My tryst with 21 Kms (add 0.097 if you are a purist) turned out to be fairly cordial after all. 2 hours 25 minutes for a Half Marathon is not exactly reason to set one's sights on the next Olympics but for a rookie who was unsure of finishing within the prescribed 3 hours, the result was satisfactory enough. Could've shaved off about 10 minutes from that time, though, for reasons that I will cover in the following post-run rumination. Please note that these are some very amateurish observations about how to get the best out of your first half-marathon in particular the Mumbai event. Keep some salt handy!
Training - If you are used to running 8-10 KMs (as I was), about a month should be enough to help you across the finishing line. That means about 4-5 runs which should go something like 10-12-15-18-21 Kms. Avoind running longer distances less than 5 days apart. If you're unused to distance running of any kind about 3 months should get you there if you can stick to your routine. Hit the treadmill 3-4 times a week and work your way upto 5 Kms by the end of the first month - try and run continuously even if it very slowly. Once you are confident about tackling 5+ Kms, go on to the road and gradually increase the distance - say, 1-2Kms after every run. As above, try and run without stopping/walking. Make sure you carry water or reward yourself with a short water break in the middle. Take your car down the route to mark out the milestones if you don't have a pedometer.
The week before the race - Your last run should ideally be between 5 and 7 days before the event. 21 Kms put a lot of pressure on your legs and rest days are important to help your muscles recover. I pushed it a bit by doing my last run just 3 days ahead of the actual race and I must say it was a close thing - the soreness did not go away until the evening before...Take a couple of days after the last trial run and do some light jogging/distance walking upto a day before the event. Rest completely the day before.
Trial Run - Very important for confidence building in my opinion. Make sure you know the route exactly - get into the clothes you propose to wear for the main event and start at the prescribed time or maybe by half an hour to make sure you are used to the sun. If you have the luxury, it would be a good idea to make this your penultimate one before the marathon itself - the last one should ideally be a shorter run of 12-15 Kms.
Gear - Start with the shoes obviously and please don't save those sparkling Nikes for D-day. Sure, you'll a lot of attention but that certi may be lost to shoebites! Needless to say, it is worth investing in a good pair - this does not necessairly mean that you have to splurge on the latest gizmos that generates charts of how many times your backside jiggled during the run. A fucntional watch will do - and a pedometer if you can get hold of one. Spend the rest on good beer. Most importtanly, make suer your laces last the distance - there's nothing more frustrating than losing the momentum of the home run to tangled laces! Yes, this happened to me and it took all my patience to keep me from tearing out my hair...
Diet - The advice I got before the marathon was to lose as much weight as possible which seemed logical enough - the lower the Kgs you need to lug around, the better, I reasoned. However an experienced friend told me that this conveniently ignored "supply side factors" as economists would put it! Your body is giong to need a helluva lot of carbs if it is going to take you anywhere near the finish line. Beside the training schedule itself would generate significant calorific requirements. So stock up on bread, roti, pasta, potatoes and so on. Go easy on proteins though. And remember to drink lots of water starting from about 3 days before the event.
Make sure you ge the "chip" - For an extra 200 bucks you get a chip that lets the organizers measure your timing and put in on the certificate. This is something I wasn't aware of myself. As an afterthought, please do go through the Marathon website in detail well advance - there's always a little piece of information that turns out to be useful later on.
Race Day - Get in early and do some mild stertching, if you must. You'll see a lot of folk jumping around - ignore them - you wanna save your energy and you can always use the first half Km to limber up. If you're taking a cab get off at Metro rather than at VT. You'll save yourself a 2 Km walk which is not the wisest way to conserve your resources.
What to take - Nothing really, other than your bib. They have locker facilities but believe me, it's not going to be fun waiting for the blokes at the counter to fish out your bag while you're dying to get a nice shower at home! Remember that you won't get anything to eat on the route and that your stomach will start growling by the time you're pushing 1K calories - dry fruits are ideal but chewing them can be an effort - cashews are better than almonds. Get salted ones since they can be an important salt supplement. I've been told that chocolates aren't good for your stamina but they work for me. Open the wrapper before you start - it will get a little gooey but that's better than trying to open it while you're on the move.
Calls of Nature - Perhaps the stupidest way to go out of a Marathon is to head home to the loo! yest, this is not an entirely improbable situation especially if you're not one of those bright ones who start their day at 5. You'll need to reach the venue by about 6 which means that should be able to...err...exercise your digestive system by 5. Once again, the key is to train - if dogs can learn, so can you! Start the routine at least a week before the event. Have bananas and lots of water the night before...and strong coffee in the morning. Pee pee pausers are more easily managed - there are facilities along the way. But yours truly lost 5 minutes thanks to milling crowds outside a cramped urinal with was operating at 200% capacity! I should've just continued running - you lose a lot of water while you're running - the hydrological imbalance tends to reverse itself very shortly!
