With which my prattles during the opener were liberally interspersed...it is an addictive word and I was rather addicted at that time...
No clue who'll lift the cup in the end - Holland or Spain if you care for my opinion - but I'll be lifting mine many, many times until then
Jabulani, Jabulani...it rolls off your tongue like a...Jabulani...Jabulani...
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Honeymoon Travails
It’s been a year…almost…I suppose the memory is now distant enough to look back and laugh at the whole thing….
One of those rare momentsI think it started in Turkey…and after several sallies across the globe – involving an armada of airline deals and super-saver packages to suit all budgets save mine - the best I could muster was “the mountainous wilds across the Eurasian fault line”… “What the hell’s that”, rasped Sun – irritated with my preceding disclosure that our budget was going to stop just short of the Sri Lankan shore…and, by now, familiar with my penchant for imaginative descriptions. The cat, or rather the tiger, was then sheepishly let out of the bag. “Corbett”, I said, hanging up to shield myself from the volley of invectives that was raining upon the overcast Bangalore evening…
Our honeymoon began with a bang, just outside Delhi. Rein in your imagination though –the onomatopoeic reference comes to mind thanks to a virile western UP tractor that attempted to penetrate the posterior of our car. I looked up at the signal we had stopped at – yep, it was still a glowering red, which pretty much summed up my mood too….at least it was, when I stomped across to join issue with the bunch of agriculturists that had outraged the modesty of my bumper. I craned up my neck to square off with an imposing patriarch perched on top of a mountain of sugarcane. He greeted me with a hearty laugh and some earthy pearls of wisdom concerning mountains and molehills. The twirling moustaches around him hinted that his seemingly agreeable disposition was neither shared by his mates, nor likely to last very long. Glowering red was, therefore, revised to something between chicken yellow and pacific green. The latter was also the colour presently assumed by the traffic signal. The tractor chugged on, leaving behind some thoughtful tips, in chaste Haryanvi, for mending my ruptured rear.
My long and difficult relationship with wheels had taught me to account for the occasional moment of highway ignominy in my drive-time estimates. But only in Gajraula - where we pulled in for a latish lunch after a stately cruise through the lush doab – did I realize that I’d placed undue reliance on cyber-trolls passing off Formula-1 fantasies as travel advice…Sun, who’d been gritting her teeth through my hesitant jabs on the gas pedal all morning, preferred to take a different view – the one from the driver’s seat. As she took over the wheel, I couldn’t help wondering if this was a sign of things to come….
Although our average was helped along by the substitution, the dinner buffet was already being folded up at the pompously named “ITC Welcome Heritage Corbett Ramganga Lodge” when we finally staggered in. Notions about a luxurious dacha in the middle of the jungle ought to have been dispelled by the grubby fare at the restaurant but we decided make some allowance for the lateness of the hour. However, once the lights in our “suite” were switched on, the gulf between our expectations from an ITC-branded, 10,000-bucks-a-night deal; and the tube-lit ugliness of our 10x10 shack couldn’t have been more starkly illuminated…
Smiling through it all
I’ve been to a few wildlife sanctuaries around the country but the Corbett experience is hard to beat. We woke up at the crack of dawn and made our way to the forest gates - the headlights sent streams of ochre into the black night, mimicking the attire of the felines we were hoping to see. What we did see that morning were wildcats – scores and scores of them - screeching and clawing at the ticket counter in a curious rite of passage that was mandated by the Park authorities. While I went around mumbling “Suniye jees” to uninterested officials, Sun donned her best Cat-woman costume and jumped into the bestial fray, eventually emerging with a blood- red entry ticket for the afternoon safari clenched in her paw. We headed back to celebrate the success of our six hour hunt with the Ramganga Lodge’s trademark rubber-naans…
A rickety gypsy pulled in at the hotel after lunch. Armed with a pair of binoculars and a birding book, I stood up on the seat, hoping to find something worthy of the National Geographic. Perhaps the Rusty-throated Wren Babbler, last spotted in Assam in 1947 or some such. Something flew past – “Ashy Drongo” I cried, industriously consulting my book. “Common crow” deadpanned Sun. The guide’s antennae went up - “Fair game” he seemed to think, as he gave me a once over. But I wasn’t Japanese and my camera wasn’t worth 5000 dollars – my tip wasn’t going to be worth it. “Kaua hai, sir. Kaua”, he crowed, along with the subject of our discussion – a budding ornithological flight was grounded for good that day.
No Ashy Drongos or Rusty-throated Wren Babblers were discovered in the end, but we did have some luck with the more conventional attractions of the forest. A battalion of Gypsies materialized to give chase to a tiger that had the misfortune of being spotted. At this point, our guide decided that a last ditch effort to shore up his gratuities was in order. A tiresome monologue was duly delivered, peppered with statistics intended to impress upon us, the utter improbability of the sighting and our immense fortune in being witness to the unfolding spectacle. Were it not for the pathetic sight of the harried animal running scared amidst our hoots and whistles, it would appear that he was prattling about a divine manifestation. But even if he had managed to invoke the Holy Ghost, it wouldn’t have altered his financial fortunes – when we were back, I ceremoniously handed over the taped up fiver that I’d fished out of my pocket while he was busy mimicking the crow…
The next morning, it was time to hit the road again - we could have used some rest but weren’t exactly heartbroken to be leaving Corbett. With TM Krishna belting out an energetic Ragam Tanam Pallavi and the after-effects of last night’s bran-beer having settled down, I was tempted to think that things were looking up after all. But that’s when the side-winders began to squeeze…It’s odd how straight and orderly roads can appear on a map, especially when one is being perused while negotiating a Himalayan hairpin bend. Sun had exactly one hill driving experience to her credit and I was…err…busy helping out with the navigation… we just about managed to stick our necks out of the serpentine coil before twilight descended.
Naini lake loomed large in front of us – a brilliant, lustrous emerald surrounded by a charming colonial-style mall….picturesque enough and a deserving honeymoon destination, except when being trampled upon by half of Karol Bagh’s juttis…We ducked into an HPTDC lodge, cutting ourselves loose from the10,000-strong convoy that was besieging the lake. Ol’ Ripley missed this one – hill stations, railway stations…they all look the same in this part of the world.
The move was a wise one – we saved our car a hiding from the tennis-ball-size hailstones that were smashing down on upper Naini….Night fell, as did our hopes of making it to our hotel in Ramgarh, a little beyond Naini – Sun was through with driving for the day, even if it meant bivouacking on Naini’s streets…and all of the town’s petrol seemed to have been consumed in one massive fuel-guzzling orgy…But we had underestimated Dahli’s all pervading influence on the town – in other words, jugaad was at hand! A jerry can was requisitioned (originally by the Army; in this instance, by an enterprising bootlegger). Besides supplying pilfered petrol at a 5x margin, Mr. Pappu was happy to ferry us to Ramgarh for a modest fee of Rs. 2500 – it would have been sacrilegious to attempt a negotiation with this heaven-sent angel…Our luck with folded up dinner tables continued in Ramgarh but the room was a pleasant surprise, considering it was priced at a fourth of our Corbett rip-off…a cozy little wooden structure with charming knick knacks arranged around a bay window that had the best view in the world…too bad, then, that we had to leave the next morning….
