operative in a helmet. She wears a full-sleeved T-shirt over her kurta, a dupatta veils her face and a helmet sits on her head, shades cover her eyes, and white gloves adorn her hands. Gopal closes the gate behind her, and leads her to the lift.

"Ah, Gopal and chick are here," I announce. Avantika looks vaguely in my direction and says, "Pass me the bat?" I leave the bat with her and go to the main door, as the doorbell echoes around my empty apartment.

I open the door and find the woman still veiled - I wonder if she is being protected from her Quranic parents, but a long, pointed bindi puts those thoughts at rest. Gopal says, "Uji, meet Sundari. Sundari, this is Ujwal, my closest friend!" Life had come a long way for me from when I was his chauffeur.

"Hi," Sundari says, taking off her veil, revealing a single silver nose-ring. Time stops, and images of a bizarre party come whizzing back to me.
"Hey," I say. I am not sure if I should remind her of our previous meeting, because she doesn't make any noises of recognition at all. If I tell her that her home phone number is 24342037, I am sure she will have a blocked artery. I just say, "I have a feeling I've seen you before."
She says, "Yeah? I don't know..."
Gopal butts in, "Uji used to be a musician. He plays that instrument that looks like a half-football with a trapezoid metal plate."
"The sarod," I tell her. Gopal is putting on his cool-act, he
Her eyes widen, and she says, "That's impressive!"
Gopal says, "Yeah. You must've seen him at a concert - he keeps going to kacheris here."
"Yeah," she agrees, "That must be it."
I smile. I have never seen her at a concert, I'm sure. She's not the kind of girl one would miss. And if I had seen her, I would have spoken to her, reminded her of that party, and reconfirmed her phone number. "There are enough concerts in Madras for two regulars to have never met," I say, bringing a philosophical quietus to the issue.
"Let's go to the terrace? My cousin is there," I offer.

We troop through the apartment to the terrace.

"Where's your cousin?" Gopal asks. I admire his dedication; he has come with a woman, but still displays great curiosity about another.
"She must've gone to the loo," I say, as Gopal takes over the mosquito bat, helps himself to an apple, settles down on the easy chair I was sitting on, and asks Sundari to feel at home. She sits on the floor, leaning against the wall, and I sit beside her, still finding myself unable to take my eyes off her nose-ring.

Avantika enters the terrace carrying a beanbag and a mat, "I knew we'd need more seating."
"That's Avantika, my cousin," I say. Gopal nods, and I wonder if he finds her interesting. It is difficult to be objective about one's cousins - and I had seen Avantika since she was called Jullu (she was named Manjula, but changed it when she was just six, because Baba Sehgal's song tormented her) and wore frilly frocks with polka dots, pink hearts, teddy bears and other random creatures on them - but Avantika is fairly pretty. She might have been a lot more attractive if she were a little thinner, though. "That's Gopal, and that's Sundari," I finish the introductions. Avantika nods in their direction.

She dumps the beanbag on the floor, sinks into it, and throws the mat in our direction. I catch it, and turn to Sundari, who stands up. We spread it, and settle down on it.

I still can't believe she doesn't remember me.

"So, what do you do?" I ask Sundari. Sundari immediately turns to Gopal, and they giggle together. "I told you!" Gopal says. "Just downstairs, I was telling Sundari that you were like a respectable uncle, and that you would interview her about her employment and marital details."
"I'm just asking her what she does!" They laugh again.
"I'm a dancer, and I act in some drama," she replies.
"Vernacular drama?" I ask her, hoping to remind her of something.
"Yes," she replies.
Gopal asks, "Which vernacular?" Now she must surely remember me.
"Tamil," she replies, expressionlessly, "Oh, one of my shows is next Sunday. You guys must come!"

"What do you do, Gopal?" Avantika asks.
"This is turning into a group discussion," he replies. Sundari laughs, I smirk.
"I think Gopal is currently unemployed. Though he has a plush fellowship that pays him a lot of money for nothing, and a book deal with Oxford University Press," I offer.
"What's the book about?"
"The book is a history of communism in India. Early communists, when and how the CPI started, its factions, its mushroom organisations, student movements, labour movements, Naxalism, everything. I'm tracing the ideology, and its manifestations."
"Oh wait!" Avantika exclaims, suddenly, "You're Gopalakrishnan Menon, aren't you? That's why you looked so bloody familiar!"
Gopal blushes, "Yes. The very same."

After college, Gopal joined the Party full-time. Barely a year out of college, when he was still a known figure in the hostel, word got around that he was climbing up hierarchies with alarming tempo, and was put in almost sole charge of overseeing campaigning in two districts for Panchayat elections.

By this time, he could deliver full-fledged speeches in chaste Kannada that put native speakers to shame. He spoke with calm which suggested that he was in control of what he had to do. He spoke with vigour, but never let emotions run high. He was brutally honest, about himself, about the Party, and also about his opposition. The audience never felt like he was cheapening the democratic process by rabble-rousing, the audience never felt like they were being spoken down to, they never thought he was insulting their intelligence. He used humour, he used sarcasm, but never overdid the rhetoric. He never spoke of a problem without offering a rational solution. He never criticised unless he had a better alternative to offer.

He was just twenty-seven when he got appointed as an observer of the politburo, and he became close friends with the leading communists of the country. Gossipmongers said he might move back to Kerala and set himself up for a long tenure as Chief Minister. Others said he was too big for that; he was only looking Delhi-wards. A magazine, in a feature on the leading youth politicians, claimed that Gopal was approached by both the Congress and the BJP with unimaginable sums of money to switch over, and that he refused. It also claimed that Gopal had Sitaram Yechuri's number saved in his phone as "Sita Darling". Gopal regularly appeared on TV channels as a talking head, sharing his views on the economy, polity and occasionally, Hindi cinema.

It was around this time, somewhere in 2007, when I just got into business school, that I heard that Gopal quit the Party. The media, too distracted by India's early World Cup exit, gave it almost no thought. The reports were brief and vague - he had left the Party due to disputes with the leadership, and there were rumours that he might join one of Big Two.

Gopal surprised everyone by joining two IIT graduates and floating a new party that aimed at bringing the young, educated middle-class to the forefront of politics. His move was hailed by the media as a bold, ideological choice.

But I had my doubts.

At the party to which I first chauffeured Gopal, we had a long conversation deep into the night. The party had died, everyone had passed out, save for a couple who had locked themselves in a bedroom even before we arrived (we heard noises from in there even at 5 am), Uma was asleep on Gopal's lap and he was twirling her locks, like he had done all night, the music had changed, by Gopal's choice, to old Hindi film songs. I sat, nursing my seventh orange juice, and Gopal was on his seventh vodka, happier that usual, but still sprightly and alert.
"How can you be a communist and hang out with this crowd?" I asked him.
He laughed, "That analysis too simplistic. I am communist, true. I believe in the ideology. But I also live in this world, you know. I mean, look at the party - most of the leaders come from backgrounds that are privileged, and live lives that are very comfortable. Our ideology isn't against that. In any case, the communism we advocate isn't strictly Marxist, right? It is a tempered communism. It is the communism of our age - we are as communist as we can be within the constraints of our polity and times."
In hindsight, his reply is self-contradicting and made no sense at all. But when he told me this, I was one year into engineering college, and had encountered every form of ideology only through him. I believed him, and respected him even more - his principles were not a blind following of an existing system, but one that was seen through the prism of modernity.

Gopal was in college for a month after that party, and he seemed to take a liking to me. He often took me to the city on his bike, on Party work, showing me around parts of Bangalore that I never saw after he left - the gullies of Shivajinagar, Cottonpet, Majestic and Chamrajpet. He took me to villages around the city, from Nelamangala to Kanakapura to Ramanagaram. He said, "The first step towards a complete education is to know that there are different kinds of people in this world, and, at the same time, realising that, ultimately, they all have the same basic needs." Again, it was just the sort of pop philosophy that sounded nuanced at the time, but so superficial in hindsight.

Three days before he left, he called a meeting of the Party chapter in college, and gave us a little farewell speech, where he announced that he wasn't taking the job he was offered by a software establishment, and that he was going to serve the country through active, full-time politics.

He said that he wanted the chapter to run and grow to neighbouring institutions. He also appointed me as his successor to run the chapter. Even that, he did in the most fair manner - he told the general body that he wanted me to be the leader, but because he didn't know what they wanted, and because he believed in democracy, he asked them if anyone else wanted the job. No one dared oppose Gopal's candidate.

For a few months, Gopal supervised chapter activities, and I worked hard to get more membership, and help with party work around the college. But once Gopal became too big to look into our affairs, I lacked the energy and the drive to take it forward. The chapter died by the end of the year, and I lost all touch with Gopal.

From the six months that I knew him closely, I found it very difficult to believe that he had any deep affiliation to ideology. I sensed, from his dealings with other Party workers, that he joined the Party only because he had a Kerala background, and the structures in the bigger Karnataka parties were much harder to break into. When there was talk of him moving back to Kerala, again, I knew it couldn't be true, because Kerala had a strong communist culture, and it would be more difficult for him to stand out there. Gopal was taking the route he knew best - to hold himself out as this suave, next generation politician, being seen at the right places with the right people, and doing and saying the right things.

I speculated, therefore, when he quit the Party, that he had done something unforgivable - my mind pointed towards a misuse of Party funds, because he was quite monarchic about the funds that our little chapter had, handing them out arbitrarily to people and for causes he thought were most deserving. Word must have gotten around, I thought, and the other parties wouldn't touch him now.

He had fallen from grace, needed a soft place to land. So, I theorised, he founded this new party with two inexperienced, idealistic IITians, and came out of the mess looking like he had taken the moral high ground.

His new party, like a couple of others like itself, didn't really take off. It found a small group of excited city-kids who threw themselves into development activities in a few Panchayats in Karnataka hoping to increase the party's base, but they broke no ground. They lost badly in every election, despite Gopal's presence, and slowly dissolved. One of the IITians made some remarks about Gopal's lack of interest in the party, and maintained that Gopal was only using this party to re-position himself into the role he took up once the party ended - of that of a researcher and writer.

I am still unconvinced of these allegations, because I met Gopal again around this phase. I was finishing IIM-Bangalore, when Gopal's new party made a visit to the campus, to try and recruit management graduates into their fold. Gopal made a speech, in his characteristic, rational, calm, meaningful style, about how India desperately needed a younger generation of politicians. The speech brought tears to some graduates' eyes, and they offered full support to him. But it amounted to very little.

In Gopal's own words, "You know, Uji, the problem with having middle class India as your vote base, is that they are too busy being middle class India to bother with anything else." He added, on another evening on my terrace, "These fellows think they're better than the people in the villages, because they're cool and educated. Such rubbish. They sign ridiculous online petitions without even finding out what they're actually about, and they do little else."

That evening, when Gopal spoke at IIM-Bangalore, I met him backstage. "I hope you're joining our movement, Uji!" he said.
I shook my head, "No chance - I'm not getting conned twice into your movements!"
He laughed heartily, and said, "Okay then, give me your phone number at least. We'll have some beer some day. You drink, don't you?"
"I do, Gopal."

We had that beer on the night when his party formally dissolved. Gopal was shattered, "This was inevitable, I know. But I really tried," he said. "I really tried, Uji, I really tried." He held his head in his hands and wept. This couldn't have been a performance - Gopal was a trained actor, but he wasn't this good.

Gopal's political career was, quite conceivably, irretrievably finished.

Sundari looks a little puzzled, and so I explain, "Gopal used to appear on TV a lot, as a political expert in these news channels."
She is impressed by that, "Not bad, dude! You never told me."
"You come on TV each week, I didn't think you'd find this too exciting," Gopal says. "Oh, Sundari anchors a show on classical dance on Kalaignar TV..."
We nod.

Gopal then says, "Oh, Avantika, I asked Uji what you do when I spoke to him on the phone. And he didn't have much of a clue. I expressed my doubts on whether you are his cousin at all."
Avantika laughs, taking the mosquito bat from Gopal's hand, "What did he say when you asked him?"
"I said that you did some sociology or something like that, and that you were coming to Madras to give an interview for some journalism... or something like that."
"He's not far off the mark," she says, zapping a colony of mosquitoes with three ferocious swishes.
Gopal smiles, "Uji has a shady history with women, which is why I had my doubts."

"I'm sorry," I say, "Gopal has the shadiest history with women."
Sundari seems too thrilled by this statement, "Ooh! You have to tell me!"
"I'll let Gopal do the honours."
"Why, da?"
"Please?" Sundari asks again.

"Okay. So there have been some women."
"How many?" she asks.
"Um, you can't really put a number to these things, no?" I say, "It's like asking how many grains of sugar in that dabba."
"Bastard, it's not that bad."
"You guys have to tell me now!"

Gopal sighs, and starts, "So, first, there was this girl in my IIT class back in Thrissur."
This is too funny for me. I imagine Gopal as a seventeen-year-old geek grappling with problems on pulleys and weights and slopes from Irodov's confounding little book, and hitting on another seventeen-year-old at the same time. "She was the hottest in our class back then... If her facebook photos are anything to go by, she's still quite hot."
"Why did it end?"
"We were seventeen. You really expect these things to last forever?!"
"They could, I mean, why not?" She is asking him that in full earnest.
I expect Gopal to dismiss her with sarcasm, but he doesn't, "Well, we drifted apart - I went off to Bangalore, she stayed behind in Thrissur. Different worlds, different altitudes."

"Then?" she asks, "Who comes next?"
Gopal thinks for a while, as he polishes off the last pieces of fruit, and says, "Sushmita - she was in my engineering college."
"Wait, this is that Sushmita two batches senior to me? As white as white can get? Shortish, specs... Thick lips."
"Yes, sir."
"Wow. How long did that last? Wasn't she infinitely irritating?"
"A month or so. She dumped me, actually. Apparently, I was too lost in my own world to care for her."

"Then came Uma?" I ask.
"Yeah, Uma," he replies, and turns to Sundari, "So, Uma was this girl, slightly older than me. Really really hot. And very very smart."
She cuts him off, "Oh wait. This girl is like tall - maybe your height - fair, light-eyes..."
"How do you know?" I ask.
She tells Gopal, "Gopal! I've been telling you for a week now! I have definitely seen you at a party years ago. I even spoke to you that day! You were there with her. At my cousin's friend's house in Bangalore!"
Gopal says, "I've been to parties in that house many times, but I have no recollection of seeing you there at all. You know the strangest thing - you're so pretty, that I can't believe that I might've seen you and then forgotten about it."

How dare he? That is my line!
She blushes.

I am dumbstruck. She remembers the party, she remembers Gopal who spoke to her for ten seconds at that party, she remembers Gopal's girlfriend whom she only saw from a distance. She spoke to me for more than an hour that day, even exchanged phone numbers, but shows no signs of recognition whatsoever.
***

To continue.

Her Obviousness - Part I

2011-04-26T19:04:00.007+05:30

Breezy romance (like Subtle Subramanian). The blog was getting too meaningful for my own good!
***

A few days after my fifteenth real birthday - I have two, one official birthday, in November, from my forged birth certificate, and one real, the actual day on which I was born - an uncle, inebriated, declared to a large family gathering, "This fellow here," pointing to me, "He'll make it big." He paused, and said again, "But he'll be the most boring of us all." My family, an assortment of old-moneyed caricatures living amidst small-town Karnataka's high society, all stared at him incredulously briefly, and burst into a volcano of laughter. At the cost of being dramatic, I must confess: that evening, I knew I had enough of this life.

A seat in a prime engineering college, much to the shock of my family, who didn't think beyond the failing family business, brought me to the outskirts of Bangalore - to a crowded hostel characterised by smells of urine, stale sweat, dirty underwear and cheap deodorant.

I came back home, each vacation, growing less fond of my cousins and uncles, and grudgingly accepting my parents' grumbling about my career choice, only to rush back to the comforting smells of the hostel. When that was over, my family, disillusioned by my older cousins who seemed happy bringing the old-money down to old-no-money, and buoyed by my uncle's tipsy prophecy of untold successes, urged me to come back and take over. I bought two years' time, telling them I needed to do an MBA.

My family disintegrated in those two years - a couple of cousins moved to the Middle East, taking their parents with them, one aunt died, large properties were sold, suits were filed in Courts in and around Mangalore, and everyone got together for one last meeting where the properties were settled. My parents bought a plush flat in the eastern extremities of the town, and settled down into their hermitage.

I moved to Chennai, gainfully employed at a bank, the gains were much more than I expected them to be, lived a life of monotonous anonymity that showed no signs of "making it big". My uncle's prediction, I realised, was just drunken gas. Only the second part of the his prediction, of being the most boring person around, seemed to be coming increasingly true over the years.

Gopalakrishnan Menon, the hero of this story, or the central character, to be more correct, for he doesn't engage in much heroism anywhere, is the only person about whom I made a similar drunken prediction - I said that the world would know his name one day. I don't know what to make of him - he's not finished with the world, and it might be too early to write him off - but he seems far far away from anything earth-shattering.

He called me this evening, and said, "Uji, I need a place to hide a girl for the night."
I reinterpreted this line, like one does with everything that Gopal says, as, "I am bringing a girl along. I hope that extra bedroom is clean and empty."
I said, "Sorry, man. I have a cousin staying over. She's sleeping in that room."
Gopal said, "No problem, da. This girl and the cousin will sleep in that room, we'll canoodle on your bed. I just need a place to hide her."

In six years of knowing Gopal, he hadn't made a request this unintelligible. I tried asking him what this deal was, and why she was being hidden. He evaded, and told me he'd tell me when the time was right. I told him that I didn't want police at my door, and he told me stop being dramatic.

My first encounter with Gopal was in my first week in college in the toilet. He threw the door of the loo open, walked out content, and declared to the queue of boys waiting to get in, "You don't feel like the holidays are over until you crap in one of these shit-holes!"

It was my first week, and I was warned that these seniors, cackling away, would pounce on me if I reacted to their jokes. But I couldn't help it, I guffawed with them. One senior, a particularly thug-like variety, glowered, "What do you know, fuckin' fuchha? Must've come straight from your amma's lap." Gopal turned to me, his shampoo-commercial hair strewn over his face, and a shiny earring peeking from one ear, winked, and turned to the thug, and said, "You're so full of shit." The queue cackled some more, and forgot about me.

I saw Gopal act in a play the next week - he performed with a theatre group in town - as a waiter given to philosophical outbursts, delivered in a deadly, robotic monotone. Moving constrainedly and speaking expressionlessly, he got the audience cheering each time he entered the stage. I didn't watch or know much theatre then, but I thought it was an extraordinary performance, for, off stage, he was maddeningly energetic and his face conveyed meaning even when you couldn't hear him speak. A classmate, who claimed to have a background in theatre, dismissed it, "He was playing the character so two-dimensionally. There was no depth. I mean, he was just that - a waiter who makes philosophical statements." I disagreed, but not vocally.

For an engineering student, Gopal was atypically political. He was a cardholder of the Communist Party of India, often found at political rallies and labour strikes, leading the sloganeering and shepherding the masses. He started a chapter of the Party in college - I joined, out of hero-worship - and tried to politicise college elections. He had a two-point manifesto - regularise the maintenance staff who were employed on contract basis, and make administration more transparent and inclusive. The hostel didn't care. They voted for him because he was Gopal the Great, and he beat the day-scholar candidate by a humiliating margin.

Gopal was most popular in the hostel because he had a girlfriend who wasn't from the girls' hostel. Gopal's girlfriend, a tall, thin, fair, light-eyed city girl, who occasionally drove up to campus in her own car, was a part-time model, we heard. She also did radio jockeying, apparently, and there was a strong rumour that she was a few years older than him, and recently divorced. The last part was untrue, I discovered years later, she had only broken up with a long-standing live-in boyfriend who was also a model, but the rest was fairly accurate.

I spent most of that first year observing Gopal from a distance. He spoke to me a few times - usually issued instructions on Party work - but I never had the courage to speak to him about anything else. He was friends with a lot of first years, but I was always slightly intimidated by his coolness.

One evening, a month before he finished college, he came to my room suddenly, and asked, "You have a screwdriver?" If it were one of my classmates, I might have replied with, "The tool or the drink?" But I was so taken aback when Gopal asked, that I mumbled something, rummaged and fished out a spanner and asked, "Will this do?"
"Screwdriver?" he said, again, laughing.

When I was looking again, for I was sure I owned one, he asked, "You drink?"
I told him I didn't. He said, "Brilliant! Want to go to the city for a party? I need someone to ride the bike back."
I was nervous again, "What party is this?"
"Don't worry. It's this bunch of friends I have in town. Eclectic crowd. You'll like it."

The bike ride was quite a trek through the narrower gullies of town, "Short cut," he said. "If I take the main roads, we'll reach in time for next weekend's party." I hoped he wouldn't be too drunk by the end of the party; there was no way I'd make it back to college on my own. He seemed to read my mind, "I'll tell you the road on the way back, don't worry! I won't get that drunk."

My usual bout of nervousness struck again. I was on my way to a party to which I wasn't invited, and I was going with a guy I barely knew. It wasn't the inappropriateness that worried me - I was known for being inappropriate - it was that I would have to spend an entire evening with people who all knew each other, but didn't know me. I hung on to Gopal's words, "Eclectic bunch." Eclectic bunches were usually very open and accepting. Or, they were the other extreme, cold and exclusive. But if this group had Gopal in it, they were likely to be the former.

As the bike wound around Bangalore, somehow, I found myself at a landmark I recognised - the Cantonment station. From there, again, it was all a whirl of bungalows and tree-lined residential streets. He stopped at one such bungalow, from where muffled noises of a wild gathering wafted towards us - it was the particular combination of loud music and louder conversation. Until then, I had only encountered this in my Mangalorean family gatherings.

Gopal rang the bell, and the noise stopped for a couple of seconds. I heard a woman holler from a room upstairs, "Dude, Annie, open the door!"
Gopal said, twinkling, "Brace yourself for Annie."
This brought two images to my mind. The first one was a matronly, overbearing sort of Annie, who engulfed you in a combination of a hug and expletive filled greeting. The second image was that of a extremely hot Annie, who would make my knees go weak.
What I didn't expect was a stubbled man built like a boxer. "Annie!" Gopal said, giving him a manly half-hug, and said, introducing me, "Meet Ujwal - my junior and chauffeur for the night," and introducing Annie, "Meet Aniket - my political rival." Annie laughed, and said to a puzzled me, "My father is a Congressman!"

The house was a proliferation of levels - we entered into what I thought was a mezzanine floor, but was only a platform that had a drawing room and led to a depression that had a more private drawing room, where two guys tensely followed a game of tennis on TV.

"You remember that chick we met last week at the play?" Annie asked Gopal. Gopal nodded. "She's in that room," he said, pointing to a bedroom that was on a level of its own, "With our man." Gopal's eyes widened, he smirked, and gave an impressed nod. My family parties didn't involve all this - there it was just drunk uncles discussing chemical factories and corporate rivalry, and bored aunts discussing cooking and school uniforms.

Two women, in flashy party clothes ran down the stairs, screeching and squealing; one chasing the other with a butter knife in her hand. They ran straight to Gopal and Annie, split them and ran past. The chased girl jumped over a couch, and the chaser positioned herself on the other side, knife poised to attack. Gopal watched the stand-off with excitement, Annie started chanting, "Fight! Fight! Fight!" He was joined by the tennis-watchers, while the two girls panted, half-smiling evilly, until the chaser lunged over the couch at the chased. They collapsed in a giggly heap on the couch, and fell to the carpeted floor, laughing, speaking excitedly and unintelligibly to each other.

The chased got up, rose to her full height, and said, "Gopal!" Gopal, who lost interest in the fight, and was walking up the stairs then, turned back and said, "Yo!" She said, "Meet my cousin Sundari upstairs. She also does some theatre and all." Gopal said, "Definitely!" The other girl said, "Hey! Uma's upstairs." Gopal said, "Thanks!"

He bounded up the stairs, followed by Annie and me.

The room upstairs looked like it was put there for a party like this. A dining table in the far corner had a huge group sitting around it, throwing tissue around and talking animatedly. The centre of the room was a sprawling dance floor, with low lighting and wooden flooring, with four or five drunken dancers, swaying to music that wasn't loud or pounding enough to dance to.

The gathering was all much older than Gopal or me - most of the people looked like they were between their mid-to-late twenties or their early thirties. I didn't know how Gopal, born and brought up in Thrissur to academic parents, got himself to be a part of this group. I had more respect for him now; he was a man knew how to get around.

There was a couch and a few beanbags in one corner where a bunch of men and women were settled. I recognised one of them as Gopal's girlfriend. In a short grey-and-red dress, barefoot and carrying a glass of beer in her hand, she was more beautiful than I remembered her from her campus visits. For one, she looked older and more mature than she did when she came to campus, and that gave her a dignified beauty. She also looked more at home here than she did when two hundred men stared at her from their windows.

She got up when she saw Gopal, came to him and planted a full kiss on his lips. Gopal recovered, and introduced me to her, Uma, with the same words - junior and chauffeur. She said, "Oh! I've seen you at one of the rallies!" I was flushed. I couldn't believe she remembered me, and wondered if she was making it up. But she said, "You were the one chatting up that girl with black specs, no?" I smiled embarrassedly. "Anything happened with her?" she asked. I shook my head.

We settled down on the floor around the couch, where the crowd discussed TV shows. Gopal and I didn't have much to say - living in the hostel, we hardly knew what the TV had to offer. A plump, happy girl walked up to us from the dining table and said, "Gopal and friend! What will you guys have?" I presumed she was the hostess who had commanded Annie to open the door.

Gopal, who was engrossed in Uma's hair, looked up startled, and said, "Yo! What's up?" He paused, and introduced me again as Ujwal, his junior and chauffeur, and said, "I'll help myself to a vodka. The kid doesn't drink, he says." The clink of a shattering glass was followed by a shriek and collective groaning. Someone had broken a wineglass on the dance floor.

The hostess hollered again, efficiently, "Don't worry! Turn on the central lights, I'll take care of this," and scurried away down the stairs to find a broom. Gopal beckoned me to the bar table, and mixed himself a strong drink, and poured out a glass of orange juice for me. "You're sure you wont have even one drink?" he asked again. I refused.

The party got over its shattering glass induced lull. The music started playing again, the voices regained in volume and once the glass pieces were swept away, the dance floor was repopulated by the same group of drunks. We made our way back towards the couch, when one girl caught Gopal by the arm and said, "Listen, come downstairs. We have to discuss the Bombay show." Gopal nodded, asked me to settle down wherever, and left with her.