Race Strategy - Start inching your way to the beginning of the "holding area". This is over half a Km long and if you lag behind, like I did, you will add this distance to your already intimidating run besides which, you'll get stuck in the middle of a huge crowd much of which will be ambling along. It was 5 minutes before I could get to the starting point - sneak up as close as possible to the start line and clear away from the crowds with a strong kick off.
The stretch from VT to Kemp's corner is mostly flat - make use of the mild temperature and your fresh muscles to get a good start. You'll also get away from the masses that way. There is a temptation to slow down here to prevent early exhaustion - this is pretty much what I did. Judging your limits is easier said than done but push yourself a bit on this one. Slow down to just over walking distance once you hit the fly-over across Kemp's Corner and onto Peddar Road until HSBC. You'll hit a huge slope that goes all the way to Haji Ali - go for it on this stretch...just throw yourself down the slope! Get back to a good trot around the Half Marathon turn at Mela restaurant.
Do not stretch yourself too much beyond Haji Ali although it is fairly flat, for coming up nest, is the most notorious stretch of the Mumbai half marathon - going back up Peddar Road has proved to be the end of many a Marathon dream! If you make it past this one, chances are you will complete the race. Keep yourself going - it is a good idea to munch something and have a good drink before you start this stretch but throw away the bottle after having a gulp or two - you'll need all your energy to get past this one!
Sprint down as above once you reach HSBC although it is going to be a rather tired effort as compared to the way up! Once you turn the corner into Chowpatty, you'll find yourself gasping at the strength of the sun - this is also the time that your knees start creaking. Remind yourself that you only at 25% of the route to complete, stick to the left, away from the beach to catch the shadow from the buildigns, and work up a consistent pace. Distract yourself with occasional bites of chocolate and pat yourself on the back everytime you cross a milestone. You may forget to drink enough water - if you look at your arms, you'll find that they have stopped sweating! This can be dagerous - grab a bottle eveytime you see one.
When you turn left from Pizzeria, you should start your build up to the finish. Keep accelrating until Flora Fountain - unless you are completely exhausted, make a dash for the finish line. It does not matter that you are 2547th at the finish line - what matters is that you've done the best you could. It was sad to see so many people walking up to the finish line. Even if you've had a bad race, make something of it with a strong finish. Make sure you stretch well and have lots of water once you are through.
Generally speaking, try to run in a straight line and avoid snaking around the road - this could add a considerable mileage to the total distance. Observe the curve of the road - especially in the Chowpatty and Haji Ali stretches and stick to the "inner line".
Now for some cribs and general impressions about the marathon itself:
Although security concerns were on top of everyone's minds, it was probably not necessary to make the entrance process remind one of getting into a Mumbai local. There was just one narrow gate through which participants had to pass. With so many policemen on duty, surely a few more gates could have been opened.
Refreshments - Water was generally plentiful but there was hardly any snacks except for some biscuits that some good samaritans had brought along. The promised energy drinks were available only at 1-2 places. If keeping costs under control was the reason, surely the organizers could have, instead, done away with the meaningless bunch of cosmetics that came along with the goody bag.
Message bearers and the morning walkers - While running etiquette was generally good, there were these folks who carried huge banners - some with loaded political messages, others with advertisements - often clocking a large cross section of the road. Then there were these groups belonging to some cultural organization or the other, walking in a human chain across the road!
Official clocks - I don't normally wear a watch and it was fortunate that I happened to be carrying one for there were no clocks other than at the start/finish line!
Overall, though, I had a great time training for, and running, the marathon. It enables a sort of bonding with the city in a way that few others events can. It was great to see folks come out to cheer the runners up and hand out stuff to eat and drink. Hats off to you guys!
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Friday, January 16, 2009
The Battle against the Marathon
Half a Marathon thankfully. This is going to be one of the most industrious Sundays of my life! But the trial run...all right, all right a gentle medium jog...went OK. And I just found out that I'd done a couple of KMs more than required...
But race day is always different....
But race day is always different....