By now, we had clocked about 30 hours of road time in 3 days. With just a day left and a drive journey to Delhi ahead of us, the odds of bringing down that average appeared decidedly high. Nevertheless, given the 11:30 PM departure, I was hoping that an early morning start could yet help us salvage a romantic dinner in Delhi from this Himalayan blunder of a honeymoon…
I work as a consultant in the transportation sector. Day in and day out, my job involves taking unwitting investors on slick, power-point trips along the expressways and mega highways of India 2.0. I hereby offer the drive back from Nainital as repentance for opinions and advice handed down from approximately 10,000 feet above a very battered and pot-holed terra firma. The grandiose National Highways Development Program lay exposed across an ignominious single-lane traverse over a non-descript seasonal stream, as an Anaconda of frustration built up on either side. It took 2 hours for us to slither across.
I work as a consultant in the transportation sector. Day in and day out, my job involves taking unwitting investors on slick, power-point trips along the expressways and mega highways of India 2.0. I hereby offer the drive back from Nainital as repentance for opinions and advice handed down from approximately 10,000 feet above a very battered and pot-holed terra firma. The grandiose National Highways Development Program lay exposed across an ignominious single-lane traverse over a non-descript seasonal stream, as an Anaconda of frustration built up on either side. It took 2 hours for us to slither across.
Dinner was, unsurprisingly, reduced to a snappy bite at the airport Mcdonald’s outlet. We were lucky that plan B involved nothing worse than a downgraded meal ticket. Racing down through Ghaziabad, across the south-eastern flank of the capital, Sun had to use every trick in the driving manual and I, my considerable experience of mooching around South Delhi’s by-lanes, so that we could slam the brakes at the airport Avis counter before the boarding gates closed.
Stressed out...A fierce loo was screaming into the night as we stepped out. I’m a Delhi boy – I’d seen it before…but Sun, after 12 hours of driving across the hot plains, was swept up by its gale force, like a fledgling caught in a storm. But we’d made it and shelter was at hand – nestled in her window seat, my beleaguered partner flipped through the in-flight magazine, finally settling on the alluring waters of some tropical paradise. She cast a slow, longing finger across the page before giving herself up to my shoulder, and elusive cerulean dreams….we had come some distance but there was a long journey yet ahead…
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
The effacement of self-effacement
.
Ali Akbar Khan DK Pattammal
Palghat Raghu Gangubai Hangal The odd thing I discovered when I was putting together this belated tribute was how few photos of these giants were available online. Oustanding musicians all, phenomenally gifted - learned vidwans apart from being virtuoso performers....But each was addicted to a perversion called art. And afflicted with the disease of decency.
Perhaps that's why we ignored their passage. And wept, instead, for the simple-minded melodies of our friendly neighbourhood, drug-popping, child-loving superstar...
Entharo Mahanubhavulu Antariki Vandanamu
.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Aurangabad
Golden wheat and black soil.
The road from Nasik is a little unsure about its identity – switching back and forth between silky concrete smothered across four luxurious lanes; and coarse, unbuttered strips tumbling over the black soil…
Ah yes! The black soil! Heaving with the pangs of her golden dreams…scrounging up intermittent stands of yellow wheat, amid the more common Deccan staples of cotton and the lesser cereals. But they don’t quite have the shimmering allure of the break baskets farther north - the assurance of their Punjabi cousins is pointedly absent and their droopy shoulders seem to betray a sense of shame at having sprung from such a dusky mother.
Teetering at the very edge of the Deccan, not far south from the psychological divide of the Vindhyas, Aurangabad has reason to feel confused and disaffected. Its fractured highways, like its incongruous explosions of wheat, speak of dark ambition, suffering a tortured sleep beneath the dark earth.
The road from Nasik is a little unsure about its identity – switching back and forth between silky concrete smothered across four luxurious lanes; and coarse, unbuttered strips tumbling over the black soil…
Ah yes! The black soil! Heaving with the pangs of her golden dreams…scrounging up intermittent stands of yellow wheat, amid the more common Deccan staples of cotton and the lesser cereals. But they don’t quite have the shimmering allure of the break baskets farther north - the assurance of their Punjabi cousins is pointedly absent and their droopy shoulders seem to betray a sense of shame at having sprung from such a dusky mother.
Teetering at the very edge of the Deccan, not far south from the psychological divide of the Vindhyas, Aurangabad has reason to feel confused and disaffected. Its fractured highways, like its incongruous explosions of wheat, speak of dark ambition, suffering a tortured sleep beneath the dark earth.
Daulatabad
Devagiri is an impressive enough spectacle. The hour long hike to the top of the fort affords an enchanting view. And, a certain sense of power. Looking down at the featureless dustbowl stretching all the way to the horizon, one can be forgiven for presuming to be on top of the world… Look around your feet, though – it’s the black soil at work…
This is the twenty first century, thank heavens - bus loads of picnickers can have a sobering effect on delusionary joyrides. It’s a grand fort, sure - just one of many, many others in the sub-continent. A fine site for a regional satrap of some standing…one might even grant a dalliance or two with events of historical significance…
Devagiri is an impressive enough spectacle. The hour long hike to the top of the fort affords an enchanting view. And, a certain sense of power. Looking down at the featureless dustbowl stretching all the way to the horizon, one can be forgiven for presuming to be on top of the world… Look around your feet, though – it’s the black soil at work…
This is the twenty first century, thank heavens - bus loads of picnickers can have a sobering effect on delusionary joyrides. It’s a grand fort, sure - just one of many, many others in the sub-continent. A fine site for a regional satrap of some standing…one might even grant a dalliance or two with events of historical significance…
Daulatabad Fort
But the seat of an empire? Perhaps that ludicrous thought was the handiwork of a bunch of Devas, moping about on the Giri, with a pitcher of Soma-rasa and a few Yugas at their disposal. Divine or otherwise, the suggestion found a susceptible ear in Muhammad Bin Tughlaq. Reeling from a particularly severe currency crisis, the Sultan was desperate for a big idea to arrest his rapid descent into the wrong side of history’s judgment. Thus began the long slog from Delhi to the hopefully re-named Daulatabad, and the inevitable return, allegedly halving in each direction, the population of the capital. The exercise only hastened what its architect sought to prevent – Muhammad bin Tughlaq is gleefully remembered by many an Indian schoolboy, as a case study in administrative ineptitude.
