Helpful Tips to Kacheri Listening

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!

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!

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

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.

Two Disappearances - Part II

Continued from here.

***
It was only when the bus left that Ajith realised he had gotten off one stop too early. He had to walk to the next stop now. This realisation coincided with another message from Nethra, 'dude, fifteen minutes...' His brisk walk graduated to a trot and soon turned into a sprint. He crossed a set of shopping complexes - typical Pondy Bazaar complexes with lots of small shops that sold fake mobile phone accessories (selling Noika, Panasoanic, Philiphs and other leading brands), computer parts, cheap clothes, expensive clothes, cheap glasses, expensive glasses, housed a watch mechanic or a photo-framer ('God Pictures and All Other Kinds of Framing'), a 'mens only' barber (with a/c and 'Style Cutting and Cropping'), a dry cleaner ('Devi Dry Cleaners - Clean as White'). Then, he reached an intersection that had a potti kadai where he stopped and asked for directions to the Big Bazaar. The man with his paan-filled mouth just pointed in a general direction without saying anything. Ajith ran past a petrol bunk, crossed what seemed like a small intersection that couldn't handle the traffic and sighted the Big Bazaar on his left. Nethra gave him only very vague directions, "It's a juice shop. I don't know what it's called. It's either before or after the Big Bazaar. I'm not sure. Oh wait. I think it is after. Because I usually walk along the flower market to get there... No. Wait.. I think it's before. I'm confusing it with the flower market image... Actually, I have no clue. Just get to the Big Bazaar and find the nearest juice shop."

As it turned out, the shop was behind the flower market, after the Big Bazaar. Nethra was there, her juice nearly finished. She pointed to the clock on her phone as soon as he reached.
He muttered an apology to which she said, "Every time, bastard."
"Hey," Ajith protested, "I have an excuse today. These musicians talk too much."
Nethra smiled. She was about to say something when the waiter arrived at their table. "Watermelon juice," Ajith declared.
"Watermelon ille, saar."
Ajith peered into the menu and spotted a '5-fruits cocktail' that he promptly ordered. The waiter replied, "Only four fruits today. Watermelon ille."
Nethra laughed, "So drink four fruits cocktail..."
They looked at the waiter, who, after consideration, said, "Saar, billing will still be for five fruits cocktail."

Ajith nodded his approval to the offer. The waiter left.

Ajith said, "What a place you've picked!"
"Heh. They let you sit here for as long as you want."
Ajith took a sip of her juice.
"So," Nethra asked, "How'd the interview go?"
"Oh, awesome. He's the strangest person I've ever met."
"Why?"
"Generally. He has these veils he hides behind, and makes it a point to let you know that he's hiding each time. He wants you to know that there are secrets, but he will not tell you what they are."
"Like what?"
"So, I asked him about his early gurus. Wait. Let me play you the recording of his answer..."
***

"Gurus... There were so many. Two or three men in the drama company knew a lot of Thyagaraja krithis... I learnt from them."
"Their names?"
"I don't even remember. I only called them 'Mama'."
"What was the name of the drama company?"
"Seethapati Drama Company."
***

Ajith paused the recording, "That is wrong. He was in the Sri Karthikeya Nataka Sangam. I read it in a book on his life by his student. He either lied to the student or he's lying now. Either way, he's being cagey about really random things."
Nethra paused for a moment before asking, "Dude, maybe he actually learnt from someone really big. But he thinks this 'self-taught' myth makes him cooler."
"Unlikely..."
***

"It was strange, you know. These teachers didn't know any theory in music. They didn't even know basic things like which swaras came in what ragas! But they sang the kritis perfectly. They would never, for instance, sing a Kedaragowla gamakam in a Yadukulakambhoji, or a Manji gamakam in a Bhairavi!"
"But how did you learn the, um... swara-structure of those ragas then?"
"By listening to concerts! It was all subconscious. I don't think I knew much of what I was singing back then. I just sang. I must've made many mistakes at that time, but people never told me anything... Except Musiri."
"What about Musiri?"
"He put me in the Music College. He thought I needed some structured learning..."