Thursday, January 15, 2009
The Season's Best
Pongal announces the passage of Margazhi, my favourite month of the year. With the extended Season grinding to a halt after over 2 months of song and dance, here come the promised awards. Mind you this is based on a sampling of less than 30 events and does not exactly spring from great depths of profundity:
Best Concert - The contenders were Sanjay's performances at the Academy and the NGS, the Malladis at Brahma Gana Sabha and Pantula Rama at the Academy. Sanjay gets it for his Academy Concert thanks to a brilliant Kambhoji. Parts of the concert, including the Kambhoji can be sampled here: http://www.sangeethamshare.org/tvg/SEASON_2008/40.Sanjay_Subramaniam/
Best Alaapana - Sanjay's Kambhoji competes with his own Darbari at the NGS the Malladi's Charukeshi. The Charukeshi bags it for sheer innovation. It had Voleti's stamp all over it - the unexpected halts, the varja prayogas. None of Voleti's own renditions are available but this was pretty close to the maestro's standards.
Best Pallavi - There was surprisingly little to choose from this year. Sanjay chose to the Hindustani way not only in terms of ragas but also revvving up the tempo instead of Trikaalam, Tisram and so on. I heard carely 4-5 Pallavis that had a Tisram. Krishna's Pallavi at Kalarasana was neatly executed but the violinist struggled which means that it was probably not discussed so it gets ruled out on the grounds of medai etiquette. His wife, Sangeetha, rendered a complicated Pallavi very well but fumbled in the korvai. The Malladis Trikaalam/Tisram suite was flawless but the Pallavi had a rather plain rhtyhmic structure. That leaves Pantula Rama's 2 Pallavis at Carnatica's fest and the Academy - the latter was the more complex one with 3 nadais weaved in but loses out because there was no Tisram. The one at Carnatica was plainer on the surface but had very dicey stress points and a Tisram was done - that's the Pallavi of the season then.
Best Tani Avarthanam/Percussion Support - Karaikkudi Mani stole the show with his trademark korvai composition for Hyderabad Brothers at BVB. Trichy Sankaran played some interesting variations for the Malladis at Brahma Gana Sabha as well as TM Krishna at Kalarasana. Patri Sathish Kumar was another contender with two brilliant displays for Sanjay at NGS and Shashank at the Academy. Karaikkudi Mani gets my vote through. A notable mention among Upa-pakkavadyakaras is Bangalore Rajsekhar who really dismissed my apprehensions about this instrument with his fine accompaniment for Sanjay's Academy concert.
Best Upcoming Artiste(s) - I heard a few this season but despite my initial optimism there was nothing that really stood out. Amrutha Venkatesh sang a highly mature Sri Rajagopala (Saveri) at the Academy that gets her my approval. Other youngsters who impressed me were Prasanna Venkataraman and TNS Krishna. On the Mrudangam, little known Jaya Balaji played brilliantly for Prasanna while SJ Arjun Ganesh made one sit and up and take notice for his exquisite patterns for Sandeep Narayan at the Academy. On the violin, I did not hear anything remarkable among the juniors although the general standards were quite high. I particularly missed Nagai Sriram this season while my other favourite, Charumathi Raghuraman, found herself wrong footed by Abhisek Raghuram's Lakshana-defying antics at the Academy.
Most Talked-about Concert - TM Krishna deciding to take up the Bhairavi as the main piece - indeed introducing a Ragam Tanam Varnam for the first time was the concert that rasikas were talking about although for all the wrong reasons. Even those who favoured the idea, largely felt that it was not a particularly successful experiment.
Best Auditorium - The Academy wins hands down in all respects and the sound system really took the game away from the competition. Among others, I found myself spending a lot of time at the festivals Carnatica and Brahma Gana Sabha but the Academy was in a different league. I did not get to visit the Krishna Gana Sabha this year.
Best Canteen - I refuse to cast my vote this year! With Jayaraman out of action and the academy installing a nobody, meal times were full of gloom...
That's pretty much all I have on Music Season 2008. Have to wait until Season 2009 comes around :-(
Best Concert - The contenders were Sanjay's performances at the Academy and the NGS, the Malladis at Brahma Gana Sabha and Pantula Rama at the Academy. Sanjay gets it for his Academy Concert thanks to a brilliant Kambhoji. Parts of the concert, including the Kambhoji can be sampled here: http://www.sangeethamshare.org/tvg/SEASON_2008/40.Sanjay_Subramaniam/
Best Alaapana - Sanjay's Kambhoji competes with his own Darbari at the NGS the Malladi's Charukeshi. The Charukeshi bags it for sheer innovation. It had Voleti's stamp all over it - the unexpected halts, the varja prayogas. None of Voleti's own renditions are available but this was pretty close to the maestro's standards.