In Ruins
The luckless Mohammed wasn’t the first to be fooled by the apparent merits of the hillock. Ramachandra, the Seuna king, ruling from Devagiri circa 1300 AD, might have allowed himself a chuckle or two at sight of Alludin Khilji’s army advancing on his hill fortress. Presently, a bunch of benjis huff and puff their way up the same slopes, turning tail eventually - a sight that the Seuna king was no doubt used to. As it turned out, however, the king was summarily disabused of his notions about the fort’s impregnability – Allaudin’s men were presumably made of sterner stuff than my erstwhile fellow travelers.
The sight of Ramachandra groveling, cap in hand, to receive his Moslem conqueror and a long list of humiliating terms was, by now, a familiar one. The Crescent’s rambunctious march, cutting a swathe across this continent and the other, swallowed, inside of a century, all that was thitherto coveted by would-be hegemons and some more...At the beginning of the millennium, it was India’s turn to submit, as Mahmud of Ghazni sacked the north - the magnitude of the event should have been amply evident to the college of sub-continental royalty – rarely short of numbers and at that time, particularly well stocked. But our Maharajas were, as ever, busy plotting discursive Ashwamedhas to defraud their neighbours of an extra village or two, quite unaware of the mother of all Chakravarthy-quests, in whose wake their collective military might must have seemed about as intimidating as a group of mallet-wielding ladies at the Croquet club.
Ellora
Had the Moslems arrived about a century earlier, there might have been a semblance of a fight. The shifting sands of the Indian political landscape had settled around three overlapping ellipses, rather like an inverted Adidas trefoil, with its base pivoted around the Doab region - that much sought after stamp of sub-continental supremacy. Between 750 and 900 AD, the Palas from the East, the Rashtrakutas from the South and the Pratiharas from the West, formed a triumvirate of powers locked in a stalemated equilibrium that was to prove the last imperial pretension of the Indo-Aryans, at least in the Aryan heartland.
Ellora - Stairway to Heaven?
If a winner were to be rummaged from the debris of their internecine feuding, the Rashtrakutas have, by far, the strongest claim. Dantidurga and Krishna I can, between them, take credit for laying the foundation of the oil-soaked, mustachioed and utterly un-sexy construct that is vilified by Bollywood as the “Madrasi”. Flicking up their loincloths in a manner that has probably not changed for centuries, these Rajnis and Chirus ran their horses around much of what lies south of the Vindhyas, directly absorbing into their domain, most of Kantaka and Maharashtra, whilst extracting a string of tributes and allegiances from the rest of their fellow-southies. However, it was Govinda III who humbled the Gujju Pratiharas and the Bong Palas to boldly go where no lungi had gone before – to Kannauj, the prevailing seat of supreme power in Aryavarta.
Aurangabad, in the process, had yet another quaff of imperial ambrosia although, at a good 500 Kms from the Rashtrakutan capital of Manyakheta (Malkhed), it can hardly be said to have been at the centre of action. Yet, the rugged tumble of hills at Ellora, just outside the city, must have exuded some unexplained magnetism – perhaps of the sort that transmutes black soil into golden wheat – that caused Dantidurga to impregnate its ponderous, unsightly belly with the seeds of the splendorous Kailasanatha temple. Malkhed, meanwhile, shoulders the ignominy of being relegated to the footnotes of history and is presently an anonymous town on the Bombay Bangalore rail route. Trains make a perfunctory two minute stop – not out of deference to its former glory – but to ferry concrete from the surrounding factories to the rest of the country. Alas, of the considerable portions of building material that were surely supplied to the town during its salad days, not a trace remains.
Kailasanatha
The Kailasa temple, and its Vedic triumphalism, shouts loudly into the ear of a more sober past. A few meters south of the complex, the Buddhist temples yield to their Hindu counterparts, in a poignant architectural acknowledgement of accession. A gentler and more gradual social metamorphosis than the schismatic events that were to follow – and wrought by less violent means than rampaging hordes: Nevertheless, the “golden age” of the Guptas and the formidable intellectual evangelism of Shankara had finally taken their toll on Buddhism even if India’s spiritual eclecticism permitted layers of history to remain side by side rather than one above the other.
Buddhism Eclipsed
Ajanta
Further north of Ellora, the caves at Ajantha are more staunchly Buddhist, reflecting the religious proclivities of an earlier era. The paintings at Ajanta are, however, just another example of the denominational diversity of the Indic religions and represent two distinct effusions of enthusiasm for cave art. The earliest paintings were literally among the earliest brushstrokes on India’s historical canvas, dating back to 200 BC, when the prevailing ethos of Hinayana forbade the representation of the Buddha’s person. Form eventually eclipsed substance - the less austere Mahayana school was better equipped to get across to a population that was used to 33 crore gods – and a million Buddhas smiled. Purists might have been unimpressed but the result was quite satisfactory as far as Indian art is concerned.
Ajantha
The caves weren’t intended to be a museum – the purpose of the Viharas was education rather than exhibition. But the imagination of the Bhikshus (monks) who lived therein was evidently unhampered by their rather prosaic purpose. Nor was the rocky medium any hindrance to lucidity of expression. If masterpieces like the Dying Princes - one of the finest surviving paintings - are any indication, Ajanta may just have been the Louvre of its time…
Shedding light on the past
Aurangzeb
That such worldwide acclaim eluded the caves was, perhaps, a blessing in disguise. Any less obscure a location might have stripped Ajanta of the few treasures that remain…for, the man who took the final bow on Aurangabad’s historical stage – and from whom the town got its name - was not exactly known for his patronage of the arts.
Aurangzeb’s tomb, north of Aurangabad, is a modest one that sits uneasily on his reputation as one of India’s mightiest rulers. There is no reason to believe that the Emperor himself - a frugal man by all accounts - would have found fault with his mortuary arrangements. Nonetheless, he is unlikely to have died a contented man. Obsessed with adding real estate to an empire that was poised to attain Mauryan proportions, the last of the great Mughals, spent over 20 years pitting his iron will, in vain, against the unyielding boulders of the Deccan. After an exhausting game of musical chairs, involving the hill-forts along the Konkan coast, with the nimble footed Marathas, Aurangzeb finally rested at Khuldabad - a mere 3 KMs from the splendor of the Kailasa temple but a good thousand years down the road in terms of historical milestones. Islamic supremacy in India, which was already breathing down the country’s neck when the Kailasa shot towards the heavens, was on its last legs.