I went back to the couch, and sat next to the only other person who took any interest in me - Uma. "Where's your boss?" she asked.
"Some girl whisked him away," I said, still recovering from the term 'boss', wondering if she took the chauffeuring too seriously. She looked curious about the whisker-girl, so I said, "Not very tall, fair, curly hair, red t-shirt..."
"Oh. Her. They were talking about some play?"
"Some show in Bombay, yes."
"That's his ex-girlfriend," she said. There was no discernible expression in that statement. I didn't know if she just said it as a matter-of-fact, or if she was upset or if she was jealous. It hung there for a few seconds, before she suddenly asked, "How old are you?"
I didn't want to answer that question, but I had no choice, "Eighteen!"

"He's eighteen?!" another girl sitting on the couch asked, "Serious?"
"This Gopal's a gay. And a paedophile..." someone drawled, to hooting and laughter.
"Weren't you bonking a high school chick just when you finished college?" Gopal asked the guy who made the paedophile allegation, suddenly emerging from the stairs.
"How do you know?!"
The entire crowd laughed again. Uma said, "By the way, Ujwal..."
"Your name is Ujwal," the drawler asked again, "Brightness..." he laughed. "You can't be very bright if you're hanging out with Gopal!"
Before I could respond, another guy said, "Dude, he's a kid. We should rag him."
The first guy said, "Ok. Kid. Come here. Stand."
I looked at Gopal, but he looked on emotionlessly. I was on my own. "Come on, kid. Stand."
I pulled myself up to stand, but lost balance and fell. It was the most inexplicable fall. Gopal said, suddenly, "Guys, he doesn't know how to stand. Show him."
One guy stood up. Gopal said, "Ok. Then what is he supposed to do?" I smiled, catching on to Gopal's grand plan. "We were thinking we'll make him stand on one leg, with his arms outstretched," the guy who was sitting down said.
The guy standing up said, "Like this!" and stretched his arms wide, and lifted his leg up, and collapsed on to the couch.

When he fell down, Gopal said to me, "Dude, come along. Let's get another drink."
The guy who fell, said, "Dude, sorry for ragging you!"
I said, "Only you thought you were ragging me!"
The crowd clapped and laughed more, and I heard someone say, "Gopal's found himself a kid just like him!" I was beaming, for a few minutes, I felt like the new Gopal - the magnetic student leader, strong, opinionated, popular with the women. The cliches rolled in my head until I reached the bar.

Gopal re-poured the same two drinks for the two of us, without asking me if I wanted something else. The hostess appeared at the bar with another girl and said, "Gopal, meet Sundari." The name struck a bell, but I couldn't place it. Gopal immediately said, "Pri's cousin. Theatre of some sort..."

The girl's face was defined by her nose - she wore a pretty single nose-ring that seemed to distract from everything else about her. Once you got past the nose-ring, you discovered that she was maddeningly pretty - large eyes, long eyelashes, knotted eyebrows, not-so-long curlyish hair, not-to-fair, not-too-dark.

"Yeah," she said, in a voice that seemed younger than she looked, "Not theatre, really. More like traditional vernacular drama."
Vernacular drama, I thought to myself. Gopal asked the question I wanted to ask, "Which vernacular?"
She smiled, "I used to do Kannada when I lived here. But now I do Tamil... I live in Madras now. Going to college there now."
"What year are you in?" I asked, almost involuntarily.
"First year," she said.
"A kid like you!" Gopal declared, and left us to our conversation. The conversation wasn't anything great, I remember, there were long awkward pauses, and longer silences. But I had a feeling I liked being there, just talking, and I presumed she liked talking too. When we were leaving, I asked her for her phone number. We didn't have cell phones then, and so she scribbled a landline number on a piece of paper.

I never called, and nor did she. And we didn't even hear of each other until this evening when Gopal, out of the blue, brought her to my house to hide her from her parents.

De-familiarisation

2011-04-20T11:56:00.002+05:30

I hadn't heard much about Ramesh Vinayagam till last evening - I only knew that he composed the music for Nala Damayanthi and was doing some research on gamakas in Carnatic music. I met him about the latter - an interview-article on his study is on the cards - at Ram's place, and the topic of conversation invariably turned to cricket.

Something about musicians from Madras makes them passionate cricketers or cricket fans - most Carnatic musicians worth their salt can reel off Test match statistics like the names of the 72-melakartas. I have a theory - that the temperament required for Carnatic music and Test cricket is similar. In both forms of art, the action unfolds layer-by-layer requiring patience, the thrill is latent, so latent that obviousness is derided upon, the subtleties miss untrained eyes and ears, and the excitement is in the pulse of the drama and not the spectacle of it.

When the meeting was ending, Ram said, "I am now going to ask Ramesh to perform my favourite trick... This is what I show him off with."

Ramesh smirked, and took out his cell phone. I wondered if he was going to do some kind of magic. He pressed some buttons, scrolled up and down a menu, until he zeroed in on something. The drone of a tambura emanated from the phone. He cleared his throat with a sa-pa, and I followed, unconsciously.

Now I was curious - what is this trick that involves a tambura drone?

He hummed a few phrases of a raga I didn't immediately identify, and launched into a Tamil song. The raga unfolded in the strangest of ways - my mind found both madhyamas, the sadharana gandhara, the chatusruti rishabha (rendered plainly), a nishada, a daivata... But the notes didn't define the raga, that was not it. It was one of those phrase-based ragas, and this had the most eclectic collection of phrases - a little like Kapi, a little like Keeravani, a bit of Simhendramadhyamam here, something else somewhere else, a flash of something that sounded like Neelambari even!

It was a beautiful song, a beautiful raga. But the word used was 'trick'. Was the raga the trick? Or would he do something with it? I wondered if he would change the tambura drone and show me how this was some raga I knew, but rendered in a different drone, it sounded so unfamiliar. I spent one verse trying to remove the drone from the music, and listening to the tune for familiarity. Nothing.

The verses came in the same frolicking pattern, in rhythmic cycles of three, still in that same raga, still bound by those phrasal boundaries, exploring little nooks within them.

Now I knew the trick was in the song itself. He wasn't going to do anything with it - he was already tricking me, somewhere, somehow.

In the last pallavi, a phrase of curious familiarity suddenly lodged itself in my head. A sa-da-pa-ma... I had heard this somewhere, definitely! I thought of the phrase just before it - ri-ga-ma-pa. Then it struck me, the ingeniousness of this trick, and the image of an Aquaguard flashed in my mind. I followed the tune until I could predict it - it was just a tune so removed from its familiar contours and Carnatic-ised that it had me fooled!

When he finished, he turned to me with the obvious question.
I said, "I think I've figured it out! It's that Western Classical tune - Fur elise?"

He smiled, impressed, "Yes. The raga is called Beethovenapriya!" And he went on to sing a few more phrases of the raga - a sketch of its geography.

A raga isn't a scale, you know, that is the English language's worst deformation of Carnatic music. A raga is something that has rules, yes, but the rules don't come from outside, they come from within it. Ask Janaranjani, Begada, Sahana - all ragas that seem like a random collection of swaras and phrases - they have a logic to them, a feel, if you like, a meaning. You can find within them an infinite universe.

Ask Beethovenapriya, and she'll tell you the same.

The Bard and I

2011-04-14T14:45:00.006+05:30

I can state with great nationalistic jingoism (or jingoistic nationalism) that I have read more Kalidasa than Shakespeare. But that isn't a great achievement - in fact it is a matter of great literary shame (or shameful literacy) - for, in twenty-six years, I have read only two verses of Shakespeare. Both the verses were found in my fourth standard English textbook, and come from this poem called Under the Greenwood Tree. And even in that fourth standard textbook, there were poems I liked more than this one - like Silver by Walter De La Mare.

(Just revisited Silver. These two lines are so beautiful:

From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep
Of doves in silver feathered sleep

Silver-feathered sleep... Sigh.)

Under the Greenwood Tree is a curious poem - I still don't understand it fully. I think I must blame my Shakespeare illiteracy on B. Madambudithaya, the man who compiled the Karnataka State syllabus textbooks for picking a poem that leaves me baffled all the time, even eighteen years after my first encounter with it:

Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And turn his merry note
Unto the sweet bird's throat,

Right. Wonderful. Who is "who"? And who turn "his" merry note? When someone lies with me, do they lie and in speak the untruth? Why can't the Bard make himself clear?

And then he says,

Come hither, come hither, come hither:
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.

Thankfully, my English teacher told me what 'hither' means, and saved me some agony. On an aside, has Shakespeare forgotten about wild animals in the forest? Or did the English forests have no such creatures? Only winter and rough weather? Really? That's easy. "He" will bring a couple of sweaters along.

Shakespeare then kills me with the next line,

Who doth ambition shun,

Argh. What a line. Drafted in the same convoluted vein as an income-tax legislation. Firstly, it takes my mind a couple of seconds to wrap itself around the meaning of "doth". Not to mention the thou, thee, hath. And then, I have to get down to figuring, "Who shuns ambition".

All this is too much for a fourth standard kid, especially one who can't see unapparent meaning.
***

My mother, who has a literary bent of mind, then made me mug some portion of Shakespeare's legendary All the world's a stage for some speech competition - you know, one of those competitions where various kids' parents write speeches for them, bully their kids into mugging them up and delivering them with a fake accent and irritating intonation, and the teachers judge which kid's parents write the best speeches? Yeah. So, my mother with a literary bent of mind wrote a few lines from that poem for that competition.

The poem gave me sleepless nights. If all the world's a stage, everyone's acting in the drama (which would mean that everyone's backstage waiting to make their entries and exits), who's watching? I began, for days, thinking of life as this flop play being performed to empty audiences. I began seeing dead people stare at me from backstage, envious of my continuing role. It scared me at every level - was I going to be a bit part that no one ever remembers? Or the fellow they point at, snigger and say, "Oh God, this guy's such a ham!" Many nights, I woke up, thinking, "Please, please. Can we do that scene again? I didn't get the chance to rehearse properly.

But then, again, there's no one watching, right?
***

At some point, I watched Shakespeare in Love, without understanding much. I pretended to understand, though, just like I pretend to understand national politics, because in my line of work, pretense and posturing is as crucial as actual knowledge. Around this time, I discovered some weird Shakespeare graphic novels in my school library, and they interested me greatly.

(Ok, fine, I'll admit it. They were Shakespeare stories in comic book form.)

They provided me with many afternoons of entertainment, and gave me enough background to remain relevant in conversations about Shakespeare. I watched Maqbool and Omkara with only these comics as my placeholders. (And oh, Langda Tyagi and Kesu Firangi did look like Iago and Cassius in the graphic novel!) Which is why I was able to say smart things like, "Oh, in Maqbool, the three witches are replaced by Om Puri and Naseeruddin Shah as soothsaying policemen..."
***

My grandfather quotes Shakespeare often. Something about mercy, justice, rain and twice-blesseth. I don't think he remembers any other quote, but he makes it a point to point it out that he has read real literature while I haven't. I tell him that I tried, many times, and I tell him that I never understood. He tut-tuts and remarks that education standards in the country are falling.
***

This morning, as I turned my merry Kalyani throat to the sweet mixie's note, I realised why I was never able to comprehend Shakespeare. My inability arises from a mistake and an arrogance. The mistake is my presumption that Shakespeare wrote in English. And the arrogance is that I don't need any annotation to understand English. The reason I read Kalidasa with annotation is because I know that my Sanskrit isn't good enough to read simply from the original.

Once I accept that Shakespeare didn't write in English, I can easily convince myself that I should get an annotated version, with the meaning of the verse in plain English. Armed with this, I shall revisit the Bard with a vengeance. And who knows, soon I might be able to quote that verse about mercy, justice, twice-blesseth and rain.

What a guy!

2011-04-03T10:44:00.003+05:30

I sit in the Bangalore Cantonment station, it is slightly after 11.20 pm. The date, one that we won't forget for some time now, is April 2, 2011. I wait for the Cauvery Express - scheduled to arrive by midnight, though often late - immersed a Coetzee I have read before. There is a continuous muffled roar of fireworks in the background, even the sleepy station has a diffused joy about it.

This guy, in a blue Benetton t-shirt and faded blue jeans walks down the platform and settles down next to me. I can sense a contentment in his eyes, and a serene smile on his face. He stares at the empty railway tracks with that same distant expression.

I read my book quietly, stopping over an achingly beautiful passage, only to turn away to attend the occasional SMS, and a short phone call from my brother, and another from a friend.

The guy in the blue t-shirt looks at me, with that same expression, and says, "We won."
I smile back and nod.
There is a momentary silence, after which I say, "What a guy!"
He nods, "What a guy!"
Then it strikes me: do both of us mean the same person?

And then he says, "Twenty years, six World Cups. Finally!"
I smile. Obviously the same person.

Five Fundamental Rules of the Art of Bullshitting

2011-03-26T12:32:00.003+05:30

1. Use words that people understand, but use them in a manner in which they don't understand: A popular misconception about bullshitting is that bullshitters use complicated words like latifundia and legerdemain. But the real legerdemain is using words people know.
The art is in favourably conditioning the spontaneous consciousness of the mind of the listener, tripping their alertness quotient, trapping their trapped senses. You get the drift.

2. Deliver with confidence: Always speak or write the bullshit like you know exactly what you're talking about. Even if you don't believe (or understand) your message, deliver it with passion. More than the content, the manner of delivery is what makes the difference. When Hitler delivered his cruel message, most Germans bought it, although they must be feeling quite stupid about the whole thing now.

3. Be vague: Speak in generalities, draw sweeping conclusions from small facts you know, buttress them with everyday examples that make no sense at all. And as stated in point 2, mask vagueness with confidence. For example, "Egypt shows us that ancient civilisations have the ability to bounce back, to fight tyranny and uphold democratic values. You see how resilient your grandparents are to modernity's corruption." Also, make vague references to vaguer things with a sense of familiarity. "It's like that Graham Greene novel set in Vietnam, and those passages in that book that tangentially touch on slavery and inverse power mechanisms..."

4. Bring the topic back to what you know: If you have to talk about Carnatic music, and you don't know much about it, compare it to a Test Match and speak about Test cricket and its artistry. If you have to talk about women's empowerment, speak of Madhuri Dixit's hips and how powerful they are even at this age.

5. Most importantly, make the listener feel too stupid to ask you what you mean: Deliver with a sense of obviousness. The counterparty must always think there's something very apparent that he or she is missing. Say, "You know how these things work." The listener is immediately shy to ask, "How?"

No Animals were Harmed in the Making of this Movie

2011-03-12T10:25:00.003+05:30

When you're jobless on weekday afternoons, and you decide to channel-flip, you'll come across Telugu movies dubbed into Hindi with rather strange titles. Indra - The Tiger. Narasimha - the Powerful Man. Meri Jung - One Man Army.

The below-mentioned, Cheetah - the Leopard is in a league of its own.

The movie, needless to say, isn't some wildlife thriller like Jungle (or one of those 80s movies that features a dog, an elephant and a pigeon). Venkatesh is a singer, Venu, whose father wants him to be an IPS officer. By the end of the movie, he becomes both. Like a cheetah who is also a leopard.

Now that you've finished guffawing, I have a question - what is the difference between a cheetah and a leopard?

(Tougher than you think, no?)

Yodhakaa

2011-03-01T13:15:00.003+05:30

Last night, in one of Madras' dingier underground pubs, Star Rock, I was nursing a stiff one when a pretty Sri raagam in a vibrant female voice enveloped me (the sentence could also be "vibrant Sri raagam in a pretty female voice", but I like the adjectives the other way around). It felt like sacrilege to be lounging on spongy sofas and nibbling on peanuts. A slide guitar launched into a drawling solo, accompanied by a punchy bass, bright guitars and groovy percussion. This wasn't the everyday devout Sri raagam, this was something else. Without realising it, I was counting fours with my feet, dissecting the song into swara-s and raga patterns and exclaiming "Sabhaash!" at a cute phrase.

Soon, I realised that I would be doing a disservice to the richness of the band's sound if I approached their music as raga-based fusion. Chennai's hot new act, Yodhakaa, throws a curious mixed-bag of music at its audience - it pits a strong Carnatic aesthetic amidst a folksy rock and samba-jazz-like environment. There are portions in their repertoire that stick to known (and unknown) ragas, but unlike most Indian fusion bands, the band doesn't seem constrained by them. They borrow Carnatic music's style, its sounding system, its way of embellishing notes and enunciating lyrics, but not its rigidity. (As is evident from this paragraph, the music isn't easy to compartmentalise.)

The easy route would be to call it "Carnatic Fusion", but that has become a bad word these days; it conjures soundscapes of jarring Hamsadhwani accompanied by keyboards and rhythm pads. The drummer, Siva, who did most of the (unnecessary) talking, said, "Hey! We're Yodhakaa, and we play Indian music... contemporary Indian music!" This term sounds like the evil twin sister of "fusion", I know, but Yodhakaa have earned the right to use it. For all their mixed-bag of influences, their music is distinctly Indian. Good music doesn't live and grow in isolation, it is a product of the music around it, and Yodhakaa is a testament to that - it doesn't sound like a "fusion" of styles, but like a new aesthetic in itself.

Its other strength is the high quality of its musicians. Subhiksha and Pradeep combine beautifully on vocals, and Pradeep plays a most interesting slide guitar (built from scratch, he says) that produces every nuance of Indian music with depth and clarity. The drums and bass give the band a groovy grounding that sets them apart from most Indian acts, and Akshay on the guitars plays with sensitivity and innovation.

For all this inventiveness, the use of "ancient Sanskrit slokas" seems like a gimmick. That is the only pretentious part of their music. And this leads to my questioning of the term "contemporary" - I can't think of a contemporary Indian connecting with these lyrics. The slokas are religious in content, but the music does not seem to revel in the religiousness - they might as well be replaced by nonsense syllables (the band's name itself, some internet research tells me, was chosen only for its phonetic value), and it would take nothing away from the music. Many of these old slokas are in the anushtup-chhandas, a metre of four lines of eight syllables with a specified arrangement of long and short syllables. Yodhakaa's music, as a result, becomes very similar in its underlying rhythm. In many songs, the verses are all sung in the same tune, and are placed almost as an interlude to the solos. Even if the band wants to stick to Sanskrit slokas, there are devilish little ones brimming with humour and philosophy that might work better than the Hanuman Ashtakam or a series of slokas on the Dasaavataaram (which the clueless drummer described as being "about destruction").

Listening to Yodhakaa gave me the feeling that they would be better in a recording than live (I'm still kicking myself for not picking up their CD that night - it would be nice for the extended drives from work to home). They were extremely tight, don't get me wrong, but they lacked spontaneous energy that lifts live performances. Maybe they were too tight? (The energy high point of the concert was what they described as their "crazy stuff" - "Even we don't know what we're doing!") Their energy is subtler, and their strength is their total understanding of each other's music, but, an improvisational conversation would have been nice amidst numerous monologues. Especially live.

Ultimately, these are only minor irritants in a performance that was truly top-class. Highly recommended.

Showing us Heroes: Aditya Sudarshan on his Second Novel

2011-02-09T16:04:00.005+05:30

Aditya Sudarshan's second novel is out, as I have already mentioned to the (approximately six) readers of this blog. The novel is centred around Prashant Padmanabhan, an engineer graduate (like half this country) making an amateur film on his cricketing idol, Ali Khan (who seemed, to me, like a strange mix of Azhar and Tendulkar). In a style that evokes Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, the novel is told through the eyes of Vaibhav, a friend of Prashant's, also involved in the movie and in the story, but not its central character in the traditional sense. The title itself comes from a Fitzgerald quote, "Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy."

I interviewed him via a few broken emails.

Congratulations on your second novel. Must be satisfying...

Thanks! Yeah it felt great to write it. Also good to get it published, although that was more of an ordeal. This book wasn't such an easy sell, so it took some perseverance to publish. Which is eventually satisfying, although as an author you also feel that's the least you deserve!

Do you find it surprising that a book that involves a cricketing hero and movie-making would be difficult to sell to a publisher in India?

Well it does sound surprising, but I didn't feel that way myself, because I know that those aspects of the story aren't treated in the obvious ways. So on a cold reading of the bare manuscript I don't think a publisher would sense immediate saleability on those counts. Maybe the reason it was tough to sell is that it is not easily categorized, in terms of genre. The story has many elements, and by the standards of conventional crime fiction, it moves slowly.

Last time I interviewed you, you said, "I think, almost more than any other story-telling device, the device of a detective story forces the author to have something to say." Is that why you choose a mystery again? Actually, would you classify this as a mystery?

I'd classify it as a mystery, a tragedy, and a coming-of-tale, the way it's mentioned in the back cover blurb. Because this novel does have distinct layers- the over-arching story is the narrator's self-discovery, so to speak. Then a major part of that process is the murder and the mystery he becomes involved in. And in the backdrop is the story of the forgotten cricketer. But if I had to mention just one genre, I would say 'coming of age', not 'mystery', because the coming of age is the 'overall' story- what everything else flows into or leads up to.

Why I chose a mystery again, well it maybe wasn't that volitional. But after my first book (which followed a fairly conventional crime fiction structure) I wanted to write another piece of crime fiction that altered that structure. Something where the victim was a central character, and where the crime and the reasons for it were not just a puzzle in themselves, but part of a bigger story. So that was one of the ambitions in my head while I was thinking up this novel.

How difficult is a second novel? Are there expectations to live up to? Suggestions you might have got from people that lodge themselves uncomfortably in the back of your mind?

In my case, I had written the draft of this novel before the first one got published. So factoring in other people's opinions or expectations wasn't so much of an issue. But even so, I think writing a second novel is definitely very different from the first. With a first novel, you tend to 'ride a wave'- you don't analyse so much and you just do things more instinctively. But the second time around you feel a lot more in control of your work. Therefore also a greater sense of responsibility. So it is more difficult and maybe less pure fun, but it's also more rewarding, because you can legitimately take credit for more things. (And feel like a professional)

Basically, if you divide fiction writing into 'creative' and 'editorial' dimensions, then starting from the second novel I think the editorial side of things is much more at work. (Not that it can ever, ever dominate, because then you wouldn't be able to write at all.)

What has been your experience with publishers' reactions to the manuscript of a second novel? Any different from their reaction to the first?

Hmm not really. I mean, a rejection is a rejection! I know it sounds like it should be an advantage to show that you've written one already, but I think unless the first one made a big sensation, it could even be a disadvantage. My sense is that publishers like debut authors, who are eager and 'unspoiled,' much more than the veteran journeyman type.

One novel hardly qualifies you as a 'veteran journeyman', Sud!

Hehe, no. But I didn't mean me - was just describing two ends of a scale.

Your novel is being billed as a cricket novel - the cricket-centric cover... I think the novel could have been about cockfighting in rural Tamilnadu, or rivalry amongst rock bands - you just happened to choose cricket. Your thoughts on that? Any reason why you chose cricket specifically?

Here I partly agree with you, partly disagree. The reason I arrived at cricket was because one of the themes of this novel is hero-worship. So I wanted to write about a larger than life public figure whom a young man could idolize. Of course it could have been a musician or someone more niche like that, but I also wanted the figure to be 'national'- someone whom all the diversity of Indian society might have an opinion about. And someone whom I myself could feel close to and interested in. So all of that kind of led to cricket, and a cricketer. But it definitely isn't just a 'cricket' novel, because that's not it's central focus.

Hmmm. That is a fair point, yes. Were you ever tempted to use fictionalised versions of real life cricketers as characters? What led you to creating a parallel cricketing world?

Initially I had made some references to actual cricketers, but I changed that later. I felt it would pull people too far out of the story because a real life cricketer is so larger than life, and provokes strong opinions on his own account. I didn't want that distraction. The character of my cricketer Ali Khan wasn't based on anybody either. Although one of the things I had thought while writing him was: what if a guy had the cricketing ability of a Tendulkar minus the saintly public persona?

Your first book, A Nice Quiet Holiday, was published by Westland, and your second book by Rupa - are the publishing cultures in the two houses very different?

I think they are. Although I'll be able to answer this better in another six months, once I know more. When I published with Westland I think they were keen on experimental fiction, new genres, niche genres etc. Rupa is a huge publisher, and they publish many kinds of books, so it's tough to assess them that way. But they are of course very strong on mainstream books and cultivating a wide (as opposed to niche) readership.

Last time, I asked you how personal your novel was. And whether you could update us on your love life. Can you answer those questions again?

This novel is probably more consistently personal than my first. It's a more emotional novel, the first one was more intellectual (and therefore more distanced from me personally). And my love life is a lot of self-love. Let's check back again after the next bookl!

You are right. Anything even remotely intellectual is necessarily distanced from you.
:-P

I've been asked to ask you this question - any reason why your first protagonist was called Anant and the second Padmanabhan?

Well Anant is my brother's first name. Padmanabhan is my friend's sur-name. So I took the names from them. But the characters aren't drawn from either my brother or Pappan (as you will be able to vouch for!)

You are moving to Bombay soon to work in films. Tell us something about this shift. Were you always planning to work in cinema at some point? Can we expect more novels from you?

Yes, I'm shifting to Bombay! There are many reasons for that, but purely professionally I think I do need to do more script-writing (I already do some for television), and Bombay obviously has more opportunities for that. I wasn't always planning to do this, but I figured about a year ago that to sustain my writing over the long-term I need to diversify into areas other than novels and stories. The way I look at it, an English language fiction writer in India who wants to make ends meet, has three options. He or she can either try to break into the foreign market, or do a lot of journalistic work- or write scripts. I think of those three options script-writing is the one I would find the most enjoyable and interesting.

But I certainly hope you can expect more novels from me (relax, you can :-)). In fact I want to write a novel that is set against the backdrop of the film industry- I think that's a powerful setting. Let's see, but hopefully things will fall into place.

Thank you, Sud. It was lovely interviewing you. Hope we can catch up soon. On Juhu Beach perhaps!

You're welcome Mami, it was my pleasure. Yes, I'll introduce you to my new film star friends!

Off two Eggs and dog biscuits

2011-02-03T08:45:00.002+05:30

Since this novel is paralysing my daily activities, I thought it would be fit to share two passages from it:

Gatsby walked over and stood beside her.

“Daisy, that’s all over now,” he said earnestly. “It doesn’t matter any more. Just tell him the truth — that you never loved him — and it’s all wiped out forever.”

She looked at him blindly. “Why — how could I love him — possibly?”