Best Pallavi - There was surprisingly little to choose from this year. Sanjay chose to the Hindustani way not only in terms of ragas but also revvving up the tempo instead of Trikaalam, Tisram and so on. I heard carely 4-5 Pallavis that had a Tisram. Krishna's Pallavi at Kalarasana was neatly executed but the violinist struggled which means that it was probably not discussed so it gets ruled out on the grounds of medai etiquette. His wife, Sangeetha, rendered a complicated Pallavi very well but fumbled in the korvai. The Malladis Trikaalam/Tisram suite was flawless but the Pallavi had a rather plain rhtyhmic structure. That leaves Pantula Rama's 2 Pallavis at Carnatica's fest and the Academy - the latter was the more complex one with 3 nadais weaved in but loses out because there was no Tisram. The one at Carnatica was plainer on the surface but had very dicey stress points and a Tisram was done - that's the Pallavi of the season then.
Best Tani Avarthanam/Percussion Support - Karaikkudi Mani stole the show with his trademark korvai composition for Hyderabad Brothers at BVB. Trichy Sankaran played some interesting variations for the Malladis at Brahma Gana Sabha as well as TM Krishna at Kalarasana. Patri Sathish Kumar was another contender with two brilliant displays for Sanjay at NGS and Shashank at the Academy. Karaikkudi Mani gets my vote through. A notable mention among Upa-pakkavadyakaras is Bangalore Rajsekhar who really dismissed my apprehensions about this instrument with his fine accompaniment for Sanjay's Academy concert.
Best Upcoming Artiste(s) - I heard a few this season but despite my initial optimism there was nothing that really stood out. Amrutha Venkatesh sang a highly mature Sri Rajagopala (Saveri) at the Academy that gets her my approval. Other youngsters who impressed me were Prasanna Venkataraman and TNS Krishna. On the Mrudangam, little known Jaya Balaji played brilliantly for Prasanna while SJ Arjun Ganesh made one sit and up and take notice for his exquisite patterns for Sandeep Narayan at the Academy. On the violin, I did not hear anything remarkable among the juniors although the general standards were quite high. I particularly missed Nagai Sriram this season while my other favourite, Charumathi Raghuraman, found herself wrong footed by Abhisek Raghuram's Lakshana-defying antics at the Academy.
Most Talked-about Concert - TM Krishna deciding to take up the Bhairavi as the main piece - indeed introducing a Ragam Tanam Varnam for the first time was the concert that rasikas were talking about although for all the wrong reasons. Even those who favoured the idea, largely felt that it was not a particularly successful experiment.
Best Auditorium - The Academy wins hands down in all respects and the sound system really took the game away from the competition. Among others, I found myself spending a lot of time at the festivals Carnatica and Brahma Gana Sabha but the Academy was in a different league. I did not get to visit the Krishna Gana Sabha this year.
Best Canteen - I refuse to cast my vote this year! With Jayaraman out of action and the academy installing a nobody, meal times were full of gloom...
That's pretty much all I have on Music Season 2008. Have to wait until Season 2009 comes around :-(
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Looking Back at Margazhi 08
A wrap up of noteworthy trends
What was that, again, about the economy? The verdict can be read out now. The economic impact on the season turned out to be much ado about nothing. The Academy started putting up the “Sold Out” sign earlier than ever before. For the Aruna Sairam – TM Krishna double header, rasikas were apparently waiting from 5.30 AM and had to be given coupons for them to even join the Q! The story was pretty much the same at all the major venues – even the Hyderabad Brothers, who aren’t exactly known for their jingli box quotient these days, managed to pull in a full house at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.
The Reluctant Dieter - Until last year, the centre of the season’s attraction was – no, not Sanjay, or Kambhoji – but Jayaraman of Gnanambika and his Vazhaipoo Vadais. Alas, this season has left rasikas hungry and undernourished. Jayaraman’s magical culinary smorgasbord was nowhere to be seen at the Narada Gana Sabha this year. His magical ladels that should’ve been stirring those heavenly sambhars were instead immersed under 6 inches of rainwater, being a victim of a pre-season storm. The insipid fare of the woodlands was the last minute replacement at NGS – their formulaic renditions of vadais and idlis were a far cry from Jayaraman’s dazzling manodharma! The Academy’s aromas were no more inviting – little known VRS caterers are well advised to take voluntary retirement after their dismal performance this year! Post cutchery dining options were thus reduced to Mylapore Fine Arts and Parthasarathi Sabha. After a few encounters with their insipid offerings, I decided in favour of “phalaharam” at the fruit shops on CP Ramaswamy Road or, if the hunger pangs were particularly severe, Koffee World/Pizza Corner further down the road.