"But you didn't like the structured learning?"
"It was horrible. People were always telling me what to do and what not to do. This is allowed. That is not. This is correct. That is wrong. They never enjoyed the music for what it was. They always judged everything. I couldn't handle it. Those discussions... On what is tradition, 'paddhati' and what is lakshana and lakshya and all that... Mostly, people didn't know what they were talking about. But they would talk. And argue. And gulp litres of coffee while doing it."

There was a pause and Shankar walked in with two tumblers of steaming coffee and a few Marie biscuits on a plate.

"I didn't really appreciate the value of theory back then." he said, dipping a Marie biscuit into the coffee and eating it, "Which was a bit of a setback as far as my music was concerned. But it allowed me to explore, you know..."
"Not be bound by what books say," Shankar helped him. Ajith nibbled on his own biscuit.
"Yeah," Mani agreed, "I hated books back then. I used to think, 'What can a book teach you about Bhairavi raagam, that listening to all those great musicians can't teach you?' I still think that today. But I have a little more respect for books!"
***

"I spoke to this other man who was with N.V. Mani at the Music College. Apparently, Mani stole lots of books from the library just before he disappeared!" Ajith said, sipping on his 4-fruits-cocktail.
Nethra laughed. Ajith liked her laugh. "I asked him about it," he said.
***

Mani laughed. "Books were being stolen from that library all the time. I was just a convenient person to pin it down on! Because I was the rebel. I was the crazy one. And I disappeared!"
"But where did you go?"
"Nowhere. I just wandered around."
Shankar looked on curiously, and Ajith was still formulating his next question to prod Mani along when the doorbell rang. Shankar got up and went to the door.
"Can you elaborate a little more?"
Mani laughed again, "You're asking questions like a policeman!" Ajith smiled wryly. Mani said, "I wandered. All over South India. I would sing a song or two in return for a meal. I used to get into trains, and when I found a place that took my fancy, I got off. I went to that village and spent time with people there. Sometimes a week, sometimes two. I would sing for them at night, teach them small songs, learn their music from them... They shared their food with me in return. Then I would take another train in another direction."

Ajith wasn't convinced of this revenue model, but he didn't ask Mani about it. Shankar walked in around then with two other people who came with cameras. Ajith ignored them and asked, "You must've met very interesting people..."

"Musicians! I met such wonderful musicians all over the place... So unlike today when everyone gravitates towards Madras. For instance, I spent six months in a small village near Kundapur, in what is coastal Karnataka today. There was an ashram of sorts by the sea. Lovely place to practice... And no one there knew me. I sourced a tambura from a musician who lived nearby who took a fancy for my music. He hadn't even heard of me. A quaint man who had learnt music from all sorts of sources - from books people bought him in Madras, from musicians who were visiting his part of the world, from people he called 'wanderers' who knew lots of songs. He knew so many compositions that the Madras scene had no idea of - in Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, even Malayalam!

"And what an Abheri he would sing! One evening, he sat in my room in the ashram and sang an Abheri alapana for eight hours. And it was that beautiful original Abheri with the shuddha-daivatam... A tinge of sadness amidst the celebration. It changed my life. Until then, I sang in such a tearing hurry. Exploration was not a part of what I did with my music until then. I was only interested in exciting an audience. I think that is one of the reasons why I left Madras. I needed time to explore. Be on my own. Understand my own music before the world imposed its music on me."

Ajith was speechless.

Mani, however, looked at the cameramen who had settled themselves on chairs around Mani, and said, "You people want photographs of me? This is who I am. Shoot away!" He turned to Ajith, who was now done with his coffee, and said, "I don't know how much longer I'll be around. So, I told some publications and organisations that if they want photos, they better come this week and take them. You continue asking questions."