“You never loved him.”

She hesitated. Her eyes fell on Jordan and me with a sort of appeal, as though she realized at last what she was doing — and as though she had never, all along, intended doing anything at all. But it was done now. It was too late.

“I never loved him,” she said, with perceptible reluctance.

“Not at Kapiolani?” demanded Tom suddenly.

“No.”

From the ballroom beneath, muffled and suffocating chords were drifting up on hot waves of air.

“Not that day I carried you down from the Punch Bowl to keep your shoes dry?” There was a husky tenderness in his tone. . . . “Daisy?”

“Please don’t.” Her voice was cold, but the rancor was gone from it. She looked at Gatsby. “There, Jay,” she said — but her hand as she tried to light a cigarette was trembling. Suddenly she threw the cigarette and the burning match on the carpet.

“Oh, you want too much!” she cried to Gatsby. “I love you now — isn’t that enough? I can’t help what’s past.” She began to sob helplessly. “I did love him once — but I loved you too.”

Gatsby’s eyes opened and closed.

“You loved me too?” he repeated.

And the second one, a sort of quote that one mugs, creates convoluted situations for, and uses on unsuspecting souls:

“Oh, and do you remember.”— she added —” a conversation we had once about driving a car?”

“Why — not exactly.”

“You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn’t I? I mean it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride.”

“I’m thirty,” I said. “I’m five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor.”

She didn’t answer. Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.

Show me a Hero

2011-01-28T20:01:00.004+05:30

Aditya Sudarshan, a great friend, comedian, metaphysicist, and a ball of slime, has written his second novel, Show me a Hero. Don't get fooled by the cricket-centred cover, the novel is about a lot more. I will share his thoughts on the book here soon. Until then, one paragraph I loved:

"The next morning, which is always the best judge of the night before, was confusing. Many times in the small hours I'd written foolish, sentimental emails to people I barely knew, only to wake up kicking myself. On more than a few drunken midnights I had told myself I was going to change the world, and then decided at 11 a.m. in the streaming sun that it was doing all right as it was. I was used to having my eye-openers in the dead of night and looking away in the morning light. That was normal. But waking up today, with a strange sense of clam and a strange sense of mission, was not. I wasn't in my comfort zone. I wasn't sure how I ought to feel."

Watch this space. Full length interview coming up.

2011-01-24T20:26:00.001+05:30

You pray his soul may rest in peace,
I want it to haunt me.

Remembering Tyagaraja

2011-01-23T09:45:00.004+05:30

It is funny that the average modern Indian isn't big on aesthetics, given our artistic history. But again, I might be ascribing the ornamental indulgences of the monarchs of yore, the architectural show-offiness of a few, to the entire population. Who knows, the average Indian might have always been of the jugaad variety - functionality over art.

The Tyagaraja Aradhana is on television as I blog (just heard TM Krishna's Kedaragowla) and the physical feature that dominates the scenery is the microphones. Four to an artiste - one screams 'Sekaran' in white lettering on a harsh, blue background, two have AIR written on them (why does the radio need two?) and one is nameless, but presumably not orphaned (I wonder if it will sing in Jingala. Please excuse, it is my Tyagaraja joke for the day). And from behind these microphones, bits of artistes peek out - it is like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle, or one of those game-shows where you guess the celebrity from the pieces on the grid revealed. This is a fallout of the jugaad - the different people who need the feed don't bother with the co-ordination in advance, and so they bombard the stage with their equipment. All this happens under a shamiana dominated by plastic chairs.

The background isn't easy on the eye. It is a mesh of raucous lettering in English and Tamil, a gaudy Tyagaraja portrait and a Vodafone banner incongruously meshed in on the right. As usual, the sabha takes it upon itself to make it clear to the world that they are registered. Really, I don't think anyone doubted that. City Union Bank hollers at you from below the stage, complete with region and branch details along with pin code. (Then again, sponsors are unavoidable - Tyagaraja himself practiced uncha vritti!)

The concerts happen on the banks of the Cauvery, in a town that comes to life only once a year, and you can't help but wonder: so much more can be done with that setting.

Still, it is Tyagaraja's melodic, rhythmic, lyrical and devotional genius - handed down to us through two centuries of interpretation by artistes of all varieties, from art musicians to bhakti musicians, from ace reproducers to ace innovators, from laya exponents to raga past masters, from the oral tradition to obscure manuscripts - that occupies centre-stage, making us forget, for as long as the songs last, the jarring environment in which it is sung.

Pop-philosophy moments

2011-01-17T17:12:00.004+05:30

Real flashes of pop-philosophical brilliance come in situations like this - at 2 am, somewhere in the Western Ghats, in a place whose name I still don't know, at a biryani-chai-cigarette-dirty-loo place, during a break from a jataka-bandi-level bumpy bus ride, with the temperature at around 8 degrees, having missed a train and no clear plans for the onward journey.

For three days, I lived under the delusion that my waitlisted train ticket would get confirmed by that Indianest of methods, the nomenclatural red herring, the Emergency quota. Apparently, I had access to the Minister of State for Railways, who would recognise my 'emergency' and get me a seat. 99% confirmed, I was told. Somehow, I've always been in that 1%.

I had been looking forward to this train journey for a while - seventeen hours of solitude, good books, good music - a chance to catch up with myself. Hello me, what's up? Even on the car to the station (its an hour and a half from home), I was quite excited, listening to Ramani Sir and MSG trade fireworks in a 1980 concert, yapping, driving, cursing bus drivers. This was a journey I wanted to make. So, when it fell apart, I was quite heartbroken.

Then came this random travel, last minute tickets, a phone running out of balance, doubts on the state of the road, the time the bus will take as a result, and slight tension about morning flights, trains, buses (also booked last minute). It was in this background, when I got down from the bus at that unknown place for a chai, unsure but strangely confident of making to Madras, that I had that pop-philosophy moment.

It's nice to have a confirmed ticket, yes. (It's not often that a Mamidipudi has a confirmed ticket.) It's nice to know where you're going and how - that brings with itself an excitement - you can pack some dinner from home, . But it's funner to not know. It's funner to realise you've mistaken 20:00 for 10 pm, landed up late at the station, and then hitchhike on a lorry. It's fun to land up at the bus stand and find that you have a ticket to Madras instead of Bangalore, and go to Madras for the weekend instead. It's fun to decide where you want to go for the long weekend at the ticket counter. It's fun to find you have booked a ticket for the wrong date, and then run around Paradise looking for shady buses and tickets. It's fun to spend nights in the unreserved compartment, spreading newspapers on the floor and catching up on sleep (or standing by the door without a sweater - only the romance of the whole thing keeping you warm).

There you have it - pop-philosophy for the day - unplanned journeys are more fetching than planned ones.

Finding Shebait

2011-01-07T12:34:00.003+05:30

This piece first appeared on mylaw.net.
***

In the wake of the Ayodhya judgment, I learnt a lot of law. The place of birth is a juristic person, apparently. Wait till the income-tax department, always looking for newer people, juristic or otherwise, hears of this. Two of the cases were dismissed on the grounds of limitation. That's rich. You're deciding whether some character called Babur built a mosque in 1528, and whether he destroyed a temple to do so, and you dismiss suits because they're filed beyond limitation.

Merits aside, the judgment threw up some interesting concepts - the "next friend" and the "shebait". Both terms sound shady.

I've heard that in Indian politics, the major political parties have their outwardly democratic structures - the President, the Vice-President, the Spokesperson and so on. But most politicians, apparently, also have an important figure around them, called their "best friend", who wields enormous power over their decisions - right from what he will have for lunch, what he will wear for a meeting, whom he will meet and what course the economy will take. A "next friend", I discovered, is someone like that. That treasure house of authoritative legal knowledge (I'm serious, ask the dudes in the big firms to swear that they've never relied on it to figure out what futures and options are), Wikipedia, defines it as "a person who represents in an action another person who is under disability or otherwise unable to maintain a suit on their own behalf as a result of their circumstances, who does not have a legal guardian". Our politicians are mostly in disability, they are usually a product of rather unfortunate circumstances, and their guardians tend to be illegal.

"Shebait" was harder to crack. Wikipedia has no entry on this word. A google search only reveals a lot of judgments from Indiankanoon.com, which suggests that beyond Indian temple law, the term does not have much use. A friend and I found the term highly useful. "I wish the High Court had more shebait." Or, "Dude, shebait, 7 o clock." "You're coming for this party?" "Depends on the shebait, macha."

And there were the jokes.
Q: How do you describe a Goan prostitute who specialises in temple administrators?
A: She baits shebaits on the sea shore.

My first hunch was that the term was Latin in origin. (I also had a feeling it might be French, given their shebaitic tendencies, but I rejected that thought immediately. Well, almost immediately.) I went through a large compendium of Latin maxims - a delightful old book that a family of rats had colonised. No luck there.

Then, I tried reading those old Indian judgments. They were of little help.

"It is true, it was a suit by some of the shebaits against the other shebaits, for the proper management of the debutter property but it cannot be said as contended on behalf of the appellant that two sets of shebaits were fighting with each other about the management of the properties...."
- Rangacharya v. Guru Revti AIR 1928 All 689

Sounds like quite a cat-fight. These judgments, though, threw up another curious word - "debutter". Who the hell is this guy? "I am putting on too much weight. I must debutter." The context suggested that "debutter" meant the Lord himself. But there was no assistance from Google on why this should be the case.

A friend at the bar, whose office has dealt with a fair number of debutters and shebaits over the years, told me that the term could be of Egyptian or Hebrew origin. He even pronounced the word as "shebayat". I spent a whole night on Hebrew and Egyptian dictionaries on the internet. I now had a collection of some choice swear words in two more languages, but no leads on the word "shebait". That night, I dreamt of shebaits and debutters locked in combat over a copy of the Bible.

In Court, the next day, I remembered - some kindred soul, whose family had no lawyers left, left me a thoroughly soporific book called "Essays on Classical and Modern Hindu Law." Flipping pages of this tattered tome, I came across a sole beacon of hope contained in a lengthy footnote, "... prefer the Bengali term 'shebayat' to describe these persons." Bengali!

One more fevered night of Googling ensued, at the end of which I found the entire story on a book on Sir John Woodroffe (the dude who wrote that book on evidence). "Shebait" came from "shebayat", although the origins of that word are still unclear. "Debutter", funnily enough, is a corruption of the word "devata".

"Dude, that shebait is quite the debutter!"

Yoraanar!

2010-12-08T13:13:00.002+05:30

This article was first published on mylaw.net
***

I read somewhere that to run a successful Tamil mega-serial, you need only three sets – a gaudy house, a police station and a hospital. Then, you find a film actress of yesteryear, a few buxom middle-aged women, hot-blooded men, Ram Gopal Varma dropouts and rejects, and put them all in a not-so-merry-go-round from home to hospital, hospital to police station, and back home. Make some characters run anti-clockwise, some oscillate between two points, and others (like nurses, grandmothers or constables) stay put. Amidst all this, you can have the police and the RGV goons mete out guerrilla justice, reinventing procedural law in the process.

In one such prime-time soap, misleadingly titled “Thendral”, meaning “lilting, gentle breeze”, the lead character, misleadingly called Tamizharasan (he speaks mostly English) is set to marry a rich girl, Charu, when he is falsely accused of embezzlement. Instead of fighting it out in the courts, Tamizh decides to nab the real culprit. Unsurprisingly, he finds himself in deeper shit. Charu’s father engages a top-notch criminal lawyer – a man dressed in white-and-white, wears bands and a black coat even when he’s at his client’s house, and carries around an unnaturally slim case bundle at all times – who gets Tamizh his bail from the High Court. He’s paid a judge off, we hear.

Sadly, Tamizh dumps Charu for his true love, Tulasi. Charu’s father is livid. He calls up the criminal lawyer and says, “Saar, please cancel his bail!” The criminal lawyer cancels the bail (in the police station!) by simply taking back a piece of paper from the concerned inspector. Tamizh finds himself arrested, and detained at the police station for two whole weeks!

In another serial, “Thangam”, (starring yesteryear sex-bomb, Ramya Krishnan, as a devout, subservient, role model, at once an IAS officer and a doting wife) the heroine’s father has two wives – both of whom he loves and treats equally. In a kinky turn, the wives love each other too. It is one big happy family. Almost.

Ramya and her sisters, born to the second wife, are detested by their half-brother, who files a suit in the local court. On the anointed day, the entire cast gathers in a court hall, when the judge enters ceremoniously. The judge says, “May the case for today be heard.” The dafedar, holding his sceptre aloft, hollers, “Thiru Karthikeyan! Karthikeyan! Karthikeyan!” Karthikeyan, the son, stations himself in the witness box and puts forth his case.

He wants to be declared the sole heir to the property. He wants the court to declare that Ramya and her sisters are not his father’s daughters at all. “They must be thrown out of society,” he declares, self-righteously in court, and then mumbles to his lawyer, “Saar, please tell him the legal point.” To which the lawyer, who was sitting with three others in the semi-circular table, rises and says, “Yoraanar, according to Indian law, a man can have only one wife.” The judge nods gravely, and jots down something in a notebook.

Karthikeyan continues. He wants the property to vest in him immediately, before his father writes his will. He offers to give his father and the first-wife 10,000 rupees each month for their subsistence. The first-wife, unable to bear the ignominy, faints. The second-wife consoles her.

At this point, the judge declares, “Let the accused be brought.” The dafedar announces, “Thiru Selvaraghavan! Selvaraghavan! Selvaraghavan!” The father, a village headman, enters the opposing witness box. The camera swooshes from one box to another, accompanied by pounding music.

The lawyer begins his cross-examination, “Do you admit that you have two wives?” The father admits. “Do you admit that it is against the law to have two wives?” The father admits. “Then do you admit that your second wife has no interest in your property?” He denies.

The tension is insurmountable. The father, calmly explains, “The law might be against me. But the law is wrong. My ancestors have been headmen for generations. I have been a headman for fifty years now. In these years, I have given large parts of my property to the Amman temple, the local school, to poor people. I have shared my wealth with everyone in this village. Nobody questioned me then!” Where is he going with this, I wonder. “Today, my own son, my own blood, tells me that I cannot share my love between two women? He tells me that the law doesn’t allow it? Yoraanar,” he addresses the Bench, “You sit in that chair not only to enforce the law, but to do justice. Tell me, now, which of us is just?” The judge nods and makes furious notes, before ruling in favour of justice over black-letter law.

This is what the courts should do. No plaint, written statement, interim prayers and applications, exhibits, proof affidavits, typed sets, precedents. No putting-up, mentioning, batta, coding sheet, docket, SR number, application number, witness number, adjournment, hearing date. No section 20, order 1, rule 10(2), CPC, CrPC. Just a one-on-one face-off.

Two Disappearances - Final Installation

2010-11-29T09:07:00.004+05:30

Sorry for the delay. Previous parts are here, in reverse order.
***

"We can drive down, if you feel up to it," Thanjan said, "We won't get a bus, it's a long weekend. Unless you want to rough it out."
"What car do you have?" Ajith asked.
"A Gypsy."
***

Two hours after the doctor declared that Mani might not last the night, he stabilised. He was very clear that he didn't want to be moved to a hospital, "Don't prolong my existence needlessly."

In a room lit by a dull bulb in the far corner, Mani lay, with Shankar by his side. A blanket covered him from toe to eye; he held its edge across his nose with his hand. His eyes were open - as open as they could be given his age and health. It was like he wanted to see death, he didn't want it to take him away surreptitiously.

What does a man think about when he knows he can do little for the rest of his brief stay? Does he comprehend the end? Or the journey? Does he think about what is in store for him after the end? Do these questions even bother such a man? Is he too tired and does he just want to go? Shankar had seen his grandfather die a few years ago. That was a case where the mind wanted to live on, but the body wasn't up for the fight. Mani was the converse - he had made peace with his end, but his body, Shankar guessed, wanted one last skirmish.

Was Mani ready to go? His eyes told little. These steel grey eyes once twinkled with mischief, widened with excitement, softened with love. They always spoke a fraction of a second before he did. On that day, though, they just closed the world behind them - they turned into a cold, grey curtain. If there was something on Mani's mind at that time, Shankar had no way of telling.

He could feel Mani's fever from a foot away. When he stroked Mani's hair, he felt it burning. The hair was as grey as his eyes, but there was no sign of balding.

When he was young, his long hair framed his face, for he never tied it up. When he sang, the hair added layers to his interpretations. They patterned the raga with their whoops of joy. Then came that phase when he cropped, oiled and combed his hair in an elegant side-parting. The music in this phase was also a neat, well-oiled machine - his brilliance held in place by the boundaries of the concert format. It was almost Ariyakudi-like - revelling in the medium - the mean tempo, always trying something new, but never overdoing a piece of improvisation, an uncluttered presentation of cluttered ideas. His music hid its tricks behind an easy charm.
***

"Mani lived like a king in those days," Thanjan said, as the battered Gypsy made its way down the hills. "I don't think he had all that much money, but he had enough people willing to spend on his behalf."
Ajith smiled and peered at what little he could see of the road in anxious concentration as a lorry passed him dangerously up a hairpin bend.

"I think he got tired of it, at some point. There was a string of affairs, your grand-aunt being only constant one. She was probably the only woman he really wanted to spend time with. His wife, Srividya, was a caring lady, fairly good-looking, but little else. Oh, she cooked really well. She brought up his children to hate him. You can't blame her for it, though. Mani didn't care much for them. They're all in the US now, they did well for themselves - the daughters are married to engineers, and the son is a professor."
"He was a musician, right?"
"Yeah. Narayanan was a very good musician, but couldn't grow out of the shadow of his father. Came under too much pressure, I think, from Mani's fans, who wanted to see the young Mani in him." He paused, and continued, "Mani also ignored him, didn't do enough to push his career. Mani was never pushed, so he didn't think it necessary. Narayanan left for the US, and has settled there as a professor of Indian music."
***

Sadasivam tried to sleep, unsuccessfully, on a chair in the adjacent room. He couldn't bear to watch Mani's blank face and lost spirit. The phone rang. It was Narayanan.
"How's Appa?"
"Last gasps."
"We're leaving tomorrow and coming there. If anything happens, don't wait for us for the cremation. We'll stay till the thirteenth day."
Sadasivam felt a surge of sympathy towards Srividya at the end of that phone call. She had spent the better part of her marriage shielding her children from their father's indiscretions. If she were a little more modern in her outlook, thought Sadasivam, she could've left Mani and sought a more independent, contended life. Like Saraswathi, who chose to never marry.
***

"The best music I heard," Thanjan said, "Was not in Mani's house in his last years." They had reached the plains now, and were proceeding a little less precariously towards Madras. "It was when Mani and Saraswathi sang together. They were geniuses - both of them. Saraswathi had an intuitive feel for the music, even more than Mani did. Her sense of rhythm... I've never seen her keep talam with her hands or her feet. And I've never seen her miss a beat. They listened to tapes of intricate tavil thani avartanams. Raghava Pillai, Meenakshisundaram Pillai and the like. Mani's eyebrows would knot in concentration. Not Saras akka. And she would pause the tape, and repeat the sollus back to Mani, like she had been practising them all her life.
"Their raga alapanas... They went on for days. Saraswathi was too weak to sing too much by this time. But they always sat down together. He would do the bulk of the singing, and she would join in every now and then with sangatis that she pulled out of nowhere. These last twenty years, he's been singing her music."
***

"Sing something," Mani mustered the energy to say to Shankar.
Shankar thought for a moment, and started Purvikalyani. Mani immediately knew where he was going with this. He asked Shankar to stop with his hand - Mani always hated cliches. Shankar hummed Ritigowla. Mani stopped him, and stage-whispered again, "Poornashadjam!"
Shankar was surprised at this strange raga request. But he obliged, softly singing Lavanya Rama.
***

"He was quite an alcoholic, you know," Thanjan said, "He would start with a drink each morning. A distant relative once received him at the airport in the US. Apparently, the first thing Mani asked for was some whiskey."
"When was this?"
"Hmmm. This was around when I was a kid - late seventies..."
"But I have seen a concert recording from that time. He didn't seem drunk or anything. Only his later recordings sound like there might have been something inducing his imagination."
Thanjan sniggered. "He told me once, 'Thanju! There are these people who say alcohol stimulates the brain. That's rubbish. It numbs it. It makes you think you're producing great music! If anything, it gives you the courage to try something you might not otherwise. But then, at that stage, you lack the concentration to execute it.'"
"But later? Once he came back from Kodaikanal?"
***

After that second disappearance, the extremities of Mani's hair had declared independence from the rest of him. They refused to be tamed, forming violent swirls and intricate patterns, still retaining an odd coherence. He was often asked to oil and comb it, by his wife, but he liked it this way. Every now and then, he would be possessed by a doubt - of whether he really didn't care about his hair or whether he let it be as an act of defiance.

Shankar stroked that hair now as he shifted to Saraswathi, almost unconsciously. He was holding Mani's hand; Shankar felt that it communicated this request to him. Shankar hummed a slow alapana around the daivatam, unleashing his teacher's trademark phrases that omitted the panchamam, and gave unnatural importance to the nishaadam.
***

"Her death shattered him?" Ajith asked.
"I used to think that, till recently. But I think it did more than shatter him."
Ajith turned to Thanjan.
"The road," Thanjan reminded Ajith. He continued, once Ajith turned his attention to the road again, "A year ago, I met Mani at his house. I had gone to Madras for my grand-uncle's funeral. My grand-uncle was quite a character, you know. My father got lucky when Mani left him the house. With his pension and the guest house, he lived very comfortably. My grand-uncle, on the other hand... He was only my father's age, worked his way up from the real bottom. He was a clerk in a lawyer's office in Madras. By the time he died, he was a lawyer, and a decent one at that. His sons, my uncles, a couple of whom were younger than me, formed a formidable partnership that rules the criminal courts to this day. Anyway, that's not the point of this story. I was telling Mani about him, and we got talking about death."
***

Watching someone die isn't easy.

I spent three hours by her bedside that morning, holding her hands, both of them in both of mine. We didn't know it would end then; it could have ended on any of the last nine days. Her hands had a warmth, so did mine. We held, our grip tightening every now and then, and loosening again. It was like a game. When one of us felt a sudden eruption of love, we tightened, and when she lost energy, we slackened.

After a while, we didn't know which hands were whose. They were equally warm, they knew every line, every depression, every lump, every fold, every groove in the other. They comprehended every move, every twitch, every squeeze. They were a part of the same system, from feeding off each other, they had mingled with each other. Fevered warmth spread from her, through my hands, to the rest of me. From the chair, I moved to the space she made on the bed. Cheek against cheek, shoulder against shoulder, thigh against thigh and toe in toe, we lay, until the rest of us became as familiar with each other as our palms.

Slowly, the warmth left us. Death had come to take us away. We felt it in the tips of our toes first, then our knees, stomachs and cheeks. The tips of our fingers were last; death left us through there, taking one soul away and leaving only a shell of the other behind.
***

Living in Mani's outhouse, and working as a clerk in the observatory, Thanjan's father, Govindan was the backbone of Mani's existence after Saraswathi's death. His wife cooked for Mani, kept the house clean, Govindan listened to his stories, his theories, his garbled philosophy.

Mani's already irregular, indisciplined existence had become even worse. The day had no meaning to him anymore, the sun had no effect on what he did or when he did it. Time floated, and he floated with it. Days went by and he didn't even know.

He lived those months upside down, sleep and waking flowing in and out of each other, time was completely diffused, nothing made sense and nothing seemed to happen. He spent a week in bed, unwell, tended for by Govindan's family, and went on a drinking binge for four days after with a couple of the tea plantation owners, entertaining them with tales of his travels. He spent hours, late into the nights, talking to Govindan about music, and spent days secluded and silent. He often sat in the sit-out staring at a tea plant.

He spent hours tuning a tambura and listening to its drone silently. He seemed very distracted when he sang every now and then. The music came in spurts, it stopped and started, it had lost the verve it had. That didn't seem to frustrate Mani at all. He smirked, stopped singing and strummed the tambura with his eyes closed.

Every now and then, he would go on an interminable walk, ambling through clumps hills, not too sure of where he was going or why. When he left on one of these walks, Govindan and his anxious family waited on him, cleaning the house, cooking every meal with a little extra for him. He returned, usually in a day or two, sometimes brisk and happy, sometimes tired and happy, and sometimes simply tired. Sometimes, he came back purposefully and sat with his tambura, and sometimes he just slept.
***

Mani asked Govindan once, "You know - that day I took that crazy walk?" Govindan remembered that day well.

Govindan wedged his way around the thicket with a stout branch in one hand and a petromax lamp in the other. He wasn't sure if he would find Mani here, amongst these bushes. The hills had too many hideouts. Some people had seen Mani walking in this direction, and Mani had mentioned a stream he frequented in this area. Govindan, not familiar with these paths, found it almost impossible to search in the darkness. He had a local with him for help, but even he lost his bearings. The murmur of the stream led them to a spot where he saw a pair of legs sticking out from behind a rock.

The body was cold, but there were faint signs of a beating heart. It took them four hours to get back to the road where they had left a jeep.

"For days," Mani said, "I had been hearing Saraswathi's voice, pleading with me to come to her. And then was another chorus of indistinct voices that welcomed me to wherever I was going. On each walk, I would hear these voices, egging me on to walk further till I reached them. Until that day, I was able to fight the chorus and return home.

"That night, when you took me to the doctor, I rose slowly from my body, I hovered above the scene, and the voices became more distinct, the chorus was more discernible. It was Saraswathi pleading with me to join her. My father, a mama from the drama company and Musiri were welcoming me. There was another voice - of a woman whom I only knew as Janani. I couldn't understand what she said at all.

"And then, something told me that it wasn't time to go. I don't know if I fought the voices, or if it was the doctor. I floated back to my own body, the voices stopped, I heard the hum of the machines in the hospital. When I become fully conscious later that day, I felt like I was reborn after three months."
***

"Why did he leave Kodaikanal for the city again?" Ajith asked.
"For his wife. That's what he told us, at least. He was very upset that there was a woman left in his care, and that he had ignored her. You know - he used to say, he performed only for his wife. That's a white lie. He performed to keep her going financially, not because he had any love for her. He retired when he didn't have to earn for her anymore."
***

Shankar sang Ranjani now. He sang the pallavi of Durmargachara, where Tyagaraja asked how people bring themselves to praise those who walked on sinful paths. Shankar sang it nearly in tears, for he remembered how Mani embellished each of the sangatis with intricate brigas and pregnant pauses.
Mani said, before closing his eyes, "Such a moralist, this Tyagaraja. And such a genius!"