The Shine’s Back at the Academy– Carnatic enthusiasts can rarely agree on anything. Even the beloved MS Amma has her share of detractors. Murali of the Hindu can therefore take a well-deserved bow for the rasika community’s’ near-unanimous endorsement of the Academy’s festival. Just 4 years ago, the institution faced the ignominy of having to skip its annual festival and was perhaps the worst example of the politics and bureaucracy that plague the arts scene in the country. In the short span of time since Murali took over the reins, the place has begun to sport its crown with renewed aplomb - it has the best sound system by far, swanky loos and, would you believe it, valet parking! Best of all, the balcony has been given its long overdue overhaul – the seats actually have more leg space than in the stalls! Sure, the system for ticket sales could be improved and its website is still a joke but it is THE PLACE for carnatic music , no question about it.
Failed to take off– Perhaps it is just my evolution as a rasika but it was jarring to note the number of slip-ups, sometime very elementary ones, even in senior level concerts. The worst offenders were those who could not identify the take off point after the tani avarthanam – this happened so many times that I stopped counting - and more often than not, these tended to be sadhu 1 avartha korvais from idam which even I could figure out! One has to wonder how much of the proliferating talent (not to speak of “child prodigies”!) is really ready for the stage.
Season of Bad Cheer – Controversy was the name of the game this Margazhi and things started to get hot under the collar well before the season began. TM Krishna in particular seemed to be getting singled out for a lot of negative attention for his views on a host of subjects including the role of spirituality in music, games musicians play with each other and certain experimentations with the concert format (more on that below). While the forthright and media-savvy Krishna is not unused to controversy, the poor Malladis walked right into a trap laid out for them by a reporter who quizzed them on their limited repertoire of Tamil composition – in response, the Brothers wondered aloud, rather unwisely in retrospect, about the number of Tamil compositions Semmangudi had sung.
Ariyakudi Takes a Shower (2) – It wasn’t so much a shower as a dunk. Some would say, an inundation. Krishna, as expected, was the mastermind behind the operation. We now officially have a ragam-taanam-varnam or RTV, replacing the ragam-tanam-pallavi! If the abbreviation sounds like a European Intercity Express, that’s exactly how many cynics dismissed the whole affair. Bombay Jayashree’s somewhat unimaginative variation on the theme was to fire a volley of tukkadas on the tani avartanam. Her Academy concert featured a 2 minute tani despite a good 20 minutes to spare for the lullabies that followed. Apologists argue that it was done with the consent of the mrudangist. Somehow coercion strikes me as a more appropriate word. Oh, and Sanjay continued his northward juggernaut – Darbari was among the additions to his Hindustani repertoire this year. The man’s appears to be listening to some seriously heavy stuff - the Dagar Brothers peeped out of his taanams every once in a while. Suryaprakash was among the others who went for a “jog” beyond the Vindhyas!
The Margazhi Idol - One of the “finds” of last season was an 80 year old matron by the name of Parasala Ponammal! Such a thing can only happen in Carnatic Music! Carnatica, which can take some of the credit for discovering this gem, pulled out another one this year – Malladi Suri Babu, student of the legendary Voleti Venkateshwarlu and the father of the Malladi Brothers. The Nishadam in the Thodi alaapana was vintage Voleti – without a care for Raga lakshana but backed by a manodharma so powerful as to make a laughing stock of grammar…and there were little traces of his genius in the third generation of his bani – Voleti wafted through the exquisite Charukeshi sung by the Malladi Brothers at Brahma Gana Sabha. Oh, but no recording exists, of the master himself!
Dancing the Blues Away – It is estimated that no more than half a dozen Bharatnatyam dancers actually manage to turn a profit from their trade. For the others, expenditure on costumes, “donations” to sabha secretaries and meeting the hefty demands of accompanists, turns out to be about as astute an investment as a clutch of Sathyam stocks! They should be better off in a few years time if the response of rasikas this season can be seen as a trend – the Academy’s dance festival was almost as much a success as its Music Conference. I had to shell out Rs. 500 bucks to watch Alarmel Valli and was probably lucky to have purchased my ticket in the morning, judging by the bursting auditorium. The story was along similar lines for top draws like Priyadarshini Govind and Malavika Sarukkai in sabhas around the city. Go get ‘em, girls!!
The "Awards" shall follow shortly...
What was that, again, about the economy? The verdict can be read out now. The economic impact on the season turned out to be much ado about nothing. The Academy started putting up the “Sold Out” sign earlier than ever before. For the Aruna Sairam – TM Krishna double header, rasikas were apparently waiting from 5.30 AM and had to be given coupons for them to even join the Q! The story was pretty much the same at all the major venues – even the Hyderabad Brothers, who aren’t exactly known for their jingli box quotient these days, managed to pull in a full house at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.