"On understanding one's own music, don't you think musicians of today..."
The setting was strange. An immobile old man was talking, in a dingy room, and three photographers walked around shooting him with bright flashes every now and then. Each time a flash came, Mani's eyes closed, but he didn't stop talking. "They don't do it. They're too busy performing or being musicians. Flitting from one kacheri to another... But one can't blame them. They're constantly being judged. If they're out of the scene for one year, they've fallen two rungs in that ladder. And people ask my students all the time, 'How many concerts have you given this month?' Is that relevant? How well did he sing? That is the crucial question..."
***

Nethra said, "It was fascinating until he began to rant." Ajith nodded in agreement.
"He rants for a while longer before talking about some really interesting stuff."
"What stuff?"
"Some woman he met in Madurai. A young woman... Hardly eighteen, apparently."
"Around when was this?"
"1956, maybe 57..."
"Barely eighteen? When was your Taapi..."

Just then, Ajith's phone rang, and his grandmother was on the other end, "Ajith!"
"Paati!"
"When are you coming home? Are you coming for dinner?"
His grandmother was only concerned with one aspect of his life - where, when and what Ajith would eat. For a very long time, the only Tamil word Ajith knew was 'saapaad.'
"I'm leaving now. Will be home in like fifteen minutes..."
"Okay. Tell me, what did they make you do at the newspaper today?"
"What?" Ajith was surprised by a non-gastronomic question.
"What did you do today at work?" she said, slightly louder this time.
"The usual, Paati. Some editing and this and that."
"I'm asking, because someone called me on my phone. Some student of N. V. Mani to tell me that you've left your notebook in his house." Her tone changed when she asked, "You've been visiting N. V. Mani?"
Ajith became a little nervous, "Not at all, Paati! That must've been some wrong number..."
"But he asked for Ajith Ramachandran."
Now Ajith was trapped. He said, "No, no. There's some confusion. I'll explain when I get home."
"I hope you aren't going looking for dead stories."
"Paati, no."
***

Mani's eyes grew larger as he spoke about her, "She was wonderful. Almost as tall as me, slightly dark, with black eyes lined with kohl, long hair, her body fuller than her age... I saw her on the Madurai railway station platform. She was sitting on a bag and eating something from a tiffin box." He chuckled at the thought of that image. "I got off at the station as soon as I saw her. I usually avoided towns, preferred getting off when the train stopped for a signal between stations, but I made an exception for her..."
"She was that beautiful?" Shankar asked.
"She was quite beautiful. But her feet were tapping a beat on the platform - in perfect Khandachapu taalam!"
"Did you speak to her?" Shankar asked.
Mani didn't reply.
Shankar asked him the same question again. This time, Mani said, with a twinkle, "I did a lot more!"
***

Nethra seemed concerned. "Who was this woman he spoke of? Was it..."
"I'm not sure."
***

(To Continue)

Two Ways of Staying in Power

1. Gandhigiri

2. Azhagiri

Two Disappearances - Part I

Plough through this part. It will get more exciting...
***

Front Page, The Hindu, 26 December, 2009
NV Mani passes away
CHENNAI: Noted Carnatic vocalist, N. V. Sivasubramanian, ailing for more than three months, passed away yesterday. He was 79. He is survived by two daughters and a son. Hundreds of his admirers and musicians thronged his Mylapore residence to mourn his death. (See Page 16)
***

Page 16, The Hindu, 26 December 2009
Genius breathes his last
CHENNAI: Carnatic vocalist, N. V. Mani passed away last night of an acute heart attack. He was bedridden with multiple ailments for more than a month, and had resisted being shifted to a hospital. His children, all living abroad, will arrive in Chennai shortly for the last rites.

Born in Tiruvarur in 1930 to Vaidyanatha Iyer and Komalatammal, N. V. Mani grew up in Madras where his father worked as an accountant. The identity of the teachers who taught him music in his childhood have all vanished into obscurity, although it is rumoured that he learnt most of his manodharma music from T. N. Rajarathinam Pillai, the nagaswaram maestro, whom he used to accompany to numerous concerts. GNB's music, it is said, had a great impact on him. It would not, however, be inappropriate to state that he was largely self-taught.

Around 1943, much to his father's resentment, Mani quit his schooling to join a drama company for whom he acted and sang. Acting as Abhimanyu in a drama, the thirteen-year-old Mani achieved instant fame for his music. Singing at a striking 5-kattai, Mani unleashed an exhilarating Thodi, Kedaragowla and Ahiri amongst others on the audience. So popular was his singing, that for more than ten years, even after he was too old to be Abhimanyu, he acted in this role!