Shankar felt the warmth leave Mani's hands. It dawned on him that those eyes wouldn't open again.
***

Epilogue

Ajith inserted the tape gingerly into his grandmother's old cassette player. The cover said, 'For Ajith'. She sat on the easy chair a few feet away. Nethra and Thanjan sat on the edge of the bed, and Shankar stood by the player.

"Turn the record button on!" a voice said through the player. Sharada recognised it as her cousin's.
"It is on!" Mani's voice said. Ajith was so used to hearing Mani's aged crackle that this seemed alien.

A tambura filled the room now, in a booming 1-kattai. Mani's voice came first, a sole chatushruti rishabham. The rishabham oscillated from almost the antara gandharam, but not quite there. It had a warmth, a life. It was not a swara taken in isolation, it was the raga's most distinctive feature. Soon, Saraswathi's voice sang a phrase, "Ri ga ma pa", gliding ever so smoothly, yet holding each note in its place for a fleeting second. Mani took over, as Saraswathi held the panchamam, "Ri pa ma ga ma ri." Each note was only an excuse for itself. The rishabham and the panchamam were conjoined by a drifting movement, the gandharam and the madhyamam were woven into each other, that you couldn't tell them apart. The phrase stopped at the same rishabham were the alapana started.

The two voices sang Sahana like this for almost half an hour, hovering around only four notes - the ri, ga, ma and pa. It was the most thorough examination Sahana had received in years. The notes were put through the paces, they were bent, squeezed and turned, but they didn't break. Sahana's notorious gandharam, the one that's neither here, nor there, nor anywhere, revelled in its joyous dance. Saraswathi, as Thanjan had said, was a genius. She would interject with phrases of devilish simplicity and charm, and leave it to Mani to develop those ideas further. Her voice had a vibrant clarity about it, and its cleanness enhanced its ability to move.

Ajith sat by the easy chair, holding his grandmother's hand. The music formed a vortex of images in her head, but the central one was the clearest. Of Saraswathi doling out sangati after sangati of dynamism with an unreal peace on her face. Of Mani sitting by her side, singing equally brilliantly, with the animated excitement of a seasoned performer. Mani's music grew on the concert stage, Saraswathi's grew in a dark room at the back of her house.

One side of the sixty-minute tape ended. The alapana had barely progressed beyond its first act. When Ajith changed the side, he found that the other side was blank. "They must have forgotten to change the side while recording," he said.

Shankar, who had walked out in the middle to take a call, came back looking shocked.
"What happened?" Ajith asked.
"A lady called from some newspaper asking me if I wanted to place an advertisement for Sir's tenth day. I asked her how she got my number. She said, 'We go to the crematoriums, get numbers of relatives from there and do marketing.'"

Ajith stared in disbelief, so did Nethra. The silence was broken by a giggle from Sharada. Thanjan guffawed. Shankar joined in, and soon, the others.

He would have found this funny, they knew.
***

A few words of thanks. A revision of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane gave me this idea, of writing about a person's life layer by layer. Thanks to Priya, who will find some words here familiar. Thanks to Emani Sankara Sastry, Ramani Sir and GNB, for providing musical inspiration.

Importantly, to Mashtre, who taught me to listen.

The Bestest

2010-10-25T10:26:00.000+05:30

A cricket post after quite long.
***

Some days ago, I undertook the arduous task of picking a team of the greatest eleven from a century-and-a-quarter of Test Cricket. The task was made trickier by a shortlist of eighty-eight players who made their country elevens. Sanath Jayasuriya was available for selection, but not Herbert Sutcliffe or WG Grace, Chaminda Vaas was there, but no Courtney Walsh or Joel Garner, Prasanna wasn't allowed, while Underwood was. You could argue, of course, that if a player didn't make his country eleven without question, he can't be on the all-time eleven. But logic and all-time lists aren't happy bedfellows. You compare and choose players you haven't even seen. I know Sachin's genius like I will never know Hammond's or Ponsford's. Yet, I have to select one. Similarly, I am forced to give some weight to Sobers' pronouncement on Subash "Fergie" Gupte's genius even though I've never seen him bowl. Statistics guide me, yes, but ultimately, it is a gut-feeling. No, a guess.

For the first opener, I can't look beyond Jack Hobbs. Amongst the early masters of batting, three names stand out the most influential - Grace, Ranji and Hobbs. Grace was the first to develop back-foot and front-foot play - a child learns these osmotically today by just watching people around him bat. Ranji showed the world the art of leg-side play and wrist work. But it was Hobbs who mastered all these principles of batting. He was the coaching manual. A question remains - which Hobbs am I picking - the early, Trumperesque Hobbs, or the post-war Jedi? I don't really know. I'm okay with either. Opening with Hobbs, I would have loved Sutcliffe - Hobbs' long-time collaborator at Surrey and England, and an expert on batting on unplayable wet wickets. His sixty-plus average is still the highest for an opener with over 4000 runs. But the England eleven went for the other stalwart, Len Hutton instead. So, I chose the greatest modern opener to partner Hobbs - Virender Sehwag. If Hobbs conquered the complex art of batting, Sehwag simplifies it. Which is why I think they would make such a great pair - at one end, you would have the calm, solid, immovable genius, and at the other end, an edgy, unpredictable, frightening one. For the record, Hutton and Gavaskar were probably better batsmen than Sehwag, simply because they played against much fiercer bowling in more difficult conditions. But I'm choosing a pair of openers, and not the two best. Which is why Sehwag makes it.

In the middle order, Don Bradman is a no brainer. Critics say that the bowling he faced wasn't as good, the fielding was poorer and he played all his cricket only against three teams, but ignore the fact that there were uncovered pitches, primitive protective gear, inferior bats. I think if you made adjustments for all this with a sophisticated statistics model, you would find that Bradman's record would remain untarnished. No batsman has ever scored even nearly as heavily, consistently and quickly as Bradman. He's in at No. 3. George Headley, the "Black Bradman" is the second middle order batsman. The first great black West Indian batsman, he played only twenty-odd Test Matches, but scored runs at an average of over 60 in a batting line-up where he accounted for nearly half the team's output. Until the Ws made their appearance, Headley was the West Indies' only world-class batsman. Batting in an order like that would have had an effect on his batting, as he found himself battling with the tail very quickly. Still, he managed that average, that record and had such an impact on the game that his loving fans described Bradman as the "White Headley", and Ramachandra Guha describes him as the greatest West Indian batsman ever - even above Lara and Richards.

Arguably, the most complete cricketer of all time, Sobers was born to play the game. He was one of the greatest batsmen of all time, he could bowl spin and medium pace and was a great fielder. He walks into the team as a batsman and an extra bowler. So far, the middle order has selected itself. Now comes the difficult part - picking one between Lara, the two Richards (Viv and Barry), Chappell, Hammond and Tendulkar - a list so diverse and distinguished that it would be criminal to leave anyone out. Ultimately, I went for the most complete batsmen I've seen - one of those guesses - and chose Sachin Tendulkar. For all the allegations on not finishing games, or scoring against weaker teams, Sachin Tendulkar remains the purest, most selfless, most beautiful, batsman of the last two decades. He has invented shots - the guide over the slip cordon, that perfect straight bat while playing the paddle sweep behind the keeper, that cover-drive on the up, or those million ways in which he manufactures singles of absolutely any ball.

This brings us to the wicketkeeper. When the batting line-up has Hobbs, Sehwag, Bradman, Headley, Sobers and Sachin, the wicketkeeper need not be a great batsman. Even as far as wicketkeeper batsmen go, Andy Flower, whose batting I rate higher than Gilchrist or Sangakkara is not available. When I chose the list on cricinfo, I picked Sangakkara. But after some research, I'd rather go with Alan Knott, who stands up there with the most skillful keepers of all time. Knott's art came to the forefront when he stood up to Underwood on wet wickets in the County circuit, when each ball had a mind of its own, and Knott still managed to collect them noiselessly. When you have Sydney Barnes swinging and spinning at the same time, and Muralitharan flummoxing batsmen with his doosra, there better be a keeper who can keep pace with what is thrown at him - the batsman isn't going to touch much.

This leaves us with the bowlers. The combination I prefer is two quicks and two spinners with Sobers bowling according to the pitch, and Tendulkar pitching in if another hand is required. Malcolm Marshall, with his extreme speed, skid, seam, swerve, swing and smartness picks himself. He was the greatest fast bowler of them all - at an unconventional five-feet-ten, and a bustling open-chested action, he could decimate batting orders. Ask England - he bowled once with his left hand fractured and still destroyed them. Just like Ranji invented leg-side play and changed the way the game was played, the Pakistani quartet of Nawaz, Imran, Akram and Younis rejuvenated old-ball bowling with reverse swing. The most skilled of that lot was Akram, bowling with the cleanest of actions and doing things with the ball that pacemen before and after him have only dreamt of. Plus, he adds left-arm variety to the attack.

Sydney Barnes was an unclassifiable bowler. He bowled a cocktail of swing, seam and spin - it was hard to tell one from another. He bowled at a Kumble-esque pace, and made turned the ball as much as O'Reilly or Warne. When someone remarked that O'Reilly was a better bowler because he bowled the googly, Barnes said, "I didn't need to." A temperamental character, he once bowled badly because his captain refused to give him the new ball. He skipped a Test Match because the English Board refused to pay for his wife's accommodation. The reason he makes it here, quite apart from his incredible numbers, is because for three generations (he played cricket for almost forty years), batsmen said he was the greatest of them all. The slot for the second spinner is a toss up between the game's two most successful - Warne and Muralitharan. Arguably, Warne was more skilful, while Murali was more successful. Warne bowled, very often, when teams had been softened by McGrath and Gillespie before him. Murali bowled when batsmen were well warmed up. Warne bowled in spinner-unfriendly, bouncy Australian tracks, but Murali bowled on pitches that were built for him. The litmus test, for me, is how they fared against the best players of spin of their generation. On this analysis, Warne, for all his wizardry, comes a distant second. Murali might not have murdered India like he did England, but he did trouble India more than any other spinner had done since Richie Benaud. Murali, in one sense, was like George Headley - he was the only world-class bowler amongst a string of also-rans. He had more opportunities, therefore, but he had more pressure as well. He rose to the challenge and ended up as the greatest matchwinner of all time. For that, he makes it as my No. 11. (This is also a change from the selection I made on cricinfo.)

The team, in batting order:
Jack Hobbs, Virender Sehwag, Don Bradman, George Headley, Sachin Tendulkar, Gary Sobers, Alan Knott, Wasim Akram, Malcolm Marshall, Muttiah Muralitharan, Sydney Barnes.
Twelfth Man - Sunil Gavaskar. (If the pitch is difficult, or the opposing team has West Indian fast bowlers of the 80s, Gavaskar sneaks in ahead of Sehwag.)

Image

2010-10-06T13:01:00.002+05:30

I was almost seventeen-and-a-half when I saw a bus held back from falling headlong into a river by a mesh of electric wires; this was after I had jumped out of the driver's seat of the bus. I had successfully cracked an exam the previous evening, one that defines my existence to this day, but that didn't matter. My big story for the next few weeks was that my overnight bus was nearly thrown into the Pangala River. "You should've seen it, mare. Too good!"

I was nearly twenty-six last week when another overnight bus nearly killed me, but killed another man, and injured at least three more. I wasn't awakened by the jolt this time. I was there in the thick of the action, standing a few feet behind the driver, begging him to stop at a place from where I could take a share auto. One moment, the conductor cackled, "Non-stop! Central!" and the next moment, he gasped.

The mind calculates really quickly, or time slows down, I don't know - it just takes a second for you to know that you're done for. And another second for impact. I was too scared to look. I opened my eyes to shattered glass, screaming, commotion, and a yellow van that had fallen on another taxi. The mind told me again - my bus hit the yellow van that tumbled over and fell on the taxi. Save for a few small shards of glass on my body, a few scratches, and a diffused pain in my cheek, I was fine.

I noted with relief that the taxi driver made his way out of the taxi, looking shaken, but not injured. I craned over the debris, from inside the bus, to take a look at the yellow van. The driver didn't get out. There was glass everywhere, and blood on it. The driver's body emerged only when people pulled him out. I read the lettering on the side of the van, now facing the sky. "School Bus". Immediately the mind conjured an image - of screaming, bruised schoolchildren, blood, battered bones, broken glass, all struggling to crawl out of the mangled school van.

It was six am, the school bus was empty, and there were no children.

Yet, three days on, this image haunts, turns me into an insomniac, worries me each time I drive, wrecks me when I see an overnight bus. Soon, this image will become a part of that memory, so skilfully woven into what I actually saw, that I will not be able to separate the two.

The mind has a way of numbing the effect of what it has seen, it has its antidotes against what it knows. But against what it imagines, it is powerless.

Witness for the Plaintiff

2010-10-01T18:20:00.002+05:30

If this post offends you, it is meant to.
***

The ten-thirty bell signalled tension for both sides. The plaintiff's crucial witness would be cross-examined by the defendant's bewildered lawyer. The large courtroom where the Full Bench of the High Court would sit was a large, airy, cheery, bright room until they installed air-conditioning a few years ago. Now, it looked like early evening throughout the day, and a low hum provided the background noise for complicated litigation.

The lawyer held the witnesses proof affidavit nervously in his hand.

"I state that Rama, also known as Lord Rama (no offence meant to My Lords) Ram (not to be confused with a male sheep), Ramachandra, Raghuvara, Pattabhirama, Kodandarama, Ram Lalla (I did not know this one until this case), Dinamanivamsatilaka, Maryaadapurushottam, Daasaratha etc. was born in Ayodhya in the sanctum sanctorum of a ruined temple. I was present that day, and was one of the sanyasis who performed his naamakarana. I state that a structure was built, around four thousand years later on this very site by invaders."

The defendant's lawyer read the paragraph thrice to make sure he was reading what he was reading. "This guy can't be serious," he told his tired junior, who was poring over volumes of officialese that archaeologists had thrown up. He saw, in the back row of the visitors gallery, a geriatric with long white hair tied up in a ridiculous bun on top of his head, flowing white beard, dressed in saffron attire, sitting cross-legged on the century-old wooden bench, looking irritatingly smug.

The judges entered the courtroom ceremonially, led by three ushers in traditional white-and-red attire and majestic sceptres. Even as they entered, one was giggling, the second was trying to tell the first to stay in control, and the third looked grave. Everyone stood up, and bowed. The judges acknowledged the bow with folded hands. The bench clerk called out, "Item one!" and read out the cause title, and said, "Posted for plaintiff's evidence."

"If it may please your Lordship, I am appearing for the plaintiff. My lord, the matter is posted the cross examination of PW 677."

The bench clerk handed the proof affidavits to the judges, and the senior-most judge said, "Are you ready, counsel?" The defendant's lawyer nodded unsurely.

"Please call the witness."

The plaintiff's lawyer signalled to the gallery, and the old man in saffron robes got up from his seat, and walked confidently to the witness box, where he was administered an oath. The typist recorded on his barely-in-one-piece desktop that the witness was administered oath.

The defendant's lawyer, reading from the affidavit asked, "Shri Shri Shri Shri Shri Shri Shri Shri Shri Satyasivasundarananda..."
"You have one Shri too many," the witness said.
"No, I don't. If your name was Ramesh, I'd say, 'Shri Ramesh'..."
"Oh."
"Out of curiosity," a judge asked, "How do you decide how many Shris you add before your name?"
"In the olden days," the witness expounded, "We added one Shri for every three-hundred years of abstention from Shrimatis. Though sources today tell me that the figure is about three hundred minutes."
The judge giggled. His fellow judge whispered in his ear, "Learned Brother, please behave yourself."
"You state in your affidavit, Shri Shri Shri Shri..."
"I think you can call him 'PW 677'," a judge interjected.
"Much obliged, my lord," he said, looking truly obliged for a change, and turning to the witness, "Shri PW 677, you state that you are about 5010 years old. That would mean that you were born in 3000 BC."
"Wrong. I was born in 2940 BC. You see, we sanyasis are born at the age of sixty. Have you ever seen a twenty-year old sanyasi?"
The defendant's lawyer nodded gravely. The typist duly recorded the evidence. The judge said, "This is fascinating."
"Yeah. So, when I was eighty, someone said I was young and upcoming. I was overjoyed." The typist was about to record this when the judge motioned him to ignore it.
"I wish I was a sanyasi," the giggly judge said, suddenly, "I'm just sixty-one, and I'm retiring in a few months."
"Please ignore my Learned Brother. He's been like this for months. Anticipatory withdrawal symptoms."

The defendant's lawyer picked up a book, and said, "If you are that old, how come you don't figure in this book?"
"What book is that, counsel?" a judge asked.
"The Limca Book of World Records."
"Ho dude, what is that?!" the witness asked, "Looks like I've been away from civilisation for too long. Damn it."
The typist looked at the judge uncomprehendingly. One judge said, "The Limca Book of Records does not mention my name as the Oldest Living Indian."

"You state in your affidavit that you reside at 'Small hillock, K2 backside, Karakoram Range, Gilgit Baltistan, Pakistan'. How do you survive there? What do you eat?"
"I meditate for a few years, and then wake up for a small bite, and then meditate again. I eat snowflakes."
"Snowflakes? How do you eat those?"
"Like you eat cornflakes."
The giggly judge asked, "Ooh. Is it tasty?"
"Of course! Why don't you come home sometime? Bring some milk when you come, and if possible, some bananas, strawberries and honey."
"Honey! Yum!"
"Learned brother! Let us please concentrate on the issues at hand."
"Learned brother, we are writing an 8000 page judgment. Surely one small recipe won't hurt."
The second brother whispered to the third, "Our Learned Brother is acting like he's had too much grass."
"Oh. Is he vegetarian?"

The defendant's lawyer soldiered on, "You state that your occupation was as a rishi and a sub-guru to Dasharatha and Rama after him. What were your duties?"
"My main task was to perform rituals for the princes. Drive away ill omens and the like. And then we taught Sanskrit to our princes, juniors and successors. I was an expert archery theorist. I couldn't shoot an arrow too well, but I could talk about it relentlessly."
"Like Harsha Bhogle," the judge said, guffawing.
"Learned Brother!"
The typist duly recorded these findings.

"Were you personally acquainted with Rama?"
"Oh, of course. I was born only ten years before him. So, even though I was seventy years older, we were contemporaries in a sense." The keyboard clippety-clapped.
"What interactions have you had with him?"
"We used to discuss matters of civil engineering. That helped him build bridges later on. We even enjoyed the occasional drink of soma. That was quite something, not like the drink this lawyer fed me last night - whiskey, he called it. Jack Daniel, apparently."
"Any other interactions?"
Oh, I was also his economics teacher briefly."
"Only briefly?"
"Yeah. Before I could teach him macroeconomics, he went away to fight some gents and ladies in the forest with a senior of mine, and came back married. And once he was married, he had little time for classes."
"Anyway, after marriage, you only need microeconomics," a voice rang.
Another resigned voice said, "Learned Brother..." Then came the clippety-clap of the keyboard.

"What were you doing on the ninth night after the New Moon during the Chaitra month on the day when Rama was born?"
"Dude, I can't reveal all that."
"Did you watch him being born?"
"No, I did not have access to those areas."
"So, you did not see him being born."
"No, I didn't."
"So, it could well be that he was not born at all."
"But I told you that I knew him."
"Please answer my question."
"Yes, yes," the judge said, "Just answer the questions put to you, 677."
"I put it to you that Rama was never born." The plaintiff's lawyer banged his fist on the table.
"Wrong."
The typist typed furiously, "It is wrong to say that Rama was not born at all."
"At what age did you interact with Rama?"
"When he was around fifteen."
"I put it to you that just as you were born at the age of sixty, Rama was born at the age of fifteen."
"Wrong." The typist typed, "It is wrong to state that Rama was born at the age of fifteen."
There was some murmuring around the courtroom. Someone shouted, "Don't insult my God!" The giggly judge said, "Damn. If this was a movie, I'd have a gavel in my hand, and I could say, 'Order! Order!' I'll retire in six months without ever having said it!"
"Learned Brother!" came the groan.

"Where was Rama born on that night?"
"In Ayodhya."
"Can you show me the palace on this map?" the lawyer said, taking out a map of Ayodhya.
The witness peered at the map closely and pointed to a spot and said, "Here!"
It was the place right under the central dome of the destroyed mosque.
"But you said you hadn't seen him being born."
"Well, that was the delivery room in the palace."
"Delivery room?"
"Yes. There were so many women in the palace, and so many children being born that the palace had one. You know, I can even tell you where he was conceived."
"Conceived? I thought the king just gave his wives some nectar and they conceived."
The witness erupted into a volcano of laughter. "Valmiki wrote in metaphors you know! Nectar! Hahahaha!"
The giggly judge roared with laughter. "Learned Brother!"
Then the judge asked, "What do you mean by lots of children being born?" The typist began to type, when the judge asked him not to.
"Oh, the palace was a fairly wild place, My Lord. If you played your cards right, you could get fairly lucky."
"Damn. I'm telling you. I should've been born five thousand years ago."

"Lets get back to the point here," the lawyer continued, "Babies were usually born in this 'delivery room'. But not necessarily."
"I don't know of a baby who wasn't."
"Rama?"
"He was."
"Did you see him being born?"
"No."
The typist typed away, the plaintiff's lawyer exasperatedly stoop up and said, "My Lords! I have already gone through this. The Amar Chitra Katha clearly shows a room where the queens are lying on beds. This must be a delivery room."
"That's a matter for argument, My Lords! No point raising it now."
"Yes, Counsel. Go on with the cross-examination."
"How do you know the delivery room was at this exact spot."
"I have seen it. I used to go there to bless the children."
"Did you bless Rama there?"
"No..."
Type, type.

"Now, PW 677, lets come to the other important question. What were you doing in the year of 1528?"
"AD or BC?"
"AD."
"There was a Kumbh-Mela at Sangam. I came down from the Himalayas for it. I lost my brother there."
"Did you pass via Ayodhya?"
Guiltily, the witness said, "Yes. We aren't supposed to have any material pleasures, according to our dharma. But you see, I had a sentimental attachment to the land of my birth. So, I came here."
"Did you see a mosque in the city?"
"They were building one."
"Were 'they' Babur?"
"No. 'They' were some masons and daily labourers."
"Did Babur commission the mosque?"
"I don't know who Babur is."
The judge whispered to his brother, "He doesn't know Babur. No wonder he hasn't got a haircut. Teehee."
The other judge whispered back, "Really, Learned Brother, are you on drugs?"
"Abbey, Learned Brother, you were the one arguing yesterday that the place of birth is a juristic person."
"Well, it is!"
"God save this country from judges like you."
"Just for that, I'm going to dissent."
"Learned Brothers! Maintain decorum!" the third judge said.

"PW 677, do you know Humayun?"
"Of course! He was this monkey who used to hang around Rama."
Type, type.

The lawyer, quite pleased with himself, said, "I have no more questions."
***

Tyagaraja, the Environmentalist

2010-09-25T11:03:00.003+05:30

The anupallavi of Tyagaraja's popular Kharaharapriya kriti, chakkani rajamargamulundaga, always intrigued me. Consider, first, the words of the pallavi:

chakkani rajamargamulundaga
sandula duranela, o manasa

"When there are beautiful, wide roads suitable for kings, why do you squeeze through gullies?" Fine. Makes sense. If you ignore the traffic, of course.

Then, we come to the anupallavi:

chikkani palu migadayundaga,
chiyanu gangasagaramele?

"When you have sweet milk and cream (yum), why would you choose to drink the..." and this is where I kept getting stuck - "gangasagaram?" I know the Ganga is highly polluted, and I would choose sweet palu and migada (yum!) over it, but I found it unlikely that the pious Tyagaraja would denigrate the Holy Ganges in his songs. But then, I'm a lazy guy, I didn't bother to find out what this word meant. I convinced myself that that the saint was also an environmental activist and let things be. Each time I sang the anupallavi, I would picture the yucky Ganga, floating dead bodies, toxic effluents from corrupt factories, the stench, the green colour, and contrast it with sweet milk, flavoured with a little badam, perhaps, drunk hot from a steel tumbler, early morning, skimming the cream (yum!) off the top with one swift movement of the tongue.

Bliss.

This morning, while writing the notation to this song for someone, I checked T.K. Govinda Rao's book for the lyrics and meaning. And I found, "river of toddy - gangasagaram!" After ploughing through another Telugu book that has detailed commentary on all Tyagaraja kritis, I found that "gangasagaram" was the saint's sarcastic way of referring to toddy. The man had a wicked sense of humour!

I sang the anupallavi with rare vigour this morning. "Chikkani palu migada(yum!) yundaga, Chhiyanu gangasagaramele?"

Two Disappearances - Continued

2010-09-22T13:25:00.003+05:30

I wanted to put this part and the next one up together, but it was too long. Split it in two. Kachaak.

Also, there's a chapter in Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle called 'No Good News in this Chapter'. Random fact.
***

On a rickety bus to Kodaikanal, trundling along a highway in disrepair, Ajith called his father. They hadn't spoken in almost a year.

"Ajith?" his father asked, immediately.
"Dad," Ajith said, in a tone that suggested he wanted to stay away from small talk, "Where in Kodaikanal is that house Thatha owned?"
"Why?" his father asked.
"Just answer the question."
His father paused, considered his response, and then said, "Your Thatha sold it. I'm not sure if it exists anymore."
"Address?"
His father hesitated, and then said, "Listen. Your Paati called me the other day and told me that you were meeting NV Mani about your grand-aunt." Ajith was surprised. Sharada was not on talking terms with her son for as long as Ajith remembered. "She wanted to know," he continued, "If I told you about them."
"Well, you did," Ajith said, bluntly.
"I might have. But that doesn't mean you go looking for these dead stories. It has split three generations of our family already. Leave it alone now."

"What does that mean?" Ajith asked.
"Why doesn't your Paati talk to me?"
"Because you left me."
Ajith's father sighed, and said, "No. I had stopped talking to them even before you were born. I didn't leave you, Ajith. I left your mother, and my parents. You just happened to be with them, that's all."
Ajith was silent. His father continued, after a few moments, "Your thatha gave away that house to your Taapi a year before you were born. For nothing. And she gave it away to Mani. Again, for nothing. And your grandparents did not say a thing. They said it was her property, and that she could do whatever she wanted with it."
"And you left my mother because?"
"They were all together. In their love for your Taapi and Mani."
"I never thought you were such a prude."