The Reluctant Dieter - Until last year, the centre of the season’s attraction was – no, not Sanjay, or Kambhoji – but Jayaraman of Gnanambika and his Vazhaipoo Vadais. Alas, this season has left rasikas hungry and undernourished. Jayaraman’s magical culinary smorgasbord was nowhere to be seen at the Narada Gana Sabha this year. His magical ladels that should’ve been stirring those heavenly sambhars were instead immersed under 6 inches of rainwater, being a victim of a pre-season storm. The insipid fare of the woodlands was the last minute replacement at NGS – their formulaic renditions of vadais and idlis were a far cry from Jayaraman’s dazzling manodharma! The Academy’s aromas were no more inviting – little known VRS caterers are well advised to take voluntary retirement after their dismal performance this year! Post cutchery dining options were thus reduced to Mylapore Fine Arts and Parthasarathi Sabha. After a few encounters with their insipid offerings, I decided in favour of “phalaharam” at the fruit shops on CP Ramaswamy Road or, if the hunger pangs were particularly severe, Koffee World/Pizza Corner further down the road.
The Shine’s Back at the Academy– Carnatic enthusiasts can rarely agree on anything. Even the beloved MS Amma has her share of detractors. Murali of the Hindu can therefore take a well-deserved bow for the rasika community’s’ near-unanimous endorsement of the Academy’s festival. Just 4 years ago, the institution faced the ignominy of having to skip its annual festival and was perhaps the worst example of the politics and bureaucracy that plague the arts scene in the country. In the short span of time since Murali took over the reins, the place has begun to sport its crown with renewed aplomb - it has the best sound system by far, swanky loos and, would you believe it, valet parking! Best of all, the balcony has been given its long overdue overhaul – the seats actually have more leg space than in the stalls! Sure, the system for ticket sales could be improved and its website is still a joke but it is THE PLACE for carnatic music , no question about it.
Failed to take off– Perhaps it is just my evolution as a rasika but it was jarring to note the number of slip-ups, sometime very elementary ones, even in senior level concerts. The worst offenders were those who could not identify the take off point after the tani avarthanam – this happened so many times that I stopped counting - and more often than not, these tended to be sadhu 1 avartha korvais from idam which even I could figure out! One has to wonder how much of the proliferating talent (not to speak of “child prodigies”!) is really ready for the stage.
Season of Bad Cheer – Controversy was the name of the game this Margazhi and things started to get hot under the collar well before the season began. TM Krishna in particular seemed to be getting singled out for a lot of negative attention for his views on a host of subjects including the role of spirituality in music, games musicians play with each other and certain experimentations with the concert format (more on that below). While the forthright and media-savvy Krishna is not unused to controversy, the poor Malladis walked right into a trap laid out for them by a reporter who quizzed them on their limited repertoire of Tamil composition – in response, the Brothers wondered aloud, rather unwisely in retrospect, about the number of Tamil compositions Semmangudi had sung.
Ariyakudi Takes a Shower (2) – It wasn’t so much a shower as a dunk. Some would say, an inundation. Krishna, as expected, was the mastermind behind the operation. We now officially have a ragam-taanam-varnam or RTV, replacing the ragam-tanam-pallavi! If the abbreviation sounds like a European Intercity Express, that’s exactly how many cynics dismissed the whole affair. Bombay Jayashree’s somewhat unimaginative variation on the theme was to fire a volley of tukkadas on the tani avartanam. Her Academy concert featured a 2 minute tani despite a good 20 minutes to spare for the lullabies that followed. Apologists argue that it was done with the consent of the mrudangist. Somehow coercion strikes me as a more appropriate word. Oh, and Sanjay continued his northward juggernaut – Darbari was among the additions to his Hindustani repertoire this year. The man’s appears to be listening to some seriously heavy stuff - the Dagar Brothers peeped out of his taanams every once in a while. Suryaprakash was among the others who went for a “jog” beyond the Vindhyas!
The Margazhi Idol - One of the “finds” of last season was an 80 year old matron by the name of Parasala Ponammal! Such a thing can only happen in Carnatic Music! Carnatica, which can take some of the credit for discovering this gem, pulled out another one this year – Malladi Suri Babu, student of the legendary Voleti Venkateshwarlu and the father of the Malladi Brothers. The Nishadam in the Thodi alaapana was vintage Voleti – without a care for Raga lakshana but backed by a manodharma so powerful as to make a laughing stock of grammar…and there were little traces of his genius in the third generation of his bani – Voleti wafted through the exquisite Charukeshi sung by the Malladi Brothers at Brahma Gana Sabha. Oh, but no recording exists, of the master himself!