The minaret inside the fort
Republic Day
While India would soon have a new master, Aurangabad had finally run through her stock of heroes…Yet, there is still the occasional brush with pomp and circumstance, such as on Republic Day. Atop the Daulatabad fort, a gaggle of junior functionaries wait for the District Magistrate to unfurl the National Standard. The wife calls in – Saheb ain’t showing up…a ripple of shrugged shoulders later, the Flag is unceremoniously installed where…very briefly… India was once ruled from...
It is dawn - a flush of indignation descends upon the black earth below. Aurangabad. A district HQ. A glowering town that grits her teeth…and bides her time…
Monday, February 16, 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,
Besmirching the blue sky with her pink blushes -
Stale, pale. The whore’s hungry for my blood!
She wants her high noon. Peroxide blonde.
To loosen her flaxen braids, shed her specious light,
Inveigle fevered couplets, spat through the hot air
And mesmerized notes, climaxing in her flame
But her gleaming blades 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,
Besmirching the blue sky with her pink blushes -
Stale, pale. The whore’s hungry for my blood!
She wants her high noon. Peroxide blonde.
To loosen her flaxen braids, shed her specious light,
Inveigle fevered couplets, spat through the hot air
And mesmerized notes, climaxing in her flame
But her gleaming blades 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?
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Getting past 21 Kms
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!
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!
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
Sunday, December 14, 2008
The Rough Guide to Sabha Hopping
The name can be a little misleading. Banish any illusions about courtly chambers graced by blue-blooded noblemen. Let’s turn our attention, instead, to stinking loos, rats scurrying about (I’d include some rasikas in this category), malodorous manifestations of dysfunctional digestive systems (what do you expect with all those paruppu vadas consumed in the canteen ;-), air-conditioners operating in the “Siberia” mode… I could go on and on…but before you log out of the Season, let me assure you that the music is well worth all those assaults on your senses and more (making allowance for the occasional concert in which that term is applicable to the music itself!). Here, then, is the round up:
The Big Four
The Music Academy – The venue for carnatic music, period. There are complaints galore of which, the atrocious ergonomics of balcony seats tops the list but things have improved since Murali of the Hindu took over in 2006. Besides, for the sheer sense of occasion, the Academy simply can’t be beaten. Parking is plentiful in St Ebba’s grounds across the road, the Bose sound system is top drawer, loos are almost sparkling by sabha standards and while the caterer changes on a yearly basis, the food is consistent in its ability to pull rasikas out of concerts for a few minutes (especially during the tani!). Book your tickets well in advance for evening concerts and try not to miss the lec dems in the morning. Nothing like watching those mamas have a go at each other even if you can’t understand a word of the debate!
Narada Gana Sabha – The parking’s almost nonexistent, the loos stink to the high heavens and the audio system is as ancient as the music it plays! If you’re wondering why the Sabha’s is ranks next only to the Academy, recall that old pearl of retailing wisdom – location, location, location! That, and a certain gastronomic phenomenon that goes by the name of Gnanambika. Jayaraman, at the helm of affairs, is a wizard at sevais and vazhappoo vadais – alas, the dining experience would be even more enjoyable if you didn’t have a Q forming behind your chair even before you move on to rasam. I’ve actually heard some mamas shout in frustration when their “target” delays their endless wait by asking for an extra helping of rice! Use the washroom in your hotel before you start out for the Sabha. If you must bring your car, park it along the side streets of Alwarpet or CIT Colony.
Krishna Gana Sabha – Easily the most aesthetically designed sabha and an audio system to match, KGS would give the Academy a good run for its money were it not for its relatively isolated location and usurious prices. The limited menu at the canteen does not help matters and driving down will almost certainly cost you the varnam and the Ganesha sthuthi, unless you show up an hour in advance. Nevertheless, judged strictly on musical parameters, the sabha puts up a good show. The dais seats are a bargain if you can hold the lotus position for 2.5 hours. The venue is also among the most prestigious for dance.
Mylapore Fine Arts Centre – The MFAC brings up the big 4’s rear, faring dismally on almost all counts – no parking, get-me-outta-here loos, an Ahuja speaker system handed down from the Quit India movement…oh, and if you’re wondering why everyone’s walking around like they have something stuffed up their backsides, try sitting on those chairs for a minute or two. What props up this relic of a Sabha is the patronage of perhaps the most musically erudite audience in the world (yes, it beats the Academy hands down – not too many Kanjeevarams and kadukkans flashed around here) and the delectable offerings at the canteen. Concerts start at 6 and usually spill over beyond the official closing time of 9 - a welcome change from 2-2.5 hour norm at most other venues. Try not to miss TN Seshagopalan’s magnum opus and the New year feast.
Other Sabhas in the Mylapore Area
Brahma Gana Sabha – My favorite after the big 4. The auditorium at Sivagami Pettachi is cozy, the seats are comfortable, the loos acceptable and the acoustics, spot on. You just might be able to squeeze in your car into the parking lot if you show up 10 minutes ahead. The food is nothing to write home about but you could always drop into MFAC or NGS next door.
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan – Another fine second tier venue, charmingly located amidst the bustle of the Kapali temple. Except for the loo and limitations of parking, there isn‘t much to complain about. There’s no canteen either but you have enough options around the temple including Saravana Bhavan and the delightful Karpagambal Mess. Early season concerts have a great ambience with packed halls and artistes eager to put their best foot forward.
Raga Sudha Hall, started by the late Shri SV Krishnan, is set in a shaded lane abutting the Nageshwara Rao park. This no-nonsense sabha is known for its knowledgeable audiences, emphasis on high musical values and excellent audio arrangements. No parking but there’s ample space outside, a solitary urinal and plastic chairs. No catering
The Shastri Hall, located next to the Mylapore Club, hosts a number of sabhas during the course of the season and boasts of a hoary tradition. As above, expect highly cultured audiences and no frills. A public latrine abutting the compound wall is the only option for answering calls of nature. There’s no parking and trying to find one in the busy Luz area can be dis”concerting” in more ways than one!
The PS High School’s auditorium, opposite the Ramakrishna Mission is shared by a few sabhas at various stages of the season. Ample parking is a plus point and the audio system is passable but the wooden benches can cause serious damage to the posterior. No Catering.
Swamy’s Hall is a recent addition to the season and perhaps the only major sabha in Mandaveli. A nice compact auditorium with a sensitive audio system. Carnatica run their season event here which means you can expect highbrow selections including veterans like Parasala Ponammal, RK Srikanthan and Tanjore Sankara Iyer. Plastic chairs, no catering and no parking inside the sabha premises.
Parthsarathi Swami Sabha – The sabha claims to be the oldest in Chennai with a history that purportedly goes back over a 100 years. That, however, does not excuse the shabby arrangements at Vidya Bharathi, near “Yellow Pages”, off Royapettah High Road. While their festival is not exactly a feast for the ears, certain other senses are better catered to – the legendary Arusuvai Natarajan usually runs the canteen and that is reason enough to fit in a cutcheri or two at this venue!