Ajith's father went completely silent, the words stung. They lingered for as long as father and son held their phones. His father finally cut the call. Ajith stared out the window as a dark, indiscernible landscape spiralled around him on the climb up the mountains. He couldn't sleep, for thoughts formed whirlpools in his head - swirling, chaotic and deadly. He drifted occasionally into snatches of sleep, only to be awakened by the rumbling of the bus or of his own mind. Ajith woke up in the morning, from that half-sleep, to the cry of touts and auto-drivers in the Kodaikanal bus stand. His phone had two messages from his father. One gave him the address of the house, and the other said, "My father loved her. Everyone knew."

The weight of that revelation fell surprisingly lightly on Ajith's shoulders. Too many lofts in too many houses with too many secrets had been emptied out onto the floor too quickly.

Ajith barely remembered how he made his way to that address. He didn't register how much the auto driver asked him for, he was only vaguely relieved that the driver immediately knew the place. He noticed that the house was slightly away from the bustle of the touristy quarter of Kodaikanal. Inhabitation became more sparse as they made their way through an untarred, climbing road towards the top of a densely forested hill.

"Shortcut!" the driver announced. Ajith nodded distractedly. "You're working at the observatory?" the driver asked again. Ajith muttered, "No..."
"A writer, then!" the driver said.
"Yes," Ajith said, not wanting to engage in any conversation.

When they reached the house, Ajith found that it had been converted into a guest house of sorts. A home-stay, they called it. A caretaker emerged from behind the house with a pair of gardening shears in his hands.
"Yes?" he asked Ajith, scanning him through his thick glasses. His gaze reminded Ajith of Shankar.
Ajith didn't really know what to do at this point. He needed to see the house, but he had no idea what else to do there. He said, "This is a guest house?"
"Yes."
"I need to stay here."
If the caretaker was surprised, he didn't show it. "How many days, Sir?"
Ajith made up his mind as he went along, "Two days."
The caretaker now stopped hiding his surprise, "Sir, what do you do?"
"I'm a writer," Ajith said, almost naturally.
"Ok," the caretaker said, "This way. I'm Thanjan, owner."
"Hello," Ajith said, swinging his backpack over his shoulder, as he walked along the pathway to the door. Thanjan had a walk that was slightly off-balance, with each step, it seemed like he would fall over to the left. He wore a faded khadi kurta and track pants, and hadn't shaved in four days.

As he walked towards the make-shift reception, Ajith had this disconcerting sensation that something was wrong, somewhere. He had seen this house in those photographs, and he vaguely remembered the place from his childhood, but something disturbed him. The place was largely familiar, but not entirely. There was a newness that troubled Ajith - since the owner had kept it so similar to the way it used to be, the small changes stood out. It was almost what he remembered, but it wasn't. That unsettled him.

As Ajith filled the details in the caretaker's register, tweaking small details here and there, changing one digit of his telephone number, or changing the old and new number for his house out of sheer habit, Thanjan asked, "Only two days, Mr. Ramachandran?"
"Yeah."
"The reason I'm asking you, is because we've had writers before, and they've all spent months here, writing."
"I'm not writing," Ajith said, "Merely looking for inspiration."
"For a novel, Sir?"
"Perhaps."

Thanjan picked up Ajith's bag, and led him along a corridor. "Until last month, there was this girl staying in this room," the caretaker said, joyfully pointing Ajith to a bright room with a sit-out. Ajith remembered it as the sit-out where his Taapi sat with a cup of tea in a photograph. "This writer, Sir," the caretaker continued, "Sharanya Ramkumar, her pseudonym is Mythili Iyer."
"Ah," Ajith said, "I know her. Very autobiographical novel..."
"Yeah? A sad life, then! She wrote the whole thing here, in this room," he said, almost wistfully, then, suddenly, springing to life, "Shall I get you some chai?"
"That would be great."
"You don't mind a light tea? Flavoured?"
"Sounds great."
"I'll get you the tea. You have to guess the flavour. You will not get this anywhere else in South India. I grow the flavouring in the garden!" Thanjan left Ajith to himself and scurried away to the kitchen.

Ajith spotted a black tambura in a corner of the room, in a pretty wooden stand, nestled amongst floor-pillows. He recognised it immediately as the one in the photograph.

He fished out his toothbrush from his bag, and found he didn't have paste. Thanjan came back, almost on cue, and said, "I thought you might not have toothpaste!" and handed him a Dabur Red paste. The paste tasted as foul as it looked, and Ajith washed his mouth until he could taste his teeth again.

When he finished, he found Thanjan waiting for him in the sit-out, laying out the tea. There were two cups - Thanjan had invited himself.

The sit-out was sunshiny, it opened out to the view of a rivulet twisting around moss-ridden grey rocks amidst a thicket. There were two cane chairs - Ajith recognised them from the photographs again - and a plastic teapoy that looked woefully out of place.

"I suggest you have it with honey. No milk, no sugar," Thanjan said.
Ajith obeyed, he was hardly given any option. He brought the hot cup towards his mouth, and smelt something fruity. He sipped the tea and found that the flavour was a mix of two or three fruits. Pineapple, definitely. A dash of mango, perhaps. And a little lemon.

"Wrong," Thanjan declared, "It's only one fruit."
Ajith was surprised. He took another sip, the taste began to grow on him now, and it achieved some coherence - instead of tasting like a mixture of three flavours, it tasted like one. But he couldn't put his finger on what it was.
"Passion fruit!" Thanjan said, "The previous owner of this house was a bit of a gardener also."
This made Ajith curious, "Who was he?"
"There was a she, who was the gardener, and then there was a he, who sold it to my father," Thanjan said, "Biscuit?"
"Mani sold it to your father?" Ajith asked, ignoring the biscuit.
Thanjan put the biscuit back on the tray, "How do you know Mani Sir owned this house?"
"I've been interviewing him."
Thanjan didn't believe him, "He wouldn't have told you this."
"Why?"
"I can't tell you that. Anyway," he said, emptying the contents of the teacup into his mouth in one large gulp, "I must be going now. You can leave the cups here."

Thanjan stood up to leave, when Ajith said, "I am Ramachandran's grandson. I've been to this house before."
Thanjan sat down, "Please don't tell me you are going to write this story?"
"Why is everyone so ashamed about it?"
"Mani Sir is a respected classical musician..."
"Many respected classical musicians have had open dalliances."
"But at his age, you want all this to come out... And," he said suddenly, "Saras Akka is your own family!" Then he declared with an air of finality, "If you came here looking for a story, you're not getting one."

Thanjan stormed out, and walked back in to say, "Do you want hot water for a bath? I'll have to heat it on the stove."
Ajith nodded.

Ajith bathed lazily, the hot water from Thanjan's stove was exhausted too quickly, but his body got used to the sting of the cold tap-water after a few tentative mugs. How quickly we get used to things, Ajith thought, what seems undigestible, intolerable, painful, soon becomes a part of our everyday. This isn't about making friends with discomfort, he thought, it is about redefining it for yourself.

He felt a lot better after that bath, the happy smell of soap and shampoo lifted his spirits. He went back to the sit-out, spread his legs out on to the teapoy and picked up the newspaper that was kept for him. He tucked into the sports page when Thanjan came back and said, "Breakfast is ready."

Ajith took his newspaper with him to the dining table, where he ate in silence. Thanjan coldly served him idlis, fresh from the cooker, with steaming sambar and slightly salty chutney. They didn't say a word to each other. Another cup of passion fruit tea later, Ajith went back to the sit-out and sat down with his laptop. Now that he had two days to himself, he thought it might be a good idea to sit and transcribe the interview.

With his legs on the teapoy, laptop on his lap, recorder in his shirt pocket and earphones in his ear, Ajith began the transcribing. He started with the first part of the conversation - Mani's memories of his childhood and his early teachers. He spoke of his mother, of how he kept taalam with the clatter of her sewing machine. "She had rhythm in everything she did," Mani said, "You could play the mridangam to her walk, to her talk, to her cutting vegetables, cooking, churning the cream into butter..." And his father, who could imitate the great nadaswaram vidwans, the distinct violin styles of Chodiwah, Dwaram and Papa, Dhanammal's veena, all with his voice, and Mali with his whistling. He wrote about Mani's brief schooling in a convent, where Mani claimed to anger his English teacher by asking him how Jesus could carry a goat in his hand and walk around when his followers ate the goat with relish. Then came his memories of the drama company, practising long and hard to get every entry, exit, every dance sequence, every song perfect, travelling on bullock cart to different villages for performances, singing and acting about eight hours a day without a trace of tiredness or boredom, tasting alcohol for the first time at fifteen after a particularly successful show, and learning Tyagaraja kritis from unnamed 'mama's.

Ajith remembered Mani's wonderment and joy while recollecting these memories - he really didn't want them lost with his passing. And he was happy he found a patient listener, who would also write about them.

By lunch, Ajith reached the part about Janani, but he had already exceeded his word limit. He had two-and-a-half days' worth of conversation still left to go through on his recorder. He decided to transcribe everything, and then begin the editing process.

Thanjan announced lunch as sourly as he had announced breakfast. Ajith ate the lunch at the common dining table as sourly as he had eaten the breakfast, which was a pity, for the food was excellent. There was another man at the table for lunch, but Ajith buried himself in a novel, not wanting to make any conversation.

After lunch, Ajith resumed his writing in the sit-out, but found it a lot harder to concentrate. The food had settled heavily in his tummy, and kept sending him into snatches of sleep.

The rivulet gurgled outside, the water sparkled in the sunlight that fell from directly above it. He saw a rabbit by the trees, hopping about aimlessly. His phone rang, and a woman's voice he had definitely heard before said, "Follow the rabbit." The voice was familiar, but Ajith couldn't exactly place it. Something told him, though, that he should follow the rabbit. Soon, the rabbit had led him to a part of the forest where Thanjan and Mani sat discussing something in hushed tones. When they saw Ajith, they bolted, and Ajith ran after them. Soon, Ajith found he wasn't chasing Thanjan or Mani, but his father and grandfather. Saraswathi overtook him, caught up with them, and ran past them. Ajith ran faster, overtaking all of them, and nearly reaching a finish line, when he found the rabbit and a tortoise had reached before him, and were bickering about some cheating.

Ajith woke up when his laptop fell to the ground with a thud. He was disoriented and worried for a second, but he calmed down when he found that there was no damage done. He saved the file, and put his computer on sleep mode and took a proper nap on the bed.

He woke up nearly three hours later, with a faint sense of a tense, nagging dream - he didn't remember it, though. He could do with another cup of that passion fruit tea. He found Thanjan in the garden again, with his shears and a hosepipe, tending to a tree that Ajith had never seen before.

"What tree is this?" Ajith asked.
Thanjan, his voice still unfriendly, replied, "Tea tree. You let the plant grow, and it turns into this."
Thanjan didn't seem to be doing anything with his shears or the hosepipe. He was just walking around the garden with them for company. Once he reached the main gate with Ajith following him, Thanjan asked, "You want tea?"

Ajith was now at the desk in his room, his laptop on the table, a cup of tea by its side, attempting to restart his transcribing. After much thought, he decided to skip the portion about Janani for now, and moved on to the second day of the interview. Here, Ajith found, very little of the conversation was recorded - most of it happened in the room when Mani's brother was picking out furniture, or in the car on the way to the beach. Ajith dropped the conversation format, and wrote in a more freestyle prose way for this part of the interview.

It was almost eight before he finished writing this part and editing the entire interview until then, when Thanjan came again for dinner. Ajith said, "You want to read what I'm writing?" Unsurely, Thanjan said, "Yes."

Just then, Ajith's phone rang. It was Nethra.
"Hello!" he said.
"Where the hell are you?" she asked, urgently.
"Kodaikanal."
Ajith heard her take a deep breath, before she said, "Mani's very breathless. Might not last till morning."
***

I am not a Whale

2010-08-23T12:02:00.007+05:30

Some borrowed words for your reading pleasure, from an early chapter in Haruki Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase. I finished reading this book a while ago, but the book hasn't finished with me.

"We are not whales - and this constitutes one great theme underscoring our sex life.

When I was a kid, there was an aquarium thirty minutes by bicycle from where I lived. A chill aquarium-like silence always pervaded the place, with only an occasional splash to be heard. I could almost feel the Creature from the Black Lagoon breathing in some dim corner.

Schools of tuna circled 'round and 'round the enormous pool. Sturgeon plied their own narrow watercourse, pirahna set their razor-sharp teeth into chunks of meat, and electric eels sputtered and sparked like shorted-out lightbulbs.

The aquarium was filled with countless other fish as well, all with different names and scales and fins. I couldn't figure out why on earth there had to be so many kinds of fish.

There were, of course, no whales in the aquarium. One whale would have been too big, even if you knocked out all the walls and made the entire aquarium into one tank. Instead, the aquarium kept a whale penis on display. As a token, if you will.

So it was that my most impressionable years of boyhood were spent gazing not at a whale but a whale's penis. Whenever I tired of strolling through the chill aisles of the aquarium, I'd steal off to my place on the bench in the hushed, high-ceilinged stillness of the exhibition room and spend hours in end contemplating this whale's penis.

At times it would remind me of a tiny shriveled palm tree; at other times, a giant ear of corn. In fact, if not for the plaque - WHALE GENITAL: MALE - no one would have taken it to be a whale's penis. More likely an artifact unearthed from the Central Asian desert than a product of the Antarctic Ocean. It bore no resemblance to my penis, not to any penis I'd ever seen. What was worse, the severed penis exuded a singular, somehow unspeakable aura of sadness.

It came back to me, that giant whale's penis, after having intercourse with a girl for the very first time. What twists of fate, what torturous circumnavigations, had brought it to that cavernous exhibition room. My heart ached, thinking about it. I felt as if I didn't have a hope in the world. But I was only seventeen and too young to give up on everything. It was then and there I came to the realization I have borne in mind ever since.

Which is, that I am not a whale."

Now you know why he leaves me speechless.

Grandmother of the Bride

2010-08-19T21:40:00.002+05:30

Mohammad Amir bowling is one of the more beautiful sights in the world - fast, fresh, whippy, and seaming, he lights up dull evenings here in Madras. And then there's Mohammad Asif, trundling along from the other end, weaving his wiliness around that unsuspecting outside edge. On one such evening, I sat before the television, watching these two when Paati sat beside me and said, "Will you turn down the volume for a second? I need to talk to you."

Paati always had the strangest things to say, and mostly, they concerned food. She would offer some strange dish, usually, "Shall I make Maggi for you with some kadalai in it?" or "What about bread with tomato and molaga podi, toasted with cooking oil?" "Perhaps you'd like some mango juice - one half of the mango was spoilt, so I squeezed it along with the other half to compensate." I usually listened to these questions, and dismissed them politely. Sometimes, impolitely. But Paati never failed to offer these quirky culinary delights.

On this particular day, it didn't seem like she was offering me anything to eat or drink. I felt she actually had something to discuss. I wondered if she had her leg-cramps, whether her eyes were watering, it could've been her teeth, or her hands, or that shooting headache she complains of sometimes. She once had a 'gastric' pain from her head to her stomach, radiating from end-to-end endlessly.

But she seemed fine. Perhaps she wanted to buy something for the house. Once she wanted to buy a folding bed, in addition to the four in the house, because you need one for the guests. Once she decided that a steel almirah must be duly purchased for keeping my books. Once she demanded a separate TV she never really watched.

"I am organising a wedding," she said, with a faint smile.
I was surprised. Organising a wedding - at eighty-six! It couldn't have been mine, she didn't have the guts to suggest something like that. There was only one other cousin eligible, but my Paati wouldn't bother with his wedding at her age.
"It is between a neem tree and another sapling," she continued, with that smile still lurking on the corners of her face.
I was startled. But I maintained a straight face and asked, "Why? What have these trees done to merit this treatment?" I really wanted to ask her if this was an inter-caste wedding.
"So," she started. My Paati tells the most convoluted stories - like the Panchatantra, where one starts with a story, and then moves to another one, and another one nestled within it, and so on and so forth, before each shell is reopened, and each story is revisited in reverse, and all neatly tied up in the end. "You know, that a niece of mine gave me a neem sapling. I planted it in a little pot on the balcony, next to the manathakkali plant. It was growing really well, and slowly outgrowing its pot. So, I called Sarasu, the lady who sweeps the steps, and asked her to plant it outside somewhere. When she uprooted it from the pot, She discovered that another plant was intertwined with it. She told me that this was great luck, and that I had to marry them off for lifelong fortune."

I wondered if it was some Rama Sene at work - marrying off intertwined couples.

Paati was in her flow now, "So, Sarasu took the plants to the Amman kovil on Boag Road and planted them there. A vaadyaar will come sometime next week and decide the date of the wedding. I have already arranged for a veshti and saree to be bought for the bride and the groom, and one more saree for Amman and a veshti for the vaadyaar." Darth vaadyaar.

I was now too stunned to speak. Paati said, "I know you think this is ridiculous, but I believe in all this. See, your cousin in the US gave birth to a boy the day I found these plants, and that other cousin found a good job. All this is because of the intertwined plants." I wondered if discovering intertwined people also brought good luck. What about intertwined dogs? Or cats? Or books?
***

A few days later, she told me, "The vaadyaar came today from the Amman kovil. He is from the Nagavalli Amman kovil."
Thatha jumped in with this little detail, "It's on the platform right next to Sivaji Ganesan's house."
"He said that the wedding will cost a thousand five hundred. Four brahmins will be fed, and some naivedyam will be given to the people who come to the temple that evening!"
"When is the wedding?" I asked.
"On the fifteenth."
"Fifteenth, fifteenth. Sunday." Thatha repeated.
"On Thursday, the vaadyaar will come and collect the money."
"I have been discouraging your Paati from the time she brought it up," Thatha said, suddenly. By this time, I found the whole wedding too beautiful, too poetic to let it die. So, I said, "Thatha, please. It's just a small thing. Let her have her fun."
***

As Thursday approached, and a fever raged within me (the intertwining wasn't bringing me health), Paati began getting expectantly fidgety. "Should I make a sweet for the wedding myself?" she asked me. I gave her some sound logic, "See, at your daughter's wedding, you didn't cook. Only the samayal fellows did. So lets just let it be, no?" "Should I give the green saree to the bride and the red one to the Amman?" "That sounds like a plan, Paati. Amman usually wears red, no?" I said, offering my expert knowledge on the Nagavalli Amman's fashion sense.

Thursday morning, I was too tired from my fever to drive to work. I worked on the internet and a phone, sleeping for an hour, working for an hour, and pretending to be important to the world. Every time the doorbell rang, Paati would jump and rush to open it (her leg pain, her limping, were pushed to the background), only to find the milkman, the flower-lady, the courier-dude, the vegetable-lady, or a man collecting donations for a temple. By evening, Thatha was muttering under his breath, "Kandraavi. Dirty fellow. He's not come at all. Keeping us waiting like this all day. I told your Paati on that day only - don't try and organise something at her age. She can barely walk, and she's trying to organise a wedding."

I looked up from my laptop and asked Paati, "Do you want to go check the plant and the vaadyaar in the temple?"

She agreed immediately. Ninety-year-old Thatha and a four-year-younger Paati trudged down the stairs and in my car to the Nagavalli Amman temple on the platform next to Sivaji's house. When we reached the platform, we found that there was no such temple there. There was an Amman temple, but she was of a different variety. We asked a fruit-seller, who directed us to the road behind Sivaji's house.

When we reached the road, we found no kovil. I looked around, Paati was getting a little irritated, but Thatha got down the car and confidently walked towards what looked like a house. "That's the temple!" he declared. It was, in fact, a house. Thatha tried asking someone where the Amman kovil was, but his deafness meant he didn't hear a word of what was said.

Suddenly, I saw this large hoarding for a festival at the Nagavalli Amman kovil, and hiding behind that hoarding, was the kovil - the size of ten matchboxes, adjacent to a gutter. "That's the temple!" I said. I led them towards it when loud devotional music started playing from a conical speaker above it. Thatha discovered a temple festival office just behind the temple, and Paati immediately recognised her vaadyaar in the makeshift office.

I expected this vaadyaar to be the topless, pot-bellied, bearded, severely sacred-ashed and veshti-clad. Instead he looked like an extra from Goripaalayam. Long, curly hair, almost like a Afro, a thick moustache, a gold chain, a bright green shirt with the top button off, dark green loose pants, rings on six fingers, a pair of shades in one hand and a Reliance phone in the other, and bright, white shoes. When he saw Paati, he smiled brightly and said, "Amma! So nice of you to come here!"

I asked, "So, where are the trees?" Are they still up to naughtiness or have you unintertwined them?
Paati asked, "Why didn't you come home today?"
He said to my Paati, "You see, Amma, the trees..."
And suddenly, someone increased the volume on the loudspeaker, and we didn't hear the rest of the sentence. Thatha hadn't heard a word of the conversation until then even.
Then the vaadyaar shouted out to some boy to turn the damn music off.
When it was quiet again, he said, "The neem tree, Amma... It died."
"Died?"
"Yes, Amma, the leaves all dried up, and it died."
"And the other plant?" I asked.
"Oh that," he said, "That died a week ago."
Paati was heartbroken. The vaadyaar was unmoved, "That's why I didn't come today, Amma." He walked us to a small enclosure next to the temple, right by the gutter, and pointed out the flora to us. The neem tree was just a stick standing on the ground, and the other plant was nowhere to be seen. The vaadyaar said, matter of factly, "So, if you buy two more plants and come, we can get them married off."
"But weren't they to be married off because they were intertwined?" I asked.
"You can always intertwine the new plants," he said.

Thatha, who finally heard and understood what had happened, said, in English, "I think this isn't worth it."
"Lets go, he is cheating us," Paati said, again, in English.

And that was the final word on the entire affair. We got into the car and drove back almost silently.

Two Disappearances - Part VI

2010-06-15T01:21:00.002+05:30

Ah, that was a long three days.
***

After twenty-two years, Sharada looked into her cousin's eyes. Frozen in time, cast in glossy paper, they were twenty-two years fresher than her own. Sharada's face, wrought with wrinkles caused both by age and worry, was a sorry shadow of her cousin's. Saraswathi would never look as careworn as her, Sharada thought. Even in those photographs in the last year of her life, she did not look like a person battling a terminal illness, two broken families and a vicious, gossipy society.

Sharada gazed dreamily at the photograph with the tambura, she remembered her cousin's exact expression when she heard an apasruti string. It was that very expression - of slight disgust and slight amusement, caught perfectly in that picture. She would tame those off-key tamburas like she tamed off-key people around her - calmly and ruthlessly. Yet, the person at the receiving end came off feeling like he was being done a favour.

Sharada smiled.

The image of Saraswati sleeping reminded Sharada of the way her nostrils flared and relaxed with each breath, her lips curled into a contented smile, her closed palms tucked beneath her chin. It reminded Sharada of the time when, as a teenager, Saraswathi would sleep off on her lap in the afternoons while Sharada read a book.

The photograph that affected her the most was the one Ajith skipped over - the photo of Mani performing to a sparse audience. Ajith found the inscription at the back interesting, but didn't investigate. If he had looked at the photo closely, he would have seen two women in the front row facing away from the camera - his grandmother and her cousin. The black-and-white photo didn't show it, but they were in matching blue sarees - the shade made popular by MS. It was a concert at a noisy wedding at a noisier wedding hall on Boag Road in T. Nagar. Sharada remembered the entire evening vividly, like she had been living it each evening.

Mani sang that day, accompanied by a young, spirited Veeraraghavan on the violin. An ageing Palani Subramania Pillai sat at the mridangam in his characteristically emotionless fashion. Sharada never found out the name of the ghatam vidwaan. Sharada remembered the exact phrase with which Mani began his Thodi alapana. It was a lengthy, labyrinthine brigha that traversed two and a half octaves at unreal speed - starting with the mandhra sthayi panchamam, snaking towards the atitara shadjam, before settling down on the daivatam. Saraswathi, who was milling about, talking, socialising, paused mid-sentence and turned to the stage.

"Lets listen for a while?" she asked Sharada.
They settled down in the front row. Mani looked at her and stopped singing almost immediately. At twenty-eight, she was that beautiful. Mani collected himself and continued his alapana, although he seemed distracted by Saraswathi's presence in the first row.

As if to collect himself, he rested on the panchamam for unnaturally long, closing his eyes and knotting his eyebrows in concentration. Da pa, he hummed. Da pa ma pa da pa, the violin prodded. "Hmmm," he said, in appreciative contemplation. He repeated after the violin, and fed off that sangati, revolving around the madhya sthayi to come back, each time, to the same phrase. Da pa ma pa da pa. And every time he came back to that phrase, he opened his eyes and looked at Saraswathi, like he expected the phrase to trigger some memory.

Saraswathi began losing herself in the Thodi. Languorous, formless, floating, yet precise, imaginative, structured, it disarmed her. She was listening to a Thodi that was fresh and new, yet traditional and classical. It was a Thodi of paradoxes. It was a Thodi you could touch and feel, but never hold. It was a Thodi that softened Saraswathi's heart.

With each passing song, Mani began ignoring more of the audience and concentrating only on Saraswathi, and she, for her part, forgot that she was at a noisy wedding.

When the concert ended, the bride, a movie actress, came to the stage to honour the artistes. When they were descending, the bride spotted Saraswathi in the front row and called out, "Sarasi!" Saraswathi came out of her trance and noticed the bride standing with Mani. She walked up to her.

"This is Mani. I'm sure you know him," the actress said, "And this is Saraswathi - I know her because she sang at my first wedding," she giggled.

Saraswathi had heard of Mani, but had never heard him until that day. She had seen him at social gatherings. She had vague memories of listening to him when she was around ten years old, but she couldn't confirm whether they were true.

"You sing?" Mani asked.
"Not much anymore, I teach more than I sing now."
"This is Saras' cousin, Sharada," the actress said.
Mani smiled, briefly glancing at Sharada before turning to Saraswathi. Sharada smiled back. The actress then whisked the cousins away to introduce them to other people.

They ate in the dining hall, Mani and Saraswathi safely away from each other's eyes. After dinner, the cousins stayed back to talk to the bride her and siblings, and Mani and the groom's uncle were sitting in the portico of the mantapam, arguing out some musical disagreements.

