Season Stories

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

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!
***

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

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

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

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

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.