Jaya TV @ Chettinad Vidyasharam (MRC Nagar) – It’s too late for this post to make any difference now – Jaya TV’s annual margazhi festival is into its last couple of days. Just as well, since “free entry” and the television angle lends this series a distinctly kitschy air. The thematic content and an inane Q&A session only make matters worse. Besides you can always catch this on Jaya TV (and on YouTube!) from the 15th onwards.
Sabhas in T Nagar and Around
Vani Mahal – Located at a busy intersection on the GN Chetty Road, the sabha had a makeover a few years ago. While that has resulted in the replacement of crumbling straw chairs with upholstered comfort, improvements to the audio system have been limited to concealing it with wooden paneling! Worse still, the soundman is suspected to suffer from hearing problems which means that things can get a little noisy when TM Krishna unleashes his lightning neravals! The loos are tolerable and a few cars can be accommodated – but considering its location, you are well advised to hail an auto.
Kalarasana – Perched on top the Raja Muthiah complex overlooking the Gemini flyover, Ranee Seethai Hall is located bang in the centre of Chennai. Seats are cramped and the loo is strictly for emergencies but parking is ample and the speakers do a decent job. Best of all, there is a certain electricity in the atmosphere – attendance is usually close to 100% and concerts invariably end with a standing ovation. I’ve heard some of Sanjay’s best concerts at this venue.
Indian Fine Arts – Mr. Srinivasan, who runs the sabha, is one of the characters of the Chennai’s music circle. Egged on by mischievous musicians eager for his patronage, this gent habitually regales the audience with a musical gem or two in the middle of his post concert speech. His magical voice will stand in splendid isolation until genetic engineers figure out how to impregnate crows with donkey-seed. The sabha secretary’s shambolic ritual is reflected in the sabha’s operations. The IFAS’ proximity (located off Habibullah Road, T Nagar) to my residence was the only reason for my venturing into its premises over the last few years. Since that is no longer the case, I propose to give it a wide berth this time.
Bharat Kalachar – Count on YGP Mami to come up with succinct summaries of concerts in her inimitable manner. When you see a musician abruptly abandoning fancy flights of manodharma, you know that Mami’s auto is about to rattle in! The open air ambience works very well for 4 PM concerts with the main piece often benefiting from the magical colors of twilight. Pity, though, about the plastic chairs, constrained views of the stage and urinals designed for 10 year olds! Having said that, the overall experience remains an extremely pleasant one. Do get your car along – parking is available in plenty at the Padma Seshadri’s T Nagar premises
Nungambakkam Cultural Academy – Conduct their festival at the Karnataka school auditorium in Habibullah Road. A bit of an also-ran among the T Nagar Sabhas - gets very little attention from the media. Concerts start at 7.15, tend to be short and often lackadaisical. Don’t forget your shawl - for the sleepy folks at the sabha will definitely forget to turn down the AC. Seats are OK although the speakers can act up. There’s some parking and a functional canteen. Stay away from the loo.
Mudra – An young sabha that looked to be on the right track until it moved its venue to the Ramakrishna Mission School’s “Infosys Hall” which, despite the fancy name, is nothing but a humdrum assembly hall fitted out with plastic chairs and makeshift boom boxes. It is a massive hall and the stage is vertically challenged which means that the sabha experience is strictly aural from the 5th row onwards. The canteen gamely carries on, well after the last concert is over so you don’t have to head back to your room with nothing, except Bhairavi, in your stomach!
Kamaraj Arangam - This sprawling auditorium on Mount Road has started hosting the "Chennaiyil Thiruvaiyyaru" series which is also aired in one of the TV channels. Dark and dingy, its musty smell in only a slight improvement over the reeking washrooms. Mount Mani Iyer held fort at the canteen last year but the except for the odd driver, no one seemed to take any interest in it.
Let me conclude with a couple of useful links.
Ramkumar (Ram) has put together painstakingly compiled season schedule which can be accessed at: http://ramsabode.wordpress.com/concerts-in-chennai/ Nalli now has serious competition! Ram is also an upcoming mrudangist and is learning from Sangitha Kalanidhi Sri Umayalapuram Sivaraman. His season schedule can also be found on his blog.
R Bharathwaj has put together a very useful map of sabhas in Chennai which you can find here:
http://maps.google.com.au/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=110523945678119131655.00043dc23fe1a497231cf&ll=13.039241,80.260105&spn=0.011351,0.017338&z=16&iwloc=00043dc278b834e4ee34b
Other resources
www.kuctheribuzz.com for season schedules, vambu and more
www.carnatica.net – Run by Sowmya and Shashikiran – also has a schedule
www.chennaionline.com - Fairly good coverage of the season including a schedule
E-paper editions of the Times and the New Indian Express put out daily schedules as does the Hindu - but you need to pay for a subscription
The Big Four
The Music Academy – The venue for carnatic music, period. There are complaints galore of which, the atrocious ergonomics of balcony seats tops the list but things have improved since Murali of the Hindu took over in 2006. Besides, for the sheer sense of occasion, the Academy simply can’t be beaten. Parking is plentiful in St Ebba’s grounds across the road, the Bose sound system is top drawer, loos are almost sparkling by sabha standards and while the caterer changes on a yearly basis, the food is consistent in its ability to pull rasikas out of concerts for a few minutes (especially during the tani!). Book your tickets well in advance for evening concerts and try not to miss the lec dems in the morning. Nothing like watching those mamas have a go at each other even if you can’t understand a word of the debate!
Narada Gana Sabha – The parking’s almost nonexistent, the loos stink to the high heavens and the audio system is as ancient as the music it plays! If you’re wondering why the Sabha’s is ranks next only to the Academy, recall that old pearl of retailing wisdom – location, location, location! That, and a certain gastronomic phenomenon that goes by the name of Gnanambika. Jayaraman, at the helm of affairs, is a wizard at sevais and vazhappoo vadais – alas, the dining experience would be even more enjoyable if you didn’t have a Q forming behind your chair even before you move on to rasam. I’ve actually heard some mamas shout in frustration when their “target” delays their endless wait by asking for an extra helping of rice! Use the washroom in your hotel before you start out for the Sabha. If you must bring your car, park it along the side streets of Alwarpet or CIT Colony.
Krishna Gana Sabha – Easily the most aesthetically designed sabha and an audio system to match, KGS would give the Academy a good run for its money were it not for its relatively isolated location and usurious prices. The limited menu at the canteen does not help matters and driving down will almost certainly cost you the varnam and the Ganesha sthuthi, unless you show up an hour in advance. Nevertheless, judged strictly on musical parameters, the sabha puts up a good show. The dais seats are a bargain if you can hold the lotus position for 2.5 hours. The venue is also among the most prestigious for dance.