Dancing the Blues Away – It is estimated that no more than half a dozen Bharatnatyam dancers actually manage to turn a profit from their trade. For the others, expenditure on costumes, “donations” to sabha secretaries and meeting the hefty demands of accompanists, turns out to be about as astute an investment as a clutch of Sathyam stocks! They should be better off in a few years time if the response of rasikas this season can be seen as a trend – the Academy’s dance festival was almost as much a success as its Music Conference. I had to shell out Rs. 500 bucks to watch Alarmel Valli and was probably lucky to have purchased my ticket in the morning, judging by the bursting auditorium. The story was along similar lines for top draws like Priyadarshini Govind and Malavika Sarukkai in sabhas around the city. Go get ‘em, girls!!
The "Awards" shall follow shortly...
Friday, January 02, 2009
A few minutes more...
Arrest that teardrop sneaking out of yon plaintive tune
No silvery spittle shall desecrate my rest!
Hush that verse, plotting against my heart
I need to sleep. Pickle the damned dawn!
Anaesthetize the morning, pimping his bedraggled sun
Pre-determined angles, pre-meditated spin,
Hackneyed inundations of pink blushes -
Stale, pale. The whore’s hungry for my blood!
She wants her high noon. Peroxide blonde.
To loosen her golden tresses, shed her mad light,
Inveigle fevered quatrains, spat through the hot air
And mesmerized notes, climaxing in her flame
But, her brightness will, in a fell swoop, descend
On the wine red evening, for a bloody repast
In the darkness, ere she licks her rosy-fingered dawn!
Yeah, night must come. May I have it now?
Switch off the arc-lights, plunder her gold!
Quote your price, friend. She’s all yours.
Oh, sweet bells preface the fading light. The Word beckons!
Psstt…Is she still around, by any chance?
No silvery spittle shall desecrate my rest!
Hush that verse, plotting against my heart
I need to sleep. Pickle the damned dawn!
Anaesthetize the morning, pimping his bedraggled sun
Pre-determined angles, pre-meditated spin,
Hackneyed inundations of pink blushes -
Stale, pale. The whore’s hungry for my blood!
She wants her high noon. Peroxide blonde.
To loosen her golden tresses, shed her mad light,
Inveigle fevered quatrains, spat through the hot air
And mesmerized notes, climaxing in her flame
But, her brightness will, in a fell swoop, descend
On the wine red evening, for a bloody repast
In the darkness, ere she licks her rosy-fingered dawn!
Yeah, night must come. May I have it now?
Switch off the arc-lights, plunder her gold!
Quote your price, friend. She’s all yours.
Oh, sweet bells preface the fading light. The Word beckons!
Psstt…Is she still around, by any chance?
The Kite Runner
The arrival of the New Year is always a bitter sweet thing. The good cheer is not without traces of regret - targets missed, promises unkept, friends unmet…beyond a certain age, it can also be a gentle reminder of mortality...
But for rasikas of carnatic music, the regret goes a few tons beyond what qualifies as “a trace”. If you’ve been following this blog the reason should be clear enough – the Season has folded up. Worse still, for rasikas outside Chennai, it is time to bid farewell to the Mecca of music.All the sabha hopping, vambu sessions at the canteen and slugfests on the forum (rasikas.org if you’re new to this blog) left very little time for blog updates. So here’s a series of reflections on the Season, starting with my concert of the Season
Sanjay Subrahmanyan, The Music Academy, 29/12/2008
S Varadarajan - Violin
Neyveli Venkatesh - Mrudangam
Bangalore Rajasekhar - Morsing
I showed up at the Academy counter 9 AM that morning and knew even before I asked, that I was too late. I picked up a ticket for the LCD show but struck a minor windfall later in the day when a friend mentioned that he had a spare pass - that too in the lower tier!
It was, thus, with that self-important air of someone unused to privilege that I stretched out to greet the Khanda Ata varnam in Sahana. But before the Pallavi was completed, I was having some second thoughts about the value of my freebie – an equivalent ticket would have cost me Rs. 600. At that point, however, my own valuation would have been a few hundred rupees less. Sanjay’s voice, sandpapered by a couple of dozen concerts and in advanced stages of season-itis, was making a brave attempt to trace the pitch curve of the 28th Mela. The result was, at best, a rough approximation.