Saraswathi whispered in her cousin's ears, "I'll come back," and headed to the restroom. On her way back, from a shadowy corridor, she heard a voice, "Janani!" it said, in a stage-whisper. Saraswathi ignored the voice. "Janani!" it came, again. The same urgent hiss. Saraswathi turned to the corridor to see Mani silhouetted against a dim room behind him. He beckoned her again, "Janani!"

She asked, suspiciously, "You're calling me?"
"Yes."

She walked to him, and said, "Janani?"
Mani's face fell. He looked at her closely and asked again, "Aren't you?"
"Aren't I what?"
"Janani..."
Saraswathi frowned, "No."
"Janani... The old man with the Veena, that town on the hill... Railway station..."
"No."
Mani looked like someone hit him with a club. He muttered, "Sorry," and walked through the door that led to the side exit. He walked briskly, opened the side door and found himself in a narrow back alley.

"Sir!" a voice called behind him. It was Saraswathi.
He stopped.
"I just wanted to tell you - I have never heard anyone sing like you."
"Thanks," Mani muttered, slightly flushed. They were walking towards each other now, involuntarily.
"Sir, can I learn from you?" she asked, almost floating towards him. They were only a couple of metres apart.
"Come home tomorrow, I'll listen to you sing, and we'll see," he said, standing two paces away from her.
"Thanks!" she said, taking one step towards him. They were within touching distance now.

"Saras?" came Sharada's voice from behind her. Both of them took a step back.
"I'll see you tomorrow, then," Mani said, putting on a formal voice.
"Yes, sir," Saraswathi replied, sounding even more formal.

Sharada realised that she had walked into a moment where even though there wasn't any physical closeness, there was intimacy. She wondered for years if her entry that day delayed Saraswathi's crime by a few days. She also wondered if she could have averted the whole thing if she had walked in moments earlier, if she had just stopped Saraswathi from running after him into the gully.

Sharada couldn't sift through those photographs anymore. She felt the kozhakattai in her throat growing, butterflies in her stomach flying more intensely, and drops of saltwater on her cheeks with each passing photo.

Sharada wasn't too fond of nostalgia. She found it awkward, even slightly disturbing, to look at old photographs, remember the 'good' times. Somehow, the good memories tended to throw up bad ones. The two were always intertwined, like in those photographs. For every photo of Saraswathi looking ravishing, there was Mani on the other side of the camera, prowling around her to capture her charm. For every carefree smile, every happy phone call from Saraswathi in Kodaikanal, there were phone calls from Mani's wife, and the questions that the world asked Sharada about her cousin. Nostalgia tickled her, and pricked her at the same time. Sharada couldn't take it.

Just then Ajith knocked on the door and cried, "Paati!"
Sharada didn't say a word. Ajith called again, and again. The knock grew louder, and more worried. "Paati? Are you there? You don't have to come outside. I just want to know if you're okay." Sharada didn't say anything. She picked up her TV remote and turned it on. The Kerala TV channel had started its early morning Guruvayoorappan bhajans. She increased the volume until it drowned out Ajith's demonstrations.

The phone in her room rang. She turned down the volume and picked it up. It was Ajith, "Paati. I'm going to Kodaikanal. I'll be back in a couple of days."

Sharada did not react, just put the phone down and sat on her bed.
***

Ajith didn't go to Kodaikanal. He called Shankar instead and asked if he could meet Mani for another interview.

At eleven o clock, after a lengthy breakfast at her house, Ajith and Nethra found themselves at Mani's gate. The house, as always, looked disused. But, the gate was locked from the outside. Ajith called Shankar's phone and found out that Mani had been rushed to hospital - he had lost consciousness that morning. Shankar could barely speak on the phone; fear made his voice tremble.

When they reached the hospital, they found Shankar and Mani's brother, Sadasivam running around, completing all the formalities. Amidst filling out forms and making payments, Sadasivam told Ajith, "If Anna becomes conscious again, the first thing he'll want to do is get back home. He hates this hospital business!"

Sure enough, the next morning, a conscious Mani kicked up a fuss and shifted back home. First, he complained that the ambulance that brought him was dirty and bad, and demanded that the ambulance that took him back should be the posh, new one. Then, he pointed out that the bed they gave him was uncomfortable, "This is the one you give to dying people, no?" He told off the doctor for missing his rounds and delaying Mani's discharge.

When he reached home, the first thing he did was order Ajith to come and finish the interview that afternoon, "I have only three days left to live," he said on the phone, his voice, once an arresting baritone, was now too feeble and unclear to even convey this message intelligibly. Shankar translated it for Ajith.
***

Ajith sat by Mani's bed, now housed in the same dingy room upstairs where Ajith met him the first time. The curtains were drawn and there was little light in the room. Ajith sat on a chair and Mani, leaning towards him on on one side, was almost on his lap. Ajith held his dictaphone right next to Mani's mouth as he asked him the questions.

"Sir, your second disappearance, in 1987-88... What caused that?" When he asked him this question, a piece of a jigsaw suddenly fell in place - the dates in Taapi's photographs were all late 1987 or early 1988.
Mani took some time answering the question.
"Unrest," Mani said, finally.
"Can you elaborate?" Ajith asked.
Mani didn't say a word, he turned his head and faced the ceiling in silence. Ajith was supposed to infer that Mani wanted to say nothing more.

"Sir," Ajith tried again, "Do you have any interest in any other arts? Say, photography?"
Ajith realised, as soon as he asked it, that the question was too direct. Mani's eyes turned almost instantly from the ceiling, to Ajith and glared at him. There was no response to this question either. Ajith had hit a dead-end. He had to pursue his story elsewhere.

Resignedly, he asked, "Sir, do you have any regrets about your musical career?"
"No," Mani said, clearly having lost the inclination to talk anymore.
Ajith asked, "For instance, you haven't been given the Sangeetha Kalanidhi..."
"No regret about that, definitely," he said with a start, "MD Ramanathan never got it. Ramnad Krishnan, Mali, Rajarathnam Pillai, Palani... These people were not treasure houses of music? Lots of connoisseurs, musicians listened to my music, many of them loved it. I'm happy."

"You stopped performing after your wife's death... What was the reason for it?"
"I loved her a lot. I almost died in 1988, she saved me. The only thing I could give her in return was my music... One she died, I had no reason to perform, no one to perform for. Anyway, all this is there in that old interview that you've read."

"It doesn't make sense to me," Ajith said, frustratedly. Mani was startled. Ajith said, "You didn't love your wife all that much. Both of us know enough to know that. That can't have been the reason."
"I'm too weak to smile. I would have smiled otherwise," Mani said, "That isn't the reason."
He paused, collected his breath, and continued, "I had been a bad family man - ignored my wife, my children, immersed in my musical world..."
Ajith still didn't understand why Mani held up this facade. Both of them knew it wasn't always Mani's music that separated him and his family.
"When I lost my mind and nearly died, my wife came looking for me. She nursed me back to health. I realised that she had no source of income apart from me. She did some tailoring, but that wasn't enough. I had to keep performing and teaching to keep her alive. So, I performed to keep her going. When she died, I saw no reason to continue performing. I had lost interest in the process for fifteen years anyway."

It was an unconvincing story, but it seemed closer to the truth than what Mani had been telling people all along.

"Your wife came looking for you. Where were you at that time?"
"You don't know? I thought you knew more."

Ajith didn't know what to make of that.

Mani carried on, "I had a house near Kodaikanal then. I was staying there, alone. The weather didn't agree with me, I almost always had a cold and severe breathing problems. One evening, I went for a long walk, and I became breathless in a fairly secluded place. I fell down that day, and I woke up a few days later at home, with my wife. We stayed there until I was strong enough to travel again. We sold that house, and came back to Madras to start over again."
Mani began coughing uncontrollably, and Shankar, who was under strict instructions not to enter the room, rushed in. Mani motioned to Ajith to leave, as he still coughed. Shankar, peering through his thick glasses, told Ajith, "He'll call you when he's better. See you then."

Mani wasn't going to tell him the truth, Ajith had to ask his Paati.
***

To continue.

The Two Disappearances - Part V

2010-06-04T17:07:00.003+05:30

Inexcusable delay. My only reason is that I was distracted by a stem-cell researcher.
Find all previous parts here.
***

Sharada's house has two bedrooms; one where she sleeps and the other were Ajith sleeps. But neither bedroom really belongs to either inhabitant - Ajith's books are in his grandmother's room, and some of her sarees are in his. The radio is in Ajith's room, and she listens to the afternoon radio concert on her way to sleep on the bed there. His room has more light during the day, and she reads the newspaper there (the drawing room is always dark). Ajith likes listening to music in Sharada's room - he thinks it is quieter. Ajith partially closes the door only late at night when he wants to watch pornography, and even then, he doesn't lock the door - he only turns the screen away from the door.

Spaces simply aren't private in Sharada's house, save the bathrooms.

But there are spaces that have become private because no one looks there anymore - like the lofts in both bedrooms. Sharada, her husband and her cousin had collected an assortment of junk during their lifetimes that found their homes in that loft. There was old, dismantled furniture. A folding chair on which Ajith's grandfather spent much of his waking hours in his fifties. When his son bought him a new one, reluctantly, this was broken into three pieces and relegated to the loft. Three legs of their first dining table was there, hiding amongst back issues of physics journals. The cradle on which Ajith and his father rocked, remnants of the small table on which Ajith did his homework, the chair that broke when Ajith made out with his girlfriend on its arm, all lay defunct and disused.

Then there are those vessels that the family brought from their ancestral house in Tirunelveli when they moved to Madras. Vessels large enough to cook for forty people in forgotten shapes and forms. There was that one in which his great-grandmother apparently made soan papdi once a year, another copper vessel used to store water in which Ajith bathed till he was five. There was also that other vessel in which Ajith's father burnt his hand trying to taste boiling payasam whilst it was still on the stove.

Somewhere in that space was a set of books and photo albums that belonged to Ajith's grand-aunt - the one he called 'Taapi'. She wasn't his Paati, but she was similar - of similar age, build, look, dress sense. But they were vastly different in their temperaments. Sharada was strict and slightly cynical. Ajith couldn't tell whether she was cynical because she was who society wanted her to be, or it was the other way around. She loved Ajith dearly, but sometimes Ajith thought of her love as almost mechanical - she loved him because she was supposed to. She was wise, she was good with finances, and she had a natural feel for human behaviour. But she was dependent - on her husband, her son, and now her grandson - for her courage.

Circumstances taught Sarswathi to fend for herself. Her parents died even before she could register their presence, she lived with her uncle after that along with nine other children. She was, as her uncle put it, too pretty for her own good, and had to learn to cope with all the attention she got from the boys in her school, her college, and even the cousins she grew up with. She learnt quickly - to keep them at a distance, but keep them.

The two girls went to their music classes with the sole objective of being able to sing when a prospective groom came to see them. Sharada perfected Seetapate in Khamas, while Saraswathi, being the more proficient singer, was saddled with having to execute Emani Ne in Mukhari. Her music teacher soon discovered that Saraswathi was too good for this. He wanted to make her a singer. Her uncle had issues with the idea, he stopped her music classes and got her to learn cooking from her aunts instead. Saraswathi eloped with her music teacher. She was only fifteen then. Eventually, her family caught up with her, the marriage was annulled by a court, and her teacher was convicted for kidnapping.

Saraswathi still learnt music, on her aunt's insistence, now with a female teacher. As consolation, Sharada also learnt with her. The two girls progressed steadily though Saraswathi was clearly the better musician. They even performed together until Sharada got married.

The first photograph in Saraswathi's album had the two girls seated together on a stage in matching half-sarees, matching pottus (the black-and-white photo showed them as black, but Ajith imagined them in crimson), matching nose and earrings, their hair neatly double-pleated and ribboned and their eyes heavily lined with kohl. They were surrounded by a violinist who looked more at ease on stage than them, his bow resting by his side and his hands on his knees; a mridangist staring at the camera nervously while holding his tuning stone in his left hand, and their mother holding up a tambura in the background. There was only one microphone placed between the two girls, a flask on Sharada's right with two tumblers by it, a notebook, and a banner behind them with the words, "Vinodini Gana Sabha (Regd.)". Ajith found it funny that sabhas always found it necessary to announce to the world that they were registered.

The photo was taken before the concert started, clearly. Back then, photographs were too precious for people to take chances with live action. If one of the girls shook her head too much or the mridangist moved his hands too violently, the motion blur would make the entire exercise pointless. So, they settled for a photograph where the girls stared at the camera like it was a firing squad. They could have smiled, Ajith thought.

But even in that solemn, posed photograph, the girls' characters came through. His grandmother looked like she was there because she was supposed to be, 'they' told her to be there, and his Taapi looked like she wanted to be there. Something in the way they sat, the way they stared, the way they wore their clothes revealed this. His Taapi looked every bit the stunner she was. Her frame was fuller than her cousin's, she had sharper features, brighter eyes and a darker complexion. One of her eyebrows was raised, as if she was questioning this process.

On the back of the photo, in clear, black lettering belonging to Taapi, was the song list for that evening. Ajith noticed a proliferation of eclectic ragas - Karnataka Behag, Shuddha Bangala, Srutiranjani, Gundakriya - amidst Kalyani and Madhyamavati. If someone as beautiful as his Taapi sang E Dari Sancharintuvo, Ajith would have melted.

Ajith turned the page to find his Taapi staring at him again. She was sitting on a bannerless stage this time, without her cousin by her side. The mridangist was the same as the previous concert, but the violinist was a young girl (Ajith wondered if she was T. Rukmini) wearing a dark half-saree contrasting with Taapi's light one. Taapi looked a little older and prettier than the previous photo, and so did the mridangist - his Adam's apple more prominent than it was in the other photo. On the tambura was an uninterested, feeble, old man who looked incapable of holding the tambura up for three hours. But that's what tambura artistes looked like all the time. The setting looked like a temple. It was outdoors, there were pillars around her, and the background was not a screen - it looked like the pathways of a temple. There were no microphones here, only flasks and cloth bags.

What struck Ajith, though, was the freedom and authority with which Taapi sat on the stage. Her regality suggested that the stage belonged to her. She wasn't just going to sing a concert - she was conducting darbar. She couldn't have performed too much by this time, Ajith thought. She looked barely twenty, she must've been. Sharada was married by this time and had stopped performing. Was it the absence of Sharada's nervousness that allowed her to lord over the stage?

There was nothing written behind the photograph - no date, no kacheri list.

The next page had a curious photo. It was of a young NV Mani in the middle of a raga alapana. The mridangam was off the mridandgist's lap and the ghatam player leaned on his ghatam. The violinist watched Mani in close concentration. Ajith knew there would be photos of Mani in that album, but he didn't expect one so soon. He turned around to find, "12th October, 1969: Found you!" written in a hand that was not his Taapi's. Ajith guessed, correctly, that it was Mani's handwriting. He didn't understand what the photo was about, though.

Ajith excitedly turned the pages of the album looking for an explanation to Mani's inscription, but he was soon distracted by the other pictures. There were many photographs of his Taapi - black-and-white photos that played spectacular games with light and dark. There she was, sitting at a table and turning around to look at the camera, as if the photographer had just called her. There was another one, where she sat on a cane chair in a verandah, the hills behind her, holding a steel tumbler in her hand. Then, he found a photograph of her tuning a black tambura in a dark room. He could only see the outlines of her figure, her face and the tambura, lit by distant, dim, balmy sunlight, and her radiant eyes fixed on the tambura. The rest of the photograph was just black.

There was a photo of her hair, just her hair, and her eyes peeking out through them teasingly. Another one of her fingers as they strummed the tambura. One photo of her feet almost smashed against the camera as the blurred outline of her face could be discerned in the bekoh in the background. Another one, extremely alluring, of one-half of her tilted face in a subtle smile.

Ajith's favourite photo was one in which she slept on one side, facing the camera, her dark eyes closed to the world, a blanket covering everything but her head, her hair strewn over the top half of the face. Again, there was more darkness than light in the photograph; a feature common to most pictures in that collection. The light only drew outlines - guides to define the contours of the subject. Light's lines were only suggestive, the viewer had to participate in the photo to draw the rest.

They had an intimacy to them, it was clear that the photographer loved his subject deeply, in a way that he saw beauty in everything Taapi did, in every single movement of hers. She must have loved him too, for the photographs suggested an affection, almost as if he weren't simply capturing her with each photo, but caressing her with it.

He ogled at the photo for a whole five minutes before telling himself that she was his grand-aunt. He wondered if the photographer had done the same - watched Taapi when she slept. Women looked most beautiful when then, Ajith believed.

Ajith instinctively turned the photo around to see if there was anything written on the back. In her neat lettering, there was "November 1987, Swara", written on it. Quickly, he went back to the other photographs. All of them had the same inscription.

She was forty-seven years old in 1987, but didn't look a day older than thirty-five. She died in early 1988.

Before Ajith thought too much about "Swara", the explanation came in the next photograph. Taapi stood, wearing trousers and a sweater (he had never seen her in these clothes before), at the gate of a house that said, " 'Swara', No. 9, Eastern Hill Street". On the other side of the gate, there was a board that said, "S. Ramachandran, Sharada Ramachandran". He suddenly remembered - this was the house his Thatha owned a little away from Kodaikanal. He sold it when Ajith was fairly young, but Ajith still has vague memories of holidays in that house. What he didn't understand, though, was what Taapi was doing there, and who took all those photographs.

Just then, Ajith's phone rang from the other room. He left the albums on the bed and rushed to receive it. It was Nethra.

He excitedly told her about this album and what he saw in it, when the conversation meandered into other topics. While he lost track of time in this conversation, Sharada entered the house from her shopping and walked straight into the room where the album was kept open.

She dropped her bag of vegetables on the floor and gasped. She then collected herself, went into the kitchen and started putting the vegetables into the fridge.

Ajith finished his call, and noticed his Paati in the kitchen. He panicked and rushed to the bedroom. He found it undisturbed and presumed that his Paati hadn't been into the room. He packed the photos back in the carton and climbed up on the chair to put it back in the loft. Then he realised that he needed to look at them again. So, he put the carton under the bed.
***

The photographs lay, unmindful of the storm brewing around them, under the bed on which Ajith slept. A full moon lit up a hazy Madras night - the streetlights causing the haze. If you looked carefully, squinting your eyes, you might have noticed a star or two, a few of the brighter ones. Otherwise, like all cities, the sky was just a blanket of purssian blue and faint orange.

Sharada's eyesight, even during the day, wasn't the best. She needed a cataract surgery that she kept postponing. By night, she managed to go to the toilet or for a drink of water only using an LED torch that Ajith bought for her from Bombay.

Presently, the torch threw a circular light on the wall behind Ajith's bed, under the loft that held the photographs. Sharada, as quietly as she could, moved a stool under the loft, stool in one hand, torch in the other. She tried standing up on the stool when it made a loud creak. Ajith didn't wake up. Emboldened, she tried again. This time, she made it on to the stool. She opened the loft and started looking inside. She found a box with "Saras" written on it, but it was too heavy for her to move. Those were Saraswathi's books. Sharada was looking for the one with the photo albums. She craned her neck to look around. It could not be too inside, Ajith had just seen it that afternoon.

"It's under the bed," Ajith said. Startled, Sharada almost fell off the stool. "The carton is under the bed," Ajith said, calmly, "Paati, get down." Sharada obeyed. Ajith pulled out the carton from under the bed and gave it to her. He turned on the light, and their eyes narrowed as they adjusted to it. Sharada simply picked up the carton and strode out to the other bedroom without a word and slammed the door shut.

A space had become private in Sharada's house.
***

(To continue. In three days. Sharan style.)

Season Stories

2010-05-14T12:16:00.003+05:30

An edited version of this appeared in Sruti long ago. Somehow, I didn't put it up here earlier.
***

My first brush with this season was trying to book Music Academy season tickets for relatives threatening to arrive from around the world. I was advised to be there slightly early. Now, the counter was to open at nine-thirty. I entered at eight-thirty to a bewildering sight – a hall full of campers, some of them looked like they’d been sitting there for weeks! A middle-aged couple in the back row were eating idlis coated with molaga podi from a steel tiffin box. Two men, sipping coffee in the portico, discussed how their decision to come by five-thirty was now vindicated. Needless to say, I returned ticketless. I must, here, praise the Academy's transparent, fair, just ticketing procedures – I tried pulling many contacts, including a Sangita Kalanidhi and the offices of Sruti. Nothing worked. Next time, I shall come by 3 am with my own steel tiffin box and laugh at the newbies.

I had not heard Valayapatti A. R. Subramaniam live before his concert with Tirupati Haribabu at the Academy. I might have missed even this concert if not for my guru's insistence that I listen to his thani. There were three of those that day, in Khandachapu, Mishrachapu and Adi Talam, each more spectacular than the other. It was fascinating to watch a master in complete command of his art. Two things separate masters from the rest. The first is their ease and comfort - even the most complicated rhythm seems so simple. The second is the amount of time they have – they are always so unhurried. A little like Roger Federer knocking a swinging, 230 kmph Roddick serve for a cross-court return winner without any fuss!

On the subject of percussion, my favourite mridangist this season was Arun Prakash. At Nungambakkam Cultural Academy, when Ravikiran announced, "I shall now play a Thyagaraja kriti in Raga Neelambari, 'Nike Dayaraka' in Mishrachapu taalam," I could almost see Arun Prakash licking his lips. He percussion side remained silent for about three lines. Then, he began punctuating the kriti with single beats. Slowly, he built up to just three touches at three-two-two. This was interspersed with very interesting, but very minimal, very delicate rhythms. Neelambari's lilt was given just the right pedestal to thrive on. After the Neelambari, when the audience was suitably blissful, a Garudadhwani came. Tatvamerugatarama. And the mridangam was right on the button, exuberant and joyous!

He proceeded to do the same for Vedavalli at Carnatica (MR Janaki College) and Music Academy – sensing exactly what the main artist is trying to do in each piece, what mood, what emotion she wants to convey, and creates it to perfection. The two Vedavalli concerts feature amongst my favourites this season. I will not forget that intoxicating neraval in Sukhi Evvaro at Carnatica for as long as I live!

R.K. Srikantan never seems to age, does he? A huge audience at Music Academy was delighted by his timeless voice (and that perfect sruti), poise, classicism and immense scholarship. The stage has become such an extension of his persona that he doesn't even think twice before rebuking his son with, "Sruti!" every now and then!

Dr. N. Ramani's concert at Asthika Samajam in Thiruvamiyur was another spine-tingler. Extraordinary renditions of Harikambhoji, Nasikabhushani and Sahana came in succession after which he took a little break. He came back and asked the audience, "Thodi vasikkatuma? Sree Krishnam Bhaja Manasa?" The Thodi alapana lasted for nearly forty minutes, each nook and corner of the raga being explored in the most leisurely manner. And then there were those searing brigas - cascades of swara patterns falling one over the other!

This year saw five flute concerts at the Academy - Mala Chandrashekhar, Dr. N. Ramani (with R. Thagarajan and Athul Kumar - his son and grandson), V. K. Raman, Mysore Chandankumar and Shashank. I wonder if this is a record. Other sabhas featured Jayaprada Ramamurthy, B. Vijayagopal, J. B. Srutisagar, the Sikkil Sisters and many more. Personally, it was disappointing to find one of my favourite flutists, Prapancham S. Balachandran, not performing at any of the major sabhas. Still, it is boom time for the bamboo-wielders, clearly.

When the schedules for the season were out, one concert really intrigued me - Shashank's jugalbandhi with Sanjeev Abhayankar. The two musicians were outstanding, as ever, but they performed two separate concerts – they just happened to be sitting on the same stage. Neither fed off the other or created any energy for the other to take off from. But that's a risk inherent to any jugalbandhi – since the musicians come from different idioms, if they do not interact at the same wavelength on that day, the concert could become an exercise in tedium. (I must also mention here that the artists were let down by an abysmal sound system.)

Another venue with really poor acoustics was the Ananthapadmanabha Swamy Temple in Gandhinagar where the Valayapatti Kaashyap Naadalaya series happened. I was at Sikkil Gurucharan's concert there, sitting behind a large group of giggly girls. When Gurucharan flashed one of his smiles, the entire bunch swooned in unison. I was almost expecting cat calls! I won't be surprised if we find Sikkil Gurucharan T-shirts soon - with his bespectacled, dimpled, smiling photograph on it, and girl-gangs wearing them and sitting in his concerts with flyers and posters. Another prediction – in five years, the December Isai Vizha will be rechristened the December Paattu-Saapattu Vizha. Signs of this change were evident this year. I heard a morning concert at Narada Gana Sabha that did not attract much of a crowd. But by 12.30, when the concert ended, the parking was full and overflowing! Music Academy even had a board at the gate that read, "No Parking for Canteen Visitors". The food served at most of these places is excellent. Sometimes, it is highly innovative - the Music Academy, I'm told, served 'Gabbage (Gos Curry)' one day. I even remember eating ‘rasakullas’ somewhere.

Back to the music. Saketharaman sang to a packed audience (although I didn't spot groups of giggly girls) at Mylapore Fine Arts, which would rate amongst the toughest places in the world to listen to music. It might just be easier to appreciate music in a local train in Bombay, at a DMK political rally or during a Taliban attack in Kabul. Sitting in the last row, I was constantly distracted by smells of fresh sambar, hot decoction, the sounds of a wet grinder, buzzing mosquitoes and sundry chatter. When the imbalanced sound system and its vagaries are added to this noxious mix, the listener gets the feeling he's sitting in a torturous heavy metal concert and not even allowed to headbang.

By the time I heard Saketharaman at Music Academy on a good sound system, late in the season, his voice in the lower registers sounded like a wet grinder. He still did a commendable job, his imagination and Charumathi Raghuraman's violin more than making up for his voice. Sanjay Subrahmanyan also faced similar issues later in the season, especially at his concert at the Academy on the thirtieth. But once that voice settled down, there was no stopping him. His Shankarabharanam was sublime, and his taanam in Kalyanavasantam was nothing short of legendary. A noted critic sitting beside me was in tears, and blamed his long taanam phrases around the kakali nishaadam for them. The pallavi that followed it had a lovely mathematical pattern (we hear he picked it up from Dr. N. Ramani), and he presented it with incredible precision and ingenuity. The RTP of the season, for me!