Mylapore Fine Arts Centre – The MFAC brings up the big 4’s rear, faring dismally on almost all counts – no parking, get-me-outta-here loos, an Ahuja speaker system handed down from the Quit India movement…oh, and if you’re wondering why everyone’s walking around like they have something stuffed up their backsides, try sitting on those chairs for a minute or two. What props up this relic of a Sabha is the patronage of perhaps the most musically erudite audience in the world (yes, it beats the Academy hands down – not too many Kanjeevarams and kadukkans flashed around here) and the delectable offerings at the canteen. Concerts start at 6 and usually spill over beyond the official closing time of 9 - a welcome change from 2-2.5 hour norm at most other venues. Try not to miss TN Seshagopalan’s magnum opus and the New year feast.
Other Sabhas in the Mylapore Area
Brahma Gana Sabha – My favorite after the big 4. The auditorium at Sivagami Pettachi is cozy, the seats are comfortable, the loos acceptable and the acoustics, spot on. You just might be able to squeeze in your car into the parking lot if you show up 10 minutes ahead. The food is nothing to write home about but you could always drop into MFAC or NGS next door.
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan – Another fine second tier venue, charmingly located amidst the bustle of the Kapali temple. Except for the loo and limitations of parking, there isn‘t much to complain about. There’s no canteen either but you have enough options around the temple including Saravana Bhavan and the delightful Karpagambal Mess. Early season concerts have a great ambience with packed halls and artistes eager to put their best foot forward.
Raga Sudha Hall, started by the late Shri SV Krishnan, is set in a shaded lane abutting the Nageshwara Rao park. This no-nonsense sabha is known for its knowledgeable audiences, emphasis on high musical values and excellent audio arrangements. No parking but there’s ample space outside, a solitary urinal and plastic chairs. No catering
The Shastri Hall, located next to the Mylapore Club, hosts a number of sabhas during the course of the season and boasts of a hoary tradition. As above, expect highly cultured audiences and no frills. A public latrine abutting the compound wall is the only option for answering calls of nature. There’s no parking and trying to find one in the busy Luz area can be dis”concerting” in more ways than one!
The PS High School’s auditorium, opposite the Ramakrishna Mission is shared by a few sabhas at various stages of the season. Ample parking is a plus point and the audio system is passable but the wooden benches can cause serious damage to the posterior. No Catering.
Swamy’s Hall is a recent addition to the season and perhaps the only major sabha in Mandaveli. A nice compact auditorium with a sensitive audio system. Carnatica run their season event here which means you can expect highbrow selections including veterans like Parasala Ponammal, RK Srikanthan and Tanjore Sankara Iyer. Plastic chairs, no catering and no parking inside the sabha premises.
Parthsarathi Swami Sabha – The sabha claims to be the oldest in Chennai with a history that purportedly goes back over a 100 years. That, however, does not excuse the shabby arrangements at Vidya Bharathi, near “Yellow Pages”, off Royapettah High Road. While their festival is not exactly a feast for the ears, certain other senses are better catered to – the legendary Arusuvai Natarajan usually runs the canteen and that is reason enough to fit in a cutcheri or two at this venue!
Jaya TV @ Chettinad Vidyasharam (MRC Nagar) – It’s too late for this post to make any difference now – Jaya TV’s annual margazhi festival is into its last couple of days. Just as well, since “free entry” and the television angle lends this series a distinctly kitschy air. The thematic content and an inane Q&A session only make matters worse. Besides you can always catch this on Jaya TV (and on YouTube!) from the 15th onwards.
Sabhas in T Nagar and Around
Vani Mahal – Located at a busy intersection on the GN Chetty Road, the sabha had a makeover a few years ago. While that has resulted in the replacement of crumbling straw chairs with upholstered comfort, improvements to the audio system have been limited to concealing it with wooden paneling! Worse still, the soundman is suspected to suffer from hearing problems which means that things can get a little noisy when TM Krishna unleashes his lightning neravals! The loos are tolerable and a few cars can be accommodated – but considering its location, you are well advised to hail an auto.
Kalarasana – Perched on top the Raja Muthiah complex overlooking the Gemini flyover, Ranee Seethai Hall is located bang in the centre of Chennai. Seats are cramped and the loo is strictly for emergencies but parking is ample and the speakers do a decent job. Best of all, there is a certain electricity in the atmosphere – attendance is usually close to 100% and concerts invariably end with a standing ovation. I’ve heard some of Sanjay’s best concerts at this venue.
Indian Fine Arts – Mr. Srinivasan, who runs the sabha, is one of the characters of the Chennai’s music circle. Egged on by mischievous musicians eager for his patronage, this gent habitually regales the audience with a musical gem or two in the middle of his post concert speech. His magical voice will stand in splendid isolation until genetic engineers figure out how to impregnate crows with donkey-seed. The sabha secretary’s shambolic ritual is reflected in the sabha’s operations. The IFAS’ proximity (located off Habibullah Road, T Nagar) to my residence was the only reason for my venturing into its premises over the last few years. Since that is no longer the case, I propose to give it a wide berth this time.
Bharat Kalachar – Count on YGP Mami to come up with succinct summaries of concerts in her inimitable manner. When you see a musician abruptly abandoning fancy flights of manodharma, you know that Mami’s auto is about to rattle in! The open air ambience works very well for 4 PM concerts with the main piece often benefiting from the magical colors of twilight. Pity, though, about the plastic chairs, constrained views of the stage and urinals designed for 10 year olds! Having said that, the overall experience remains an extremely pleasant one. Do get your car along – parking is available in plenty at the Padma Seshadri’s T Nagar premises
Nungambakkam Cultural Academy – Conduct their festival at the Karnataka school auditorium in Habibullah Road. A bit of an also-ran among the T Nagar Sabhas - gets very little attention from the media. Concerts start at 7.15, tend to be short and often lackadaisical. Don’t forget your shawl - for the sleepy folks at the sabha will definitely forget to turn down the AC. Seats are OK although the speakers can act up. There’s some parking and a functional canteen. Stay away from the loo.
Mudra – An young sabha that looked to be on the right track until it moved its venue to the Ramakrishna Mission School’s “Infosys Hall” which, despite the fancy name, is nothing but a humdrum assembly hall fitted out with plastic chairs and makeshift boom boxes. It is a massive hall and the stage is vertically challenged which means that the sabha experience is strictly aural from the 5th row onwards. The canteen gamely carries on, well after the last concert is over so you don’t have to head back to your room with nothing, except Bhairavi, in your stomach!