Simultaneously, Mani's popularity as a Carnatic vocalist was rising. His youthful, playful voice, his searing tarasthayi brigas, his supersonic swaraprastarams created resulted in a burgeoning fan base even before his voice had settled into adulthood. It was around this time, that he began to assimilate kritis just by listening to maestros sing them. An unhappy stint at the Music College ensued. He was admitted without basic schooling on Musiri Subramania Iyer's insistence. However, he felt the rigorous, academic atmosphere dampened his manodharmam. He felt his music was losing its spontaneity and quit within a year. After disappearing from the Madras music scene briefly, he resurfaced as the boy who sat behind Rajarathinam Pillai at all his concerts. Around 1958, N.V. Mani's name was heard in the music circles again. His music was still thrilling, it was still fast-paced, but it seemed to have lost the manic energy of his early years. It began acquiring the depth and stretches of contemplativeness that he came to be known for.

In this interim, Mani married Srividya, his neighbour in Triplicane. It was an alliance forced on him by his brothers who were worried he would lose his way as a musician. Surprisingly, it was a happy marriage and they had two sons and a daughter.

In 1963, after making peace with the Carnatic establishment, he first performed at the Music Academy during the December season to a sellout audience. Since that year, until 1986, he was a permanent fixture at the Academy - on the 25th of December. In that period, he rose from a young cavalier to a senior statesman in the most dignified manner, being accompanied by stalwarts of three generations on the mridangam and the violin. His playback singing for the popular movie Mohanagaanam starring Gemini Ganesan as an alcoholic musician made him a household name and face.

However, a vague illness in 1986 waylaid him for two years. Again, nobody knew where he was. When he came back, he looked ten years older, and his music acquired sobriety to the extent of being almost melancholic. In the next ten years, his music remained highly inward looking and probing. The frenzy of the first phase of his career had disappeared completely. It was like a different musician had emerged. He lost his popularity to a cult status.

In 1997, he suffered a major double-blow. He lost his ancestral Triplicane house in a litigation to his cousin, and Srividya passed away. Unable to deal with the latter, and forced out of his home, Mani moved to the US where he lived with his son for three years. Harsh weather and a dislike for the States' lonely environs brought Mani back to his beloved Chennai. His brother, who passed away two months before Mani moved back, left Mani with his house in Mylapore where Mani lived with various students till his death.

With his passing, Carnatic Music has lost one of its most original and unique voices. It has lost a man who is responsible for ideas that musicians will play with for generations. It has lost its mad scientist.
***


Page 9, The Indian Express, Chennai Edition, 26 December, 2009
Reclusive, obscure, magical
Forty years ago, I was at a wedding of a distant relative when I heard the most magnificent Thodi raga alapana of my life. My uncle was marrying a movie actress. The superstar singer explored the contours of this most mysterious raga for more than an hour, probing each note, each level, each turn. Every now and then, he'd go quiet, focus on the drone of the tambura, and unleash ecstatic phrases of incomparable genius. The Thodi had everything - those traditional stamp-like gamakas, weird combinations of swaras and uncharacteristic plain notes. The crowd at the wedding milled around, as ever, listening to snatches of the concert when they got too tired of talking to one another or gawking at the stars that came to the wedding. I don't know what about that setting inspired him to sing that Thodi. It was noisy, the sound system was highly primitive. It was a Madras summer, and fans were turned off around the stage so as to not disturb the tambura. He was drenched in sweat even before he began. But he sang like he was in a universe of his own, and that unearthly Thodi, like it is said about the music of the Gandharvas, did not stand on the strength of the swaras, but on the microtones in between those swaras. It was music for the Gods.