The season is like one of those extra-large buffets – you can either try a bit of everything, or concentrate on one or two cuisines and really enjoy them. I chose the latter approach this year. While I got to understand some musicians intimately, I missed some of the music. I heard that T.M. Krishna's concert at the Music Academy was a spectacle worth being present for – an RTP in Nattakurinji sounds delicious, and his concert at Narada Gana Sabha was his best in years. Kalakshetra organised a Hindustani music festival and re-staged Ramayana. I couldn't make it to either (it would be nice if they shifted the Kalakshetra campus to Mylapore briefly for the season). Schedules didn't allow me to catch the Malladi Brothers, Vijay Siva, Lalgudi Krishnan and Vijayalakshmi, U. Srinivas, Nedunuri and many others.

This brings me to a question – is there too much happening at the same time? The same artistes perform everywhere, and if one follows a musician around, one figures that much of the audience is also the same. Many concerts are races against time with the curtain-drawer standing menacingly backstage. Artists often find themselves with ten minutes left and a taanam and pallavi to finish. Also, many concerts are sung to empty halls – only siblings, parents, assorted relatives, friends, a sprinkling of retired men and women, NRIs, foreigners and the odd photographer or journalist. Rarely do these number beyond a hundred. Musicians, organisers and sponsors know all of this. Yet, the season grows each year.

I’m beyond trying to explain this baffling phenomenon now. It’s a lot more fun to just pick up one of those season schedule books, a pencil, some loose cash (or season passes), a motorbike and enjoy!

Two Moments

2010-05-07T16:01:00.005+05:30

My earliest memory of Carnatic music involves Balamuralikrishna singing Duduku Gala. He sings the anupallavi, "Kadu durvishayaakrushtudai..." At 'vishayaa', there's a pause for the briefest of moments, a thousandth of a second, or even less, where he leaves us hanging at the tara sthayi madhyamam, before he takes 'krushtudai...' That madhyamam, in his bell-like voice, and that pause after, where you have just enough time to gasp, but not enough to sigh, is magical.
***

"Next, I will play a composition of Saint Tyagaraja in the ragam Gangeyabhushani. Evvare Ramayya." U. Srinivas announced. This was three years ago.

I was in the fifth row of the Music Academy, sitting next to a foreigner who knew a fair bit of Carnatic Music. "That's raga number 33!" he told me, excitedly. I smiled. Srinivas started with the panchamam, a fleeting sound, before he turned to his right adjusted his amplifier. He started again, pa ma ga ma ga, a momentary pause, and then the shatsruti ri, drawn from the depths of the lower panchamam. I smiled again.

Ri ga ma pa. Pa pa ma ga ma ga, and then a pause, and that ri again. This was standard fare.

He signalled to the violinist to stop following him.

Then he played sa-da. Held the daivatam for hardly a second-and-a-half before turning to his violinist and smiling impishly.

The damage was done. The da sent a spear right through me - it took me a few seconds to even recognise the note! It had a similar effect on the foreigner. It was like I was being thrown, suddenly, out of an aeroplane, and the surprise caused me to forget how to open the parachute. I knew that the shuddha daivatam would come in this raaga at some point. But Srinivas had distracted me enough for those five seconds, toying with the familiar, before hurling me into the skies!
***

2010-05-05T11:05:00.003+05:30

I'm nine, and Sharan is five. (I think.)

It's Christmas, we're in Solomon Mama and Prema aunty's house.

Mama still works in the Nuclear Medicine Department. Aunty taught social studies in our school. (In school, though, she was Solomon teacher - solemn, strict, slightly scary, but mighty good!)

One holiday afternoon, a friend and I didn't know the answer to a question in a quiz in a newspaper - name the river that runs through seven countries. We went straight to her house. She fetched this large coffee table book on Europe. She showed us the map and pointed out the Rhine and the Danube. Pretty pictures. I don't remember which one actually runs through seven countries, but I know that I learnt of these two rivers that afternoon.

Solomon Mama helped me decode electromagnetism for my tenth standard physics exam. But that's not the fun story. I once installed a theme on his computer by mistake, and each time he started his computer, a partly-see-through-bikini-clad Mariah Carey splashed water around instead of the stately "Windows 95" floating amidst blue clouds. He sent me an email about it (through this ancient form of email called zetainfotech - their server crashed when my cousin tried sending me a photo of Azhar!), and I still remember a sentence, "Please get Mariah Carey out of my life!"

The Solomons had a pomeranian, Scooby; a white, fluffy, jumpy variety. Sharan was petrified of him. Which is why I'm surprised he's even there at this Christmas party photo.

Christmases, for many years, meant a morning at their house. Mama would call my Appa on the previous day and request him to send us there for some cake, biscuits and juice. I would run excitedly, and Sharan would accompany me like he was being taken to be administered polio drops.

Look at him - staring into the camera, white-and-white-politician-kurta-pyjama, straight out of a fairness cream advertisement, a head too large for his body, clutching the biscuit as if it were a grenade, turning to the camera almost as if it allows him to take his mind off the biscuit.

And there I am. Oblivious to the camera. Wearing my Venkatesh shirt (it was the same shirt he wore in "Ammai muddu..." in Kshana Kshanam) and my Chermas jeans (I loved that shop only because the clothes fell through some tunnel from the packing people on the second floor to the delivery guys on the ground floor). Too engrossed in my plum cake to bother with the world.

Little has changed. Sharan is still a kurta-sporting diplomat, aware, alert and in touch with his surroundings.

And here I am, trying to come to terms with the world, only to be distracted by every plum cake that comes my way.

The Gap Theory

2010-04-26T15:08:00.002+05:30

In his new 'non-fiction' blog (a strange tag in an illusory world where everything is fictional anyway), my small brother (Chinnathambi) writes about his Law of the Loo. I quote:

When "n" urinals are aligned sequentially (n>5), the cleanest ones will lie between the 70th and the 80th percentile.

His reasoning is as follows: people rush to the nearest empty urinal, fueled by internal pressures and lack of sufficient thought being given to the process, which makes the first few urinals dirty. Then there are 'mamas' (remember Johnny Bravo: "Hey there, pretty mama!") who pick the last few, assuming no one takes the trouble of going that far. So, it leaves the cubicles in the 70-80th percentile extremely clean.

He has, unfortunately, due to lack of keen powers of observation, ignored the Gap Theory of Urinal Usage. When "n" urinals are aligned sequentially, if L_n is occupied by a user, the next loo user will only occupy L_n+2. L_n+1 is left unoccupied on account of lack of knowledge of L_n's user's orientation, Freud's theory of member envy and a prevailing requirement of freedom of expression.

The Gap Theory implies that when two of the aforementioned mamas are in the loo at the same time, or more than 40% of the urinals are occupied, the 70th to 80th percentile will get filled. Suitable modifications in his theory are therefore to be made.
***

Oh, before someone accuses me of intellectual dishonesty, I shall clarify that I didn't come up with the Gap Theory. It was only valuable, ancient, secret knowledge passed on for generations at Cauvery Hostel.

Breach the Skies

2010-03-29T13:56:00.003+05:30

I watched Vinnaithaandi Varuvaaya with mixed expectations, and emerged from the theatre with mixed feelings. The company I went with hated the movie, and although I did curse and mutter on my way home, lest my peers brand me unintelligent and sappy, I couldn't help feeling that I was being harsh on a movie that had its moments.

VTV is a long, twisting climb to nowhere, but so is its subject - love. That sounds depressingly bleak, I know, but I'm just speaking from personal experience. Love (and more particularly, relationships) is (are), for the large part, pointless. Once their initial freshness wears off, they are boringly repetitive. (Just like VTV.) You like the same things about each other, you fight about the same things, your peeves are the same. Love, at the end of the day, is a facade, a front, a construct even - reinforced by years of popular cinema, popular music (how many non-metal songs are about anything other than love?), literature, peer pressure. Hell, sometimes I wonder if man was ever built to be monogamous...

I had you there for a second, no?
Tee hee.

Lets get back to the main 'review'.

VTV is a long, twisting climb to nowhere, but so is its subject - love. On the surface, the 'obstacles' to love in VTV are the usual ones - parents, angry-bearded-don't-touch-my-thangacchi-type brother (he comes as a package offer with a gang of men with unkempt hair and beard also), religion, age and other usual suspects. But these are only ancillary to the obstacles inside his leads minds - Jessie's confusion and Karthik's obsession.

The reason for neither is clearly spelt out. Karthik is madly in love with Jessie merely because she's walked past him a few times. (Hosanna, en vaasal thaandi ponaale/ Hosanna, verondrum seyyaamale...) Sure, his obsession escalates as he gets to know her better, but it is born in a very Maniratnamesque manner (think Madhavan in Alaipayuthey, Arvind Swamy in Bombay, Shah Rukh Khan on the railway platform in Dil Se (in both cases, the wind blows the veil off Manisha Koirala's face), Rajnikanth when Shobhana walks past him in Raakamma...). But that isn't completely unrealistic. Firstly, he has to contend with Trisha walking past him looking absolutely phantasmagorical in that sari. Moreover, it's not improbable, is it? Men do fall madly in love (lust?) at first sight - we only cool-ise and stop admitting it to ourselves and the rest of the world after a while. (What men don't do is thump their chest or jump around like apes like Simbu keeps doing in the movie.)

Jessie, on the other hand, is never sure of Karthik. Does she like him enough to marry him? He does make an impact on her, at some level. She admits to that much. Perhaps she's not convinced about Karthik's seriousness? She ends their relationship when he refuses to come back from Goa. Or is she scared of her parents? Does that vague back-story of her sister weigh on her mind? Jessie's confusion creates VTV's most engaging moments. For instance, you know Jessie's not going to get married at that church to the random Mellu groom. But you aren't sure how and why it will happen. Karthik looms ominously in the background and you think he's going to jump out at them and do something. Jessie seems slightly off, slightly nervous. In the end, Jessie just tells people she needs more time to think about life. You're still not sure if Karthik's the reason for her confusion. Even when she admits it to him later that night in a lovely little exchange, she doesn't do it convincingly.

Or that scene in the cameraman's house - when they're unwilling to let go of their hug and Karthik declares that he wants that moment to last forever. We've all made such declamations (inspired by cinema, perhaps?). But Jessie makes a comment that could have only come from a character like her, "This might be the last time?" It strikes an odd, discordant note, and you immediately know. Their romance will spiral downwards from there. Then, there's that superb scene towards the end where declare love for each other at Central Park. It is a mushy, mushy scene - the dialogues are cliched, long and leave one pretty winded. But there's an honesty to this scene that makes it really beautiful.

This is why I liked VTV. It gives you that space to chew on the characters. And it gives the characters enough meat to let us chew.

Now for what I didn't like in the movie.

It was slightly longer than it should have been. This, I fail to understand. After making tight thrillers like Kaaka Kaaka, and Vettaiyaadu Vilayaadu, why has he made two rambling messes of movies (VTV is slightly less rambling than Vaaranam Aaiyram, I will admit)? What happened to that slickness?

Also, the dialogues were really problematic. First, I don't like the English that Gautham Menon uses. He pokes fun at it early on in one of those meta-moments that has become fashionable in Indian cinema these days, but one cannot forgive him for some of those lines. "This was a one-way ticket to heartbreak city." Really? Dude? I can understand being true-to-life and all that. But that line? Really? Simbu? And tell me this - how many average, mechanical engineering guys go tell a girl they've spoken to thrice in their life, "I want to make love to you"?

Even otherwise, some of the Tamil dialogues were just so execrable, they killed scenes for me. The other problem was that the movie, in parts, got too talky. A silence here, an unsaid emotion there would have made it more effective, more honest.

Gautham Menon needs to watch more Wes Anderson, I think. Or even Dibankar Bannerjee (No, I haven't seen LSD yet, I'm going on the evidence from OLLO). He needs to learn how music works on an image. VTV has such wonderful music, but each song is murdered by its video. Systematically. Line dances for everything? Really? This brings me to a question - does a director need to know music? Let me give you an example. In Hosanna, the song bursts into life and colour at the words, "Vanna vanna pattupoochi..." (listen to the sudden euphoria in the background music at this point), but the image just has Simbu jumping around, just like in the previous verses. No bursting into life and colour. He jumps off some steps, yes. But the image was not even vaguely as exuberant as the verse.

In the end analysis (at the end of this maundering review that eerily resembles VTV itself), VTV was an enjoyable movie. I would, probably, even watch it again. But it left one with the sense that it could have been so much more...

The Two Disappearances - Part IV

2010-03-12T13:15:00.004+05:30

Much belated. Sorry. Continued from here.
***

Mani's cell phone was switched off for a week, his landline was 'disconnected' (Ajith wondered if he had forgotten to pay his bill) and Ajith was too nervous to go to his house without calling him first. For three days after the first interview, Ajith expected no call and didn't get one. Then, like a husband with his wife nearing her 'due' date, he began expecting a phone call at any moment and obsessed over being around his phone at all times. At the end of the week, he decided that he had to be the one making the phone calls, but met with the irritating switched-off-voice. Slowly, he grew desperate and started calling Nethra everyday, whining to her about geniuses and their need to show to the world that they are eccentric. People always mistake eccentricity for genius, he told her, and most often, geniuses are taken seriously only when they are eccentric. Nethra suggested that Ajith should go directly to Mani's house.

The very next morning, Shankar called. "Sir wants you to come at three-fifteen this afternoon."

At three-ten, Ajith found the front door wide open and Shankar sitting in the verandah with ironing a veshti with great concentration. The old iron traversed the garment in careful straight lines, crisping it in the process. Shankar looked up when he heard the gate and peered happily at Ajith through his thick glasses. For a moment, the iron-box left the garment and rested on a side table.

"Hello!" Shankar exclaimed. Ajith waved, as he approached the verandah. Shankar placed a chair next to his own, and asked Ajith to sit. Ajith obeyed. Shankar then disappeared inside the house. Ajith, partly mechanically, and partly because it seemed like fun, began ironing the veshti. Almost three minutes later, Mani appeared at the front door, preceded by a four-legged walker and escorted by Shankar.

"Good afternoon!" Mani said, sounding as cheery as he did the other day, "You don't have to iron my veshti, you know! Only my students do that..."
Shankar lunged to take the iron out of Ajith's hand, while Ajith put the iron away on the side table. "It's an honour!" Ajith said.

Mani laughed. Shankar went into the house and returned in a moment with a folding easy chair. He placed it in the verandah facing the road. Mani sat on the chair. Ajith and Shankar then took their seats next to him, and Ajith put his recorder on the armrest of Mani's chair.

"You're looking much better today!" Ajith said.
"I feel better! But the end is near... I can feel it," Mani said, in a natural, cheery tone.
A silence followed that statement. "Where were we?" Mani asked, unmindful of the reaction his declaration had caused.
Ajith took a second before replying, "You told us about the girl in Thanjavur..."
"Madurai," Mani corrected him.
Ajith looked at him curiously. "You said Madurai? I somehow thought it was Thanjavur..."
"No. Madurai."
Ajith was pretty sure the short story by Janani referred to the Thanjavur Railway Station, but he wasn't sure of what Mani had told him. He couldn't believe that there could be a discrepancy between Mani's story and Janani's.

Mani broke the silence with, "That story's over. What next?"
"You were saying... You were saying you met that woman again, but she didn't recognise you..."
"I don't know if I want to tell you that story," Mani said, looking mischievously at Ajith through the corner of his eye.

Ajith's face fell. But he collected himself to ask, "Any other women?"
Mani laughed, "Too many!"
"Tell us about them?"
Mani smiled, "No."

There was another pause. Ajith broke the silence this time with, "Sir, are you actually a recluse? Or is that just a perception?"
"I'm not fond of social gatherings. Except kacheris," he chuckled. "I like smaller groups of people for social interaction... You know, I get uncomfortable when I am at a wedding or a function. Too many people know me, too many people have met me. I am always worried that I'm inadvertently ignoring people, or I've slighted someone, or I've been over-friendly with someone I don't know too well. It scares me. So, I avoid all these events. So, people think I'm introverted or anti-social. I like a group of three or four people. Then, we're all talking to each other, we can all have our conversations, I'm spending time with all of them. In a large gathering, I'm not spending time with anyone. It's overwhelming. Frightening."

Ajith did not know how to maneuver this odd convesation. Mani then said, "To tell you the truth, the world inside my head is far richer than the world outside it. I prefer living there."

Ajith knotted his eyebrows. Mani signalled something to Shankar. Shankar got up and went inside the house.

Then, Mani said, "Even in my childhood, I had a world inside my head. It was, usually, a version of the world outside. Real people are more complicated in my head than they are in real life. Emotions are stronger, responses are magnified, scenes are in full colour and 3-D. If my father was actually cold and strict, in my head, he would be caring - and perhaps he was on the inside! If I was known for my singing everywhere, I was an actor in my head. I always wanted to act in the movies, and imagined my Abhimanyu play being made into a famous movie. When I watched Ben-hur in Bombay, I was blown away! I spent months trying to convince directors here to make an Abhimanyu movie on that scale and cast me in it. And I would spend days imagining myself in those movies, acting, singing, fighting, romancing... And giving interviews! I read these film magazines that came from Bombay with interviews from the stars. I must've been in my twenties by then, but the interviews really fascinated me. And because no one ever wanted to interview a Carnatic musician then, I imagined interviews, answers, reactions.
"But then, you know, the world is a noisy place. You can't hear what is inside you when the world chatters all around you. An artist needs to spend enough time in that world inside his head. If someone says he has no such world, he's no artist at all. He's just a xerox machine. A musician's music should be his own. Not someone else's.
"This Shankar, for instance," Mani said, pointing at Shankar entering again with the usual tea and Marie biscuits, "Sings brilliantly. Lovely voice. But sings only my sangatis. I sometimes think he writes down my raga alapanas in a notebook and reproduces them." Shankar attempted some form of protest, but Mani cut him off and continued, "He has a band of followers now - a cult of old men and women who liked my music. They hear me in his voice, in his style... Not good at all. I don't teach him anything these days. Just let him sing on his own. I don't even correct him if he makes a mistake. He needs to live in his head for a while."
"Sir exaggerates," Shankar said, nibbling on his biscuit.
It was a confused monologue from Mani. Was he senile, Ajith pondered. He sipped his tea, and found it tasting like dissolved mud. It was the sort of tea his grandmother made - boil cheap tea powder in milk, strain, add milk, sugar, boil everything together and serve hot. The same procedure could result in excellent chai, like the tea kadai at the end of Boag Road proved, but his grandmother and Shankar had got something wrong. Perhaps, they did use mud.

Just then, a Maruti 800 pulled up by the main gate. An old man got out, opened the gate and drove straight in. Mani called out joyously, "Sivan!" and said to Ajith, "My brother, Sadasivam."
Sadasivam waved from the car, parked it, got out and hollered, "Anna! Not bad! You're sitting in the verandah!" and looking at Shankar and Ajith asked, "Shishyaalaa?"
"That one with the glasses, he is Shankar, my student. Lives with me now."
"Of course I know Shankar..." Sadasivam said, suddenly recognising him.

"And this one here, Ajith," he paused, "Am I right? Ajith?" Ajith nodded. "Yes. He is Ajith. A reporter from the Indian Express. Interviewing me."
"My Anna is a big fraud," Sadasivam said, "Always telling people that he's an ordinary fellow and all that. Even he doesn't know the extent of his genius."
Ajith laughed, "Don't worry. We're not fooled by him!"
Mani said, "Ajith, I need to take my brother inside the house - I'm just getting rid of some furniture. Wait here." He turned to Shankar, "Keep him entertained."
Shankar helped Mani on to his feet, but Mani brushed him aside after that, "Siva will take me from here!"
Sadasivam gleefully put his hand on Mani's shoulder and guided him through the door. He turned to Ajith and said, "Come with us. You can continue the interview while we look at the furniture."

Ajith walked with them into the bare drawing room and through the dining room to the landing where the stairs led to the first floor. Lurking at the far end of the landing, partly hidden by the stairs and partly by the dim light, was a door that Ajith wouldn't have noticed if Shankar hadn't opened it. It led to a room that was a grand bedroom in its heyday, where the owners of the house slept. Now, it was a storeroom for old furniture and books. Sadasivam said, "I need a bookshelf. And a study table. I'm converting the sit-out into a study of sorts."
"Oh, the one on the first floor?"
"Yeah."
Mani stood with his walker at the head of the room and said, "Leave that one there on the right for me. It has my cassettes. Take anything else."
Sadasivam scanned the room, moving furniture around to make space for himself. He spotted a large bookshelf at the near corner filled with Tamil books and said, "That bookshelf looks good."
Ajith, meanwhile, walked straight to the shelf with Mani's cassettes. It was a fascinating collection of Mani's music - concerts from the 1950s to the 1990s, all arranged in chronological order, labelled in crisp English lettering, with the year, sabha, accompanists and main raagam on the sleeve. Ajith saw TNK, TKM, UKS, VR and other familiar abbreviations on many covers. There was one that caught his fancy - "SC (nadaswaram)", it said. Ajith asked, across the room, "You've sung with Sheik Chinnamoulana-saheb?"
Mani said, "Oh yes! Three concerts. All of them were bad! When I sang with Rajarathnam Anna, it was so beautiful. I was trying to recreate that effect... There's one next to this cassette with T. Viswanathan on flute, right?"
"Yes."
"That is a great concert - Saaveri, Shuddha Saaveri, Asaveri were the first three ragas..."
"Yes!" Ajith said in amazement, "How do you remember such things?"
Shankar said from near the other bookshelf, "Once, I told him that I had a recording of his concert at Bangalore, 1980 with Thodi raagam-taanam-pallavi in it. MSG on violin. And he said..."
"There's Sahana, Kaanada, Hindolam in the ragamalika. Yes, I remember that concert very well!"
Ajith suddenly noticed something out-of-place. There was a set of Pink Floyd CDs! "Sir, what are these Pink Floyd CDs?"
Sadasivam laughed, and Mani joined him. Mani said, "You won't believe me if I told you. I sang a concert in London, after which Roger Waters gave them to me."
"You know what is special about Anna's music? It is universal, every damn fellow loves it. Anna hates to admit it, but he's a genius. That word is used easily these days, but I mean it. He is a true genius." Sadasivam said, now looking for a study table.
Mani said, "I wish I could be like my brothers."
"What rubbish!"
"Siva, you don't know. You have such an advantage in that you understand people around you. I'm always a little lost, always the oddball. Eccentric. Genius. People like me from a distance - it is an admiration for what I am and what I've achieved..."
"Don't get fooled by this self-pity, Ajith. Anna has admirers who'll do anything for him. Ask Shankar, isn't my Anna most caring?"
Shankar agreed.
"Admirers?" Mani asked, "I don't see a single one at home today. Except for Shankar... You don't know, Siva. I can't walk today, there are things eating me up from the inside. Doctors are trying to prolong my existence; god knows why. And my children are in the US. Too busy to spend time with me. You fractured your leg and your son came to India for a month... It's my fault. I wasted my life being a genius. I should've been with them more when they were younger." Mani addressed Ajith now, "When we were kids, my brothers had all sorts of stories to tell, about their friends, their school, their adventures. I had nothing to tell anyone about. Look at Sadasivam, I'm sure you like him already, with his easy charm and sense of humour. I would've preferred being like him."
"The whole world wants to be you, Anna. Now shut up." After a moment, Sadasivam sighed and said, "I guess I'll have to buy a new study table. Nothing here."
Mani turned around, his walker clanking against the red-oxide floor as he walked into the landing, into the dining room.

Suddenly, he asked Sadasivam, "Dai Siva! Take me to the beach?"

Soon, Ajith found himself in the old Maruti car with Mani, Sadasivam and Shankar, hurtling away towards Marina Beach.
Sadasivam asked, "Ajith, you've been with the Indian Express for long?"
"Six months."
"Oh. Where were you before that?"
"I was with a market research firm in Bombay..."
"Didn't like Bombay?"
"Umm, sort of. I was always looking to come back South."
"Your parents live here?"
Shankar interjected, "You live with your grandmother, don't you?"
Ajith said, "Yeah. My mother's no more. She died when I was barely two."
"I'm so sorry..." Sadasivam said. "What about your father?"
"He married again and left me with his parents. They brought me up."
There was an uncomfortable silence. Mani decided to break it with, "So, Ajith what does your grandfather do?"
"He was in the I.R.S. He's also no more... I moved back to Madras because my grandmother was alone."
Again, it was uncomfortable. Everyone muttered a sorry, but said little more. Ajith said, "He was old..."
Finally, Mani said to Sadasivam, "Hey, I.R.S! You might know him!" and said to Ajith, "Siva's an I.A.S. retired."
Sadasivam said, "What was his name?"
"S. Ramachandran."
That revelation produced the most awkward of the three silences.
Sadasivam said, with a fake enthusiasm, "Ram Anna is an old friend! Great man, he was! Great man."
Mani went unnaturally quiet until they reached the beach. Ajith realised he shouldn't have given away his grandfather's identity. His cover of being an innocent young fellow trying to understand Mani was exposed. Mani would soon suspect that Ajith was only interested in one story. The story of his grand-aunt. Ajith guessed that Mani would be guarded about all his stories now. The openness, the twinkling eyes, the rants, the vague stories would all go.

"In the 50s," Mani told Shankar, "When I was around your age, I used to come here and practice on the beach! There was nobody here early in the morning. Or late at night. In that corner, around the lighthouse, sometimes I would hear a piercing flute - especially at night. That was Flute Ramani, sometimes accompanied by Mali. The beach was otherwise empty."
Ajith imagined the young, handsome Mani, his striking voice, the drone of the tambura and lashing of the night-waves. And he looked at the Mani today, his walker clanking ahead of him as he navigated the pavement towards a cement bench. His brain suddenly conjured another image, of a middle-aged Mani, still handsome, and Ajith's Taapi, a most beautiful woman, sitting together on this very beach, oblivious to the scandal they were creating in their homes.
***

To Continue.

Saturday, the Thirteenth

2010-03-07T12:46:00.003+05:30

Partying on Saturday nights has never been a routine for me. In my childhood, I found myself at my neighbour's house by seven-thirty pm waiting for our music teacher to come. Classes took up rest of the night, often stretching to ten o clock or beyond. In Bangalore, I went to my aunt's place on Saturday evenings and spent most of the weekend lying down on the sofa or the bed, and dragging myself to the dining table for meals. On such Saturday nights, I would wait for my uncle and aunt to finish their nightly-TV-watching, and settle down into one of the English movie channels.

On this particular Saturday night - it was the thirteenth of either April or May, I can't recollect - I watched this particularly nondescript movie called Big Bully. (I would have forgotten this movie completely if I hadn't watched the Blessy's brilliant Bhramaram that dealt with a similar theme in a much more nuanced manner.) After the movie, I groggily made my way to the loo, and then to the bed.