Kamaraj Arangam - This sprawling auditorium on Mount Road has started hosting the "Chennaiyil Thiruvaiyyaru" series which is also aired in one of the TV channels. Dark and dingy, its musty smell in only a slight improvement over the reeking washrooms. Mount Mani Iyer held fort at the canteen last year but the except for the odd driver, no one seemed to take any interest in it.
Let me conclude with a couple of useful links.
Ramkumar (Ram) has put together painstakingly compiled season schedule which can be accessed at: http://ramsabode.wordpress.com/concerts-in-chennai/ Nalli now has serious competition! Ram is also an upcoming mrudangist and is learning from Sangitha Kalanidhi Sri Umayalapuram Sivaraman. His season schedule can also be found on his blog.
R Bharathwaj has put together a very useful map of sabhas in Chennai which you can find here:
http://maps.google.com.au/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=110523945678119131655.00043dc23fe1a497231cf&ll=13.039241,80.260105&spn=0.011351,0.017338&z=16&iwloc=00043dc278b834e4ee34b
Other resources
www.kuctheribuzz.com for season schedules, vambu and more
www.carnatica.net – Run by Sowmya and Shashikiran – also has a schedule
www.chennaionline.com - Fairly good coverage of the season including a schedule
E-paper editions of the Times and the New Indian Express put out daily schedules as does the Hindu - but you need to pay for a subscription
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Seasonal Shelter
We’re talking about 5000 performances – and even that’s a very rough, and very conservative, estimate. If your quest for information on the season finds you here, that says a few things about 1) your season IQ and 2) your browsing skills. In other words, you need help! Worry not – you are in safe hands. And hand me that bludgeon, will ya…
Accommodation
If you still haven’t figured out where you are going to stay, the standard recommendation would be to cancel your ticket. However, there is hope this year thanks to the recession and cash-strapped NRIs who’ve decided that they will not collectively descend on the Woodlands after all.
The jury’s still out on the impact of the downturn on the Season – your correspondent, for instance, has found himself wrong footed by the unprecedented demand for the Academy’s season pass. This means, among other things, that he will be spending his mornings sweating it out in long lines instead of munching vadas at the canteen and smirking at the unwashed masses queuing up for a ticket! Notwithstanding the Academy’s fortunes, the word is that hotels around Mylapore have a few rooms to spare. Remember that this is rarer than a sighting of Halley’s comet, and scoot to your nearest travel portal. Before you do, this is what you need to know:
- Rooms don’t come cheaper than at the Woodlands, unless you plan to stretch yourself out on the Marina. For 1K a night you get a fairly clean single room besides varied, if increasingly insipid, fare. It’s also where the buzz is at – you are likely to catch a Kambhoji wafting in from the next room and hear season regulars tearing sundry artistes to pieces at the restaurant. Assuming that, like me, this is your kind of scene, visit http://www.newwoodlands.com/
- Alternatives in a slightly higher budget range include the Marris, which is right opposite the Academy and Nilgiri’s Nest further down RK Salai. Both offer slightly higher levels of comfort (read blankets in place of jamakalams and fewer cockroaches) and the Marris serves the best non-home-cooked meals in Chennai. Arunachala Inn (apparently owned by Thalaivar – thee won and wonly Rajanikanth) on Kodambakkam High Road is a little removed from the centre of action but offers good access to sabhas in T Nagar including Bharat Kalachar (PSBB), Vani Mahal and Indian Fine Arts. Expect to pay about 2-2.5K per night.
- In the 3 star category, the Savera, has the best location right next to the Woodlands. The food is nothing to write home about and the rooms are beginning to show their age but there’s a nice swimming pool and a well quipped health club. Another conveniently located place is Ramada Raj Park on TTK road, sandwiched between the Academy and the Narada Gana Sabha. In case your preferred sabhas happen to be Vani Mahal, Nungambakkam Cultural Academy or Bharat Kalachar, the Quality Inn Shabari and the Benzz Park on Thirumalai Road, T Nagar should save you some auto hire charges…and extend your life by a few years. Other options include GRT Grand Days in T Nagar and the Ambassador Pallava in Egmore both of which are well established but entail commutes of between 3 and 5 Kms to the major sabhas. Hotels in this range will set you back by about 4-6K per night.
- If you are one of those shrewd operators who sold early this year and would like to reward yourself with a five star season, you will be happy to hear that Chennai has an almost obscene variety of choices to offer. The Park Sheraton (Alwarpet) and The Chola (RK Salai) top the location sweepstakes but the latter, once the pride of Chennai, hangs on to its 5 star status by a slender thread. An interesting new option is the Raintree on St Mary’s road whose rooftop restaurant offers a fine view of the city. You can also let your hair down at the Havana although the last time I checked, the DJ didn’t have Akshaya Linga Vibho among his tracks! The Courtyard Marriot, the Accord Metropolitan (or whatever name this chameleon of a hotel presently goes by) and the Park (not to be confused with the Park Sheraton) are lined up on, or just behind, the Mount Road which means they are good options for those wishing to split their time between sabhas in Mylapore and T Nagar. The Taj group’s two properties – the Connemara and the Coromandel - are slightly more distant and need be considered only if other options are unavailable. 5 stars will relieve you of between 5 and 10K per night for standard rooms. And oh, let me know when I can drop in for the latest market buzz…
- Non hotel options are available as well. Keep an eye on the Hindu’s property classifieds for paying guest or short term rental options. You can also check out kutcheribuzz.com which has a few accommodation listings. Rates range from 10-15K per month for an air-conditioned room with TV and attached bath to 30-40K for a furnished 2 BHK but if your trip is shorter than 2 weeks, you might find the process of settling down and making domestic arrangements a little too tiresome. Smaller guest house chains such as Chennai Inn and Good Counsel also have good rooms at reasonable but you would probably need a contact to get across.
- Reservation at most hotels can be done through popular travel portals like yatra.com, makemytrip.com etc.
More to follow…
Sunday, December 07, 2008
Season's Greetings
It’s here again - that brief window when Chennai takes a break from its duties as an equatorial industrial powerhouse - wipes off the sweat and grime and sits back to enjoy a well deserved shower of the classical arts. This will also be my first Season as a tourist after a while (the first was in 1999) which augurs well for the safety of my existing concert record (49, clocked last Season).
I hope not to turn this into another platitudinous compilation of overused facts, figures and anecdotes. That can be found here:
http://vijaysarma.blogspot.com/2006/05/seasonal-melodies-chennais-margazhi.html
And here: http://vijaysarma.blogspot.com/2008/01/seasoned-tourist.html
This “curtain raiser”, if you will, is my summary of trends and talking points. The calendar of South Indian arts can be broadly split into two somewhat unequal phases – 30 days in December, and the rest of the year - which leaves us with the beginning and the end of the Season as the natural stock taking points. Accountants may find that less than satisfactory but then accounting and music have little in common, Sanjay Subrahmanyan notwithstanding. What follows, then, is fodder that has sustained rasikas over the hungry part of the year and which, in all likelihood, will determine the flavours of Season 2008. For reasons entirely related to the limitations of my knowledge, the emphasis will be on music rather than dance.