By the time he came around with a second helping of Venkatamakhin’s Number 28, concerns about his voice had receded to the background eclipsed, as they were, by a meandering Dharmavathi and a composition that only served to underscore my opinion that the scale’s evolution into a raga is still work in progress.
To appreciate the import of what happened next, one requires a certain background in the unique vocal tradition of Indian classical music. Of diamonds lurking inside ugly, amorphous stones, and shaky vocal foundations supporting imposing raga edifices. The Kambhoji was a celebration of this glorious tradition. Its standard struggled to gain any wind from the acrobatics of Sanjay’s fatigued larynx but he ran and ran – lines and angles, ellipses and eights – and then, with a final, desperate tug, the kite and its bearer were launched into the sky. Mr. Subrahmanyan, who had thus far appeared to be racing towards the ENT clinic down the road, was suddenly transformed into the Sanjaya of legend - surveying the raga’s magnificent landscape with his exalted vision and conveying tales from an unseen, distant world, to an audience gasping at every little twist…until the climax brought them, if only for a moment, to the portals of that rarefied world beyond joy and sorrow…
That pass turned out to be priceless in more ways than one.
Songlist
Evare - Sahana - Khanda Ata - Patnam Subramania Iyer
Kanjadalayadakshi- Kamalamanohari - Adi - Dikshitar - S
Arurvai Angayarkanniye - Dharmavati- Rupakam - Dhandapani Desikar - RNS
Nannu vidachi- Reethigowla-Misra Chapu -Thyagaraka
Rasa vilasa -Kambhoji - Adi - Swati tirunal- (R, S)
RTP - Jaunpuri- Misra Chapu
But for rasikas of carnatic music, the regret goes a few tons beyond what qualifies as “a trace”. If you’ve been following this blog the reason should be clear enough – the Season has folded up. Worse still, for rasikas outside Chennai, it is time to bid farewell to the Mecca of music.All the sabha hopping, vambu sessions at the canteen and slugfests on the forum (rasikas.org if you’re new to this blog) left very little time for blog updates. So here’s a series of reflections on the Season, starting with my concert of the Season
Sanjay Subrahmanyan, The Music Academy, 29/12/2008
S Varadarajan - Violin
Neyveli Venkatesh - Mrudangam
Bangalore Rajasekhar - Morsing
I showed up at the Academy counter 9 AM that morning and knew even before I asked, that I was too late. I picked up a ticket for the LCD show but struck a minor windfall later in the day when a friend mentioned that he had a spare pass - that too in the lower tier!
It was, thus, with that self-important air of someone unused to privilege that I stretched out to greet the Khanda Ata varnam in Sahana. But before the Pallavi was completed, I was having some second thoughts about the value of my freebie – an equivalent ticket would have cost me Rs. 600. At that point, however, my own valuation would have been a few hundred rupees less. Sanjay’s voice, sandpapered by a couple of dozen concerts and in advanced stages of season-itis, was making a brave attempt to trace the pitch curve of the 28th Mela. The result was, at best, a rough approximation.
By the time he came around with a second helping of Venkatamakhin’s Number 28, concerns about his voice had receded to the background eclipsed, as they were, by a meandering Dharmavathi and a composition that only served to underscore my opinion that the scale’s evolution into a raga is still work in progress.
To appreciate the import of what happened next, one requires a certain background in the unique vocal tradition of Indian classical music. Of diamonds lurking inside ugly, amorphous stones, and shaky vocal foundations supporting imposing raga edifices. The Kambhoji was a celebration of this glorious tradition. Its standard struggled to gain any wind from the acrobatics of Sanjay’s fatigued larynx but he ran and ran – lines and angles, ellipses and eights – and then, with a final, desperate tug, the kite and its bearer were launched into the sky. Mr. Subrahmanyan, who had thus far appeared to be racing towards the ENT clinic down the road, was suddenly transformed into the Sanjaya of legend - surveying the raga’s magnificent landscape with his exalted vision and conveying tales from an unseen, distant world, to an audience gasping at every little twist…until the climax brought them, if only for a moment, to the portals of that rarefied world beyond joy and sorrow…
That pass turned out to be priceless in more ways than one.
Songlist
Evare - Sahana - Khanda Ata - Patnam Subramania Iyer
Kanjadalayadakshi- Kamalamanohari - Adi - Dikshitar - S
Arurvai Angayarkanniye - Dharmavati- Rupakam - Dhandapani Desikar - RNS
Nannu vidachi- Reethigowla-Misra Chapu -Thyagaraka
Rasa vilasa -Kambhoji - Adi - Swati tirunal- (R, S)
RTP - Jaunpuri- Misra Chapu
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