It was a double-bed parallel to the wall. I slept on the edge and there was enough space for someone to sleep behind me. I was just about asleep when I felt someone climb over me and sleep on the other side. My cousin was still staying with her parents then, and I presumed it might be her. I wanted to check anyway. I opened my eyes, I was definitely awake, but I felt like my body was bound to the bed. I couldn't move. When this temporary paralysis lifted, I got up and found the room empty. Out of curiosity, I walked into the hall, a long room with a wide window at the other end, moonlight peering through the translucent glass.

There she was, a short woman silhouetted against the window, walking ever so slowly and disappearing into the kitchen. I went back to my room, turned the light on, lay staring at the ceiling for a while until I dozed off.

Next morning, at the breakfast table, my aunt asked me why the light was on all night. I told her this story. She looked at me, surprised, and said, "You know, many years ago, your Mama also had the same experience - he said someone was in the room, and he couldn't get up!" My uncle wondered whether I saw his deceased sister, who was of similar physique as the woman I described.
***

Today, five years later, I get a mail from my cousin with a link to this article. Two extracts:

"7. Sleepy hallucinations
We're all used to seeing strange things in our dreams, but what about when we're not dreaming? So-called hypnagogic hallucinations occur during the transition from wakefulness to sleep (just after our head hits the pillow). And hypnopompic hallucinations hit during the waking-up process. People report hearing voices, feeling phantom sensations and seeing people or strange objects in their rooms. Bugs or animals crawling on the walls are a common vision, said Neil Kline, a sleep physician and representative of the ASA."

About sleep paralysis:

"Sleep paralysis

During REM sleep, dream activity ramps up and the voluntary muscles of the body become immobile. This temporary paralysis keeps us from acting out our dreams and hurting ourselves. Sometimes, though, the paralysis persists even after the person wakes up. "You know you're awake and you want to move," Kline said. "But you just can't."Even worse, sleep paralysis often coincides with number 7 on our list: hallucinations. In one 1999 study published in the Journal of Sleep Research, 75 percent of college students who'd experienced sleep paralysis reported simultaneous hallucinations. And these hallucinations, when they occur with sleep paralysis, are no picnic; people commonly report sensing an evil presence, along with a feeling of being crushed or choked. That sensation has given sleep paralysis a place in folklore worldwide. Newfoundlanders know it as the "Old Hag." In China, it's the "ghost pressing down on you." And in Mexico, it's known by the idiom "subirse el muerto," or "the dead climb on top of you.""

Spooky.

Helpful Tips to Kacheri Listening

2010-03-01T22:27:00.004+05:30

Also, N.V. Mani requires some serious attention. Lets all hope this weekend will be better than my last few.

This is written for single, twenty-something males with little or no knowledge of Carnatic music. But others can apply these fundae wherever it is applicable.
***

There are many reasons why the classical-musically-disinclined amongst you might find yourselves at a Carnatic Music concert. Your friend is an enthusiast, and he (hopefully, she) believes that three hours of T.N. Seshagopalan might change your life. Your good friend plays the violin and you're obliged to listen. You find that the girl you find interesting finds Carnatic Music more interesting. You think, for some strange reason, that T.V.Sankaranarayanan could be the front-man for a heavy metal band playing screeching guitar solos, and end up in a more demure atmosphere instead. You might be under the common misconception that pretty Iyengar girls come to kacheris. You might just wander into Music Academy for the air-conditioning on a hot December afternoon.

In such situations, life can be awkward. You could find yourself out of place, like a fish out of water, like Alastair Cook in a T20 game, like Bobby Deol in a movie, like a Bombay-ite in a Madras auto, like a Delhi-ite trying to eat rasam saadam off a banana leaf... (you get the general idea).

Here is a simple guide to looking the part (even if you don't feel the part).

1. The Dress: If you've lived in South India for long enough, you'll know that if someone notices your clothes, you're overdressed. And really, that's the way the world should be. (Btw, Koramangala is not South India anymore). So, if you think wearing a fabindia kurta is proper attire for a kacheri, then you're wrong. That is the first mistake newbies make. Because when a mama sees you in a fabindia kurta, he knows you're a pretender. He'll scoff at you and tell you an in-those-days-we-all-sang-raagam-taanam-pallavi-sitting-in-our-verandas-while-doing-maths-homework-type story.

Wear a checked shirt. Preferably vague brands such as SVK, VBR, Discent purchased at small shops around Mylapore tank or non-AC shops in Pondy bazaar (And, no. Don't wear the white shirt from Ramraj Cottons. People will presume you're one of the artistes.). Then, we come to the bottom-half of the dress. You can either wear a pair of trousers, again, belonging to one of these vague brands. Or you could wear a veshti. Remember, the veshti cannot have a jari border or be too white and too ironed. Else, again, people will think you're the artiste.

Carry a yellow cloth pye, preferably with the little Ready Raga Reckoner in it. You can fill the pye with random pink and yellow sheets of paper with Tamil writing, a copy of the panchangam, Reynolds pen, Odomos tube, random small notebook with name of respectable south Indian company (Shree Lakshmi Cotton Mills, Sundaram Finance) written on it.
2. What to do during the kacheri:
(a) The first challenge is managing to stay awake. There are things you can try. Like counting the hairs on head of the bald-mama sitting in front of you. Making snide remarks (to yourself) about someone's garish silk podavai with ugly golden border could also be considered. It is really interesting to watch the mridangam and ghatam/kanjira/morsing player make eyes at each other. They do it unnaturally often. If it is an open air place, you could spend time taking an Odomos tube out of your yellow pye (see above), applying it carefully over each part of your body exposed to winged-threats and offering it to your neighbour.

(b) Taalam. Many inexperienced listeners try keeping taalam. That is a common mistake. Let me elaborate.

There are many kinds of taalam keepers. The first kind does not know the taalam, but thinks it essential that he must wave his hands enthusiastically to the beat. The second is the excited new listener, who has just learnt to keep taalam - falls apart when the neraval or swarams set in. The third sort is the more experienced second sort - who can keep taalam correctly for most of the kacheri. The fourth sort knows the taalam quite well, but doesn't feel the need to show off his skills - he's beyond all that. The taalam just runs in his head. Once in a while, he'll slap his thigh in appreciation on the concluding beat of a long calculation. The fifth sort is the official taalam keeper for the kacheri - look out for him/her in the first row or behind the main artiste with a tambura. There is an elusive sixth sort - one who knows the taalam well enough to keep it in his sleep. He is sleepy, but doesn't want people to know that he's sleeping during a kacheri. So, he'll close his eyes, keep taalam and doze off. The taalam continues monotonously without any sign of a mistake. People think he's engrossed in the music. Actually, he's catching up on sleep after last night's party.

Now, if you don't know the taalam too well, you might be tempted to slot yourself in the first category and execute dance moves with your hands. Don't. Exercise restraint. The best tactic is to seem like the fourth category. That takes some acting. Let out a "Sabhaash!" at a random spot in the song, and nod knowingly at the mridangist. (Warning: don't do this too often, or they'll call your bluff. Twice in the concert, maximum.) During raga alapanas, a 'mtch-mtch' is much appreciated by your neighbours.

(c) Other activities. You could have your phone in your shirt pocket, let it ring and spend three excruciating minutes fumbling to turn it off. If you have the Ready Raga Reckoner, you could put it in a plastic cover in your yellow pye, and take it out at the start of each song and put it back into the plastic cover after referring to it. Make noise and attract attention to yourself each time with the plastic cover. Doing things noiselessly is unbecoming of an experienced kacheri listener.

3. Useful lines to say to the mama sitting next to you:

Say this in a lamenting tone: "Nobody sings padams anymore... Brinda-Mukta... They were the last great musicians. And Tiger before them..." (If you're really curious about 'Tiger', check this out.)

"Dikshitar kritis are a true test of one's musical prowess..." This can work in both circumstances - when the singer is actually singing Dikshitar kritis, the mama will assume you're making a comment on the Dikshitar kriti; and if he's not, then the mama will think you're suggesting that the singer must sing Dikshitar kritis instead of whatever he's singing. This will set you amongst the intellectual listeners.

If you're at a young artiste's performance, "Youngsters these days are in a hurry to get on stage and perform. In those days..."

At an old artiste's performance, "Oh. I heard this old recording of when was young, that was something else..."

Dangers of this approach are many.

(a) The mama sitting next to you might seek to clarify raagam doubts from you.

Suggested response: "Mama! Of course you know this raagam!" Or, "Let me give you a hint. There is a tillana by T.K. Rangachari in this raagam. Very famous!" T.K. Rangachari was a great enough musician to have composed a tillana in his time, and he is obscure enough for the mama to think that the tillana might have escaped his attention somehow.

Second suggested response: "Mama, I've actually learnt only Hindustani music." Pronounce Hindustani as in-dus-ta-ni (the 't' and 'd' being pronounced as in 'turgid' and the 'n' as in 'ponnu'). This gives you the opportunity to tell the mama that the corresponding raagam in in-dus-ta-ni is 'Meend' or 'Jeeral' (neither raga exists, to my knowledge, but they're sufficiently North Indian sounding and sufficiently vague).

(b) The mama sitting next to you might ask you for your educational qualification, employment particulars, marital status and horoscope details.

Here, you make an assessment. Do you really want this mama to be your father-in-law? But you have to make another assessment first - is the mama 'looking' for his daughter? Or granddaughter? Or is it his neice/grandneice/similarly situated relative? Friend's daughter? Enemy's daughter? Or is he really liberal and is 'looking' for his son/ grandson/ grandnephew/ nephew? If you think the counter-party that this mama offers could be interesting, you could respond with relevant details. (You can look around him to see if any interesting-looking personalities are sitting around him.)

Otherwise, you can repel the mama with, "Mama, I am a divorcee." (Pronounce it as dye-voar-see)
Also try, "I am working at Satyam."

4. Things to tell the Artistes if you bump into them: Compliment the artistes on their 'laya' (rhythm) or 'shruti shuddham' (pitch perfectness.)(Actually, after a rock concert, go backstage and tell the lead singer, "Sir, you have such srutisuddham!" That might be fun.). Don't tell them they have 'beautiful voices' or that they are 'energetic' - that's just low-level complimentation.

Other cool things to try:
If it is a female singer, "M.S. would have been proud of this concert!"
If it is a male singer, "Oh, it felt like I was listening to Ariyakkudi again!"
If it is an instrumentalist, "You sound just like your guru!"

You can freak them out with this:
"In 1947, I heard GNB at RR Sabha... This concert was just like that!"
The artiste will give you an incredulous look. And then you reply, matter of factly, "In my last life," and walk away into the crowd.

En-gag-ed!

2010-02-18T11:08:00.005+05:30

A poem by my Amma.
***
While you were sleeping,
We got you engaged
To the girl of your dreams!

We drove in, flew in,
Met and mingled,
And sealed your secret affair,
With an official consent!

No girl, no boy,
So who’s engaged?
Of course we are
As families engaged:
Between small talks and snacks,
slokams and kolams ,
priests and photographers,
chanting and clicking.

Your parents and hers,
Exchanged gifts and hearts,
while you both slept,
Like kids and dreamt!
All aunts and uncles
And cousins and friends,
Grand parents, "both sides"
Blessed your future
With love and yellow rice!

And when you wake up,
And see what we did,
Frozen in photos,
Our smiles say it all,
Half a world away,
Bridged by best wishes,
Tell us how you feel,
Engaged to this gorgeous,
Girl of your dreams!
***

My cousin got engaged last Monday. In a not-so-uncommon occurrence, the engagement happened in Bangalore while the boy and girl were both in the US. It was 3 A.M. in the US when it happened, and my writerly Amma wrote this poem for him as a present. I'm sharing it without her permission. Sorry, Amma. But some things need to be shared with the world.

Review Time!

2010-02-05T18:06:00.006+05:30

I know I'll make a horrible music/cinema journalist - the sort that reviews music and movies week after week. The profession requires you to react quickly to something, and spew out length-bound opinions. I can't do that, because I have a theory. (God, I'm so full of doddi.)

There's three kinds of art. One that makes no impact on you at all. The second that makes immediate impact, but disappears into the recesses of your memory soon. The third makes some (or even no) impact on the first attempt, but stays with you, haunts you and begs you to come back for seconds, thirds and (on occasion) infinites. Then, there is that insignificant minority that catches you by the balls the first time around and lives with you for ever. Most art falls somewhere in between these categories. (I know I said three categories and ended up with four. It was intentional. I'm a Douglas Adams fan. Or, you could count the first sentence as tisram, and the rest of the paragraph in chaturasram. Ok, forgive me for that random Carnatic joke. God, I'm so full of doddi.)

Now, when you write a movie review on Friday evening, after having watched the movie on Friday morning, anything that is in category 1 gets dismissed immediately, anything in category 2 gets elevated to category 3 (Rang De Basanti, for instance), lots of things in between categories 2 and 3 get interchanged, and anything in category 4 gets just deserts. (No. The spelling of the word is not 'desserts' in this context. Check this out. (God, I'm so full of doddi.)

See what happened with Vinnaithandi Varuvaaya - the first time I heard it, I thought, Bleddy Hell. Rahman's taken his structurelessness too far. And then I heard it again. And again, and again. Until structures, forms, meanings were discovered, and Mannippaaya became a better song than Aaromale. I know Rahman's music very well. Hell, I know Rahman's music better than I know Tyagaraja's (I've listened to Rahman uninterruptedly since Roja, circa 1992, but there was a long gap where I heard almost no Tyagaraja). But the dude's managed to surprise me again - with that naadaswaram in Omana Penne, with some fresh hip-hoppy stuff from Blaaze in Hosanna, that bluesy-angsty-Malayali singing in Aaromale, and the sheer uncatchability of Mannippaaya. (One mustn't forget the lovely vocals in the title song.) He's also surprised me with two doddi songs - I mean, what is with Anbil Avan and Kannukkul Kannai?! Why are they even in the same galaxy?

Just a couple of additional things about Mannippaaya. (God, I'm so full of doddi.) Shreya Ghoshal's Tamil accent is getting better by the day, and her voice, oh man, so pretty. There's many kinds of female voices, most of which I'm not too fond of. (Wait, Mary Wollstonecraft. Don't kill me. There's many kinds of male voices also, most of which I'm not too fond of.) Shreya Ghoshal's is the loveliest sort, really. Not too timbrous, not too shrieky. Fully in shruti, at all points of time. Really helps when you're negotiating a melody as complicated as Mannippaaya. And Ra-ghu-man, suppper only. That introduction line, "Kanne thadumaari nadanthen..." when he comes in with that high note, crooning. Abbah. Bliss only, it is.

Similarly with Ishqiya. I came out of the theatre too numb to talk. I mean, one can take only so much of Vidya Balan playing a sexual manipulator and still remain coherent and sane. If I had to write a review in two hours' time, I would've praised the movie to the skies, flooded paragraphs with superlatives, fantasised about Vidya Balan and collapsed under the excitement. But I exercised restraint - for two days. Today, my opinion is slightly different. The movie has its stretches of brilliance. (No, I don't use that term lightly. I mean it. There were stretches of brilliance - the way she dangles the two men was outstanding! You could feel Kalujaan's tender love and Babban's erotic infatuation (as Babban puts it, "Tumhara isqh, aur hamara ishq sex?"), and Krishna's perfect understanding of what both of them want. But there was the rest of the movie - a convoluted plot where nobody's motive was made clear. The dude playing the husband did a very good job of hiding a confused character's shallowness. And the lady's voice over the phone was, as one Mr. Happy put it, 'an unnecessary device'.

Even so, Ishqiya was a very good film. That "Mamta ko dhoka nahin de sakta" scene, "chuttar dhone se pahele bandook chalana seekh jata hai", that scene where they dance to "Dekha jo Tujhe yaar", the addition of chutiyum sulphate to my vocabulary, all makes it a great movie. But some coherence, some consistency, and it could have been God-level.

Ishqiya continues, in an equally engaging manner, a genre started by Manorama: Six Feet Under - of rural, desi noir (or, as Jabberwock put it once, phillum noir). That one was quieter, more brooding, less quirky and more dangerous. This one is funnier, edgier and madder. But both deserve more attention than they're getting.

In the end analysis, neither Vinnaithandi Varuvaaya (the music), nor Ishqiya will form a part of me - unlike Thiruda Thiruda or Maqbool, but I will recollect both fondly. (God, I'm so full of doddi.)
***

a. Doddi means shit in Telugu/PD.
b. Yes. I invent words. I'm like Shakespeare.

Two Disappearances - Part III

2010-02-01T09:42:00.003+05:30

Sorry for the delay. For those who don't know, all parts are aggregated in the label called 'the two disappearances'.
***
Untitled

As high school girls in Neyveli, we were unabashedly romantic. Brought up hopelessly mawkish mythology, drama and cinema, we believed that one day, a man would walk into our lives and change it forever. We would love him passionately, deeply, he would love us back; then we would bear his children, bring them up, care for them, get them married; we would weep when he dies, and he would if we died before him. Life taught us that romances, marriages and relationships are far more complicated. In this story, though, I am only seventeen years and eight months old. Forgive me if I'm a little naive.

I remember only the strangest details from that summer afternoon. I wore an olive green sari with a darker green border. Don't blame my aesthetic sensibilities - my mother bought it for me. That day, she also made my curd rice too milky - she overestimated the heat's curdling abilities. She also miscalculated the amount of time it would take for me to come from Neyveli to Thanjavur. I reached the station five hours before my train to Madras. My Chitappa, a lawyer, had some work in Thanjavur escorted me to the station and left me to my fate.

When a train slowed down at the station, accompanied by its hoot, I noticed a beard and grey eyes. I looked away immediately, because I could feel their gaze on me and it made me a little uneasy. Still, I wanted to see them once more. For a second, I toyed with the idea of getting on the train and seeking those eyes. But I contained that desire. The train began moving.

Like they do in the movies, I stood up suddenly, picked up my bag and ran with the train until I caught up with the nearest door. I was about to leap into the compartment when I felt the gaze on me again. This time, it was from my left. When I turned to the platform, I saw those very grey eyes, adorning a six-foot-two-inch-frame, a handsome face, long, unkempt hair and the prettiest of beards. I froze. Those eyes looked unfazed, and that face broke into a faint smile.

He asked me in a clear, young voice, "Looking for me?"

I was flooded by another image. Of a temple in Neyveli, gas lamps and a moonless night. Of laughing faces, waving hands, swaying heads. I could hear the music again - a clear, young voice, its clarity and tone untarnished by the high notes or speeds it was trying to negotiate. I felt that high again, that meaningless rush of romantic love!

"Are you who I think you are?" I asked, nervously.
He was.

The train had left by then. The platform was deserted again. There might have been a wind blowing, one of those comforting winds, or that might just be my romantic mind adding details to the event. I brought it to his notice that he had missed his train. He said, "I didn't even know where it was going." I looked at him incredulously. He only grinned.

"Let's go somewhere?" he asked.
I considered that offer for a second, before asking, "I know a place. Are you feeling up to a walk?"
"Can I ask you something?"
"Yes?"
"Your name?"
"Janani."
He liked my name, I think, for he repeated it with a certain fondness. "I'm Siva..."
"I know."

We first took a bus. I rested my head on his shoulder. I felt his initial uneasy excitement at my boldness, but soon he was comfortable, and leaned against me. My love story was playing out just as I had imagined it. We spoke a lot, of our families, of our friends, of childhoods, likes, peeves, idiosyncrasies, and music. He spoke of his music with a slight tinge of pomposity. He had the air of someone who believed he was the greatest, but wanted to hide this belief from the world.

I asked him, "What are you doing these days?"
"You've ever heard of wandering musicians?" I nodded. He said, "I'm not one. I'm just a musician in hiding!"
I asked him what that meant. "My brothers are trying to get me married off to my neighbour. She's a sweet girl. But I can't live with someone who's just sweet, no?"
"And that's why you ran away?"
He paused for a moment, before he said, "I was hoping I'd run into someone like you."

Our trek involved walking through paddy fields, a marsh, a thicket and finally to the summit of a secluded hill. It led to a little settlement of no more than thirty families. It was almost ten in the night when we reached there - the entire journey had taken us six hours.

He asked me, again, what we were doing there. I told him, again, to be patient.

I led him to a house from which the most haunting Vagadeeswari ensued. We entered the little hall, where an old man was playing the veena, with his eyes closed and six other men listened. If the artiste sensed our entrance, he didn't show it.

We sat at the back and soaked in the taanam. It was the most slow, detailed, heavy taanam we had ever heard. The old man gave each swara such care and attention, they seemed to come alive. He played phrase after phrase around the rishabham, grandharam and the madhyamam, going back and forth, up and down, sliding and staccato, over each of those notes, slipping in and out of a rhythm. My grey-eyed hero watched in disbelief. His aesthetic sensibilities, his theatrical style were all being dismissed by an old, frail man on a veena. The entire room was in a trance when the veena began booming in the ati-mandhra taanam. The variety and quality of the sounds of the veena were beyond anything he had heard before. In that small space, one could hear the subtlest of the veena's tones. And the old man had much to convey through the faintest of touches, and the subtlest of flourishes.

When the taanam ended, the old man fumbled for the glass of water that was behind him. His student, seated next to him, gave him the glass. Siva realised the man was blind. The man suddenly asked, "Janani is here? At this hour?"

I replied, "Yes... I'm with a friend. He sings."
I could feel Siva's nervousness when the old man asked, "Sing for us? Is this sruti okay for you?"
Siva hummed a Thodi phrase and said, "Yes. This sruti is perfect."
The old man said, "Can you sing Ritigowla instead of Thodi?"

Siva started with a striking tara sthayi phrase in Ritigowla and started adding layer after layer of sangatis over it; like garlands. The old man exclaimed, "Bale!" Siva's imagination was relentless - like cyclonic downpour! The little audience had never heard anything of that sort before. In ten minutes though, he was done. Exhausted by his own high, he was panting at the end of the alapana. He collected himself before launching into, "Janani Ninnuvina", the grey eyes twinkling naughtily in my direction each time he said "Janani". It was nearly midnight when his Ritigowla ended.

The old man asked us if we had eaten anything. We hadn't. Everyone in the hall walked with the man to a nearby house, where his sister fed us. When we were done, we settled down in the courtyard there. The old man started again. It was Ritigowla, again. Siva, who was chatty, happy and proud until then, went silent. If his Ritigowla rode on its sheer vitality, this one had pathos. Siva's was rough, even brash, this one was smooth, yet heavy. Siva snaked around the raga, like a young man on a motorbike through heavy traffic, the man drove along effortlessly, like the traffic didn't exist at all.

It was morning when we were done with the music session. Siva didn't dare sing again that night. One of the men invited us to stay with him. When we walked towards his house, Siva pulled me by my hand into a bylane and said, "Thank you..." Those grey eyes, in the early morning sun, moist, staring into my own, conveyed love and gratefulness in equal measure.

(This is a short story in Tamil by noted writer, P. Srivaralakshmi, who wrote under the psuedonym 'Janani'. The original, untitled, was found amongst the author's papers after her death and translated into English by Vasudev Iyer.)
***

"What happened to her?"
"We stayed in that village for almost a month. That veena player, Shanmugasundaram, taught both of us. We were nearly married, when her family caught up with her. They took her away..."
"You didn't go looking for her?"
"I went to Neyveli, where she claimed to be from. No one there knew any Janani!"
"You never met her again?"
"I'm sure I did, although she behaved like she was seeing me for the first time."
***

Nethra called Ajith excitedly, "Dude! I went to this book launch by this guy called Vasudev Iyer. He's translated these short stories by women writers in Tamil. As in, he's translated women's writing in Tamil to English... Short stories."'
"Okay?"
"Wait. The point is, there is this story... It is exactly the one that NV Mani told you..."
***

"There are some things I should tell you," Vasudev Iyer said, sipping on his Cappucino, "This piece was not very well written, I did a lot of editing, a lot of adding to bring it to a publishable form. My guess is that it was never intended to be published. A personal diary of sorts, I think..."
"And it ends there?"
"Rather abruptly, yes. A slightly pointless story, I know..." he said, and added, "God. Why don't they serve filter coffee here?"

After a brief silence, Ajith asked, "Then why did you include that in the anthology?"
"It seemed interesting, the idea. And it was rare and unpublished. I got it through her grand-nephew. No one's read it before. And it gives an insight into a young girl's mind..." Nethra's expression of contempt deserved to be photographed.
"How true is it? Any idea?"
"Srivaralakshmi lived in Bombay, though she grew up in Neyveli. She married someone who worked there and moved with him. Whether she met any musician when she was young is a mystery. No one remembers such a story, although some old man mentioned something about her wedding being sudden."
Nethra asked Ajith, "But if she died in Bombay when she was thirty, Mani couldn't have met her again..."
***

"You met her again?" Ajith's voice said through the recorder.
"Almost twelve years later." Mani's replied.
"Where?" Shankar's asked.
"That's a story for another day. I'm tired now," Mani's said.
"When?"
"I'll call you..." he said, and added, "I hope you will not publish these stories about women? I'll tell you enough about music. You can write about that..."

Ajith turned off the recorder.
***

That night, when Shankar rolled out his mattress on the floor, next to his teacher's bed, he couldn't help but wonder what Mani must have been like when he was younger. By the time Shankar met him, Mani was nearly seventy - he had just about retired, and Shankar thought of him as a musical sanyasi. He had never seen Mani talk about anything else with any passion or conviction. To think that he might have had a girlfriend, or even that he had women on his mind at some point was vaguely disturbing.

Ajith sat by his laptop, transcribing the interview. He heard the part about the woman over and over to see if there were any more hints on her identity. What did Mani mean when he said he had met her again? Was she his spunky grand-aunt who left their house suddenly? The story seemed to suggest she could have been, but some of the facts didn't fit.

Ajith's paati, Sharada, thought of her cousin endlessly that evening. The orphaned Saraswathi and she were the only two girls amongst eight boys in her house. Growing up together, they were co-conspirators in everything they did (they were even named after the same Goddess!), until Saraswathi committed a crime that Sharada couldn't be a part of. It was a continuing crime that lasted for years, but Saraswathi behaved like she did no wrong. It consumed her in the end, Sharada believed, as she breathed her last in a hamlet near Kodaikanal, away from all her friends and family. Sharada went to Ajith's room twice to see what Ajith was writing, but only saw Facebook on his laptop.

Mani, meanwhile, slept peacefully.
***

To continue.