The media revolution - Oh dear! Did I just break my promise not to sound hackneyed? It’s true, if trite, that the media’s been sniffing around the heels of Carnatic music for quite a while. The internet, in particular, has been a happy hunting ground for those, like me, who can’t walk..err sing/play…the talk. www.rasikas.org, into whose treasures I will be frequently dipping during this post, is one such greenhouse of ideas and opinions. But why does the media deserve special attention in 2008? For two reasons – this: http://sanjaysub.blogspot.com/ and this: http://margazhiraagam.com/ Enough said.
Coming out of the closet – No, we’re not talking about the homosexual musician although I wouldn’t entirely rule out that possibility considering how “straight” carnatic music appears to be, in a world where the Arts attract a disproportionate representation of queer people. The skeletons tumbling out have more to do with spiritual questions and the place of Bhakti in carnatic music. At least two prominent musicians, TM Krishna and Bombay Jayashree, have voiced their ambivalence on the subject this year, while stopping short of confessing their own religious leanings. A flavor of the angst this has generated amongst the rasika community, which is still very conservative, and still predominantly grey haired (oops… that would now include me!) can be gauged from this discussion:
http://rasikas.org/topic/7472/tm-krishnas-preposterous-response-at-nov-fest/
Dance, of course, has always been a little naughtier and while Rukmini Devi Arundale’s cleanliness drive swept the Devadasis away, it was not long before Chandralekhas and Mallika Sarabhais fondled the Art back towards its original Kamasutra-friendly shape. With articulate convent-educated dancers taking over the stage along with their middle class sensibilities, Bharatanatyam’s hide and seek with sex continues. These cycles of prurience and prudishness are, however, united in distancing themselves from religion which in the present context is , at best, of peripheral interest to the secular-liberal ethos of the ruling dance divas. Religious compositions are gradually giving way to secular choreography woven around topics that have more currency. Thus, we have little dance-skits on issues such as women’s empowerment, world peace and the environment once the technical rigors of the Varnam etc. have been negotiated.
Gen Next waits forever – The nineties were uncertain times for carnatic music. The greats from the 50s and 60s were either dead and gone, or well past their prime. TV had, by then, become a staple feature in middle class homes and the cable further strengthened the nation’s collective bondage to the medium.
100 bucks for a month. 100 bucks for a 2 hour concert. Make your choice. Who’s singing? Huh? That crusty old fool who can’t hold a note, or keep his veshti up, for half a second?…Shhh…Saas Bahu are here… Oh, and I hear certain whispers coming in through the ether – the internet they are calling it….
It’s this dismal backdrop that makes carnatic music’s comeback so remarkable. From the jam packed Academy that greeted the debuts of Sudha Raghunathan and Bombay Jayashree, circa 1990, to TM Krishna’s high fives after his cracker of a concert at the same venue in 2000, by the turn of the century Gen X had hijacked carnatic music. The turning point was almost certainly grand show put up by the Youth Association of Carnatic Music, on the eve of the new century – the baton had finally passed.
But that’s where it’s been stuck for a while. Ranjani Gayathri and the Malladis have graduated to the evening slot at the Academy – that great herald of an artiste’s “arrival” - but that’s pretty much it. Schedules are chock full of artistes in their thirties and early forties, few of whom look like exiting in the near future.
It will take more than the inevitability of age for fledgling artistes to find a foothold and the wait is likely to prove too long for most. Youngsters need to be good - damn good - to have any hope of making it to the top. However, Season 08 promises to one in which the juniors sound a warning bell or two in the general direction of the established pecking order. Sikkil Gurucharan, who’s gamely fought it out in the sub-senior slot for 5 years, is one such. The there is Prasanna Venkataraman, whose quicksilver progress is likely to make short work of his tenure in the B-list. TNS Krishna, Balamurali Jr., Abhishek Raghuram, Amrutha Murali, Amritha Venkatesh – afternoons at the Academy this year will be flowing over with talent that is not far removed from the top of the heap.
Unlike 99-2000, 2008 won’t be a watershed year – but it will be one in which the boys play with the men.
Ariyakudi takes a shower – The Ariyakudi format is often credited with moving Carnatic Music out of the stuffiness of royal palaces and into backyards of the unwashed masses. The classic 2.5 hour cutchery starting with a varnam, 2 main pieces, sundry fillers and tukkadas, perfected by the undisputed king of carnatic consumer behavior - Ariyakkudi Ramanuja Iyengar - has been the staple diet of rasikas for close to a century now. Much like the fare on offer at Sabha Canteens, the menu is beginning to go beyond beyond idlis and vadas.
At one end of the spectrum, the tukkadas are pecking away at weightier compositions – women artistes, in particular, are threatening to question the very meaning of the term - on occasion, the tukkada section actually eclipses the preceding items in terms of airtime!
At the other end, artistes are re-inventing the concert format, breathing life into increasingly rare pieces such as Ragam Tanam Pallavis and experimenting with 4 hour concerts. A good part of Sanjay Subrahmanyan’s much written about tour of the US (http://rasikas.org/topic/6748/sanjay-at-south-india-fine-arts-san-francisco-bay-area/ for example) , was spent transcribing the beauty of Hindustani ragas into the carnatic idiom, extending his already well established reputation for handling rare ragas. TM Krishna is another artiste who does not shy away from standing convention on its head – often kicking off with a heavy piece in a major raga and plonking down a varnam in the middle, with an alaapana and swaras added for good measure!
Others are busy building bridges between the classical and the popular. Charulatha Mani’s concerts on film songs set to carnatic ragas are a massive rage with mamas and mamis who’s jumped on to the carnatic bandwagon in the evening of their lives while Anil Srinivasan and Sikkil Gurucharan’s joint venture is a more intellectual one that seeks to fuse western harmonics with Indian melodies.
I will look forward to more of the unexpected in Season 08 and try not to yawn when I hear yet another old-timer bemoan the demise of Ariyakudi’s beleaguered format.
I was hoping to throw in some tips for Season tourists in the unlikely hope that some of them have landed up on my blog for guidance but I think I will save that for another post.
I hope not to turn this into another platitudinous compilation of overused facts, figures and anecdotes. That can be found here:
http://vijaysarma.blogspot.com/2006/05/seasonal-melodies-chennais-margazhi.html
And here: http://vijaysarma.blogspot.com/2008/01/seasoned-tourist.html
This “curtain raiser”, if you will, is my summary of trends and talking points. The calendar