His last concert was at the Vinayakar temple in Besant Nagar on a Thursday November evening. A small crowd, undaunted by the rain, was treated to a lovely ragam-taanam-pallavi in Kedaragowla. The concert also consisted of Gowla, Mayamalavagowla, Ritigowla and Kannadagowla! He finished the concert in a hurry and announced, "My wife is ailing. In the hospital... I shall sing more for you another day..." She passed away that night, and he never sang publicly again. When my uncle, a very close friend of his, asked him about it, he said, "I performed, all these years, knowing she was listening. She would tell me exactly how good or bad the concert was. I sang for her. I can't anymore..."

Many fans, since, have gone to his house to listen to private concerts. He obliged most people who came to hear him. Sometimes, he called his friends for private concerts. He would sing with two students, accompanied by two tamburas, for hours together. The biggest musicians of our times found themselves at these concerts. The concerts had no structure, no limits, no plan. Often, he would launch into a raga alapana after the kriti, neraval would happen on three or four lines, and pallavis composed on the spot! And at the centre of it all was the man himself - lost in his music, striving to understand his art better.

N. V. Mani, NVM to his fans, Mani to his friends, Mama to his students, passed away last evening, almost twelve years after he last performed on stage. Yet, there was a huge gathering at his house - fans, many of whom looked too young to have actually heard him live; students, some of whom barely learnt a song from him; musicians, many of whom he'd fought with; and relatives, who hadn't cared for him for years. Such was the power of his music. He might have left us, but his music, like that Thodi, will linger for years.

(The Sunday Express tomorrow will carry the last interview of N. V. Mani - a conversation over four days in November 2009 with Ajith Ramachandran.)
***

Ajith stood nervously at the door, waiting for it to open. He had rung the bell four times now. The doors, the windows on the ground floor, were all shut. The house looked like it was under litigation, and no one had lived in it for years. There was a cycle in the verandah, but even that looked unusable. He decided that the man had forgotten the appointment, or that he'd given Ajith the wrong address, and started to leave. He barely reached the gate when a voice called him, "Hello! Sir!" Ajith turned around to find a young man, around his age, with a moustache and thick glasses standing at the balcony on the first floor.

"Indian Express?" the man asked.
"Yeah..."
"Wait!" he called out, and disappeared from the balcony, only to appear at the door open it. He was wearing only a towel, and his hair was still wet. "I'm so sorry. I was in the bathroom, and Mama can't walk to the door."
"Oh, no issue..."
"Come in. Mama's been waiting."
They walked into a sparse house. There was a wooden bench in the front room, three plastic chairs in the drawing room, and two more in the dining room. "I'm Shankar, Mama's student..."
"Ajith Ramachandran."
"Hello," he paused, and took off again, "This house is unused. Mama and I live upstairs. He's not well at all... Doesn't even have the energy to make trips to the toilet. But he's very enthusiastic. When T.V. Sankaranarayanan came last evening, they both sang Bhairavi!"
They smiled politely. Shankar led Ajith into a bedroom, where, on a creaking bed, Mani lay, wrapped in a blanket, a smile pasted on his face. Shankar left, presumably to wear some clothes.

"So. You are the kid they've sent?"
"Sir, I'm Ajith..."
"They must've sent you so that they can get one last interview before I pop it?" he said, still smiling. Ajith turned more nervous than he already was. He managed to mumble, "Sir... No... I was genuinely interested..."
He laughed. Then he said, "Pull up that chair, sit down... I'm being such a bad host. Shankar!"
"I think he is changing," Ajith said, placing an old wooden chair by the bed.
"I'm so sorry for doing this - could you just open the curtains a bit? So dingy in here..." Ajith got up to open the curtains. Mani spoke again, "What does the Indian Express want to know about me now? Everything is known..."
"Actually, the Express was not too keen on this story. I wanted to interview you," Ajith replied, the open curtains letting mid-morning sunlight into the room.
"Let me guess. You've heard some old recordings from some website, and you're a fan or something."
"No. I read a couple of articles in Ananda Vikatan on your two disappearances. That interested me."
Mani laughed. "You're frank. I like you."
Ajith seated himself on the chair, and said, "The interview might take a few days..."
Mani was still giggling, "I'll call you whenever I'm feeling up to it. You'll get everything you want before I die. Don't worry."
***
(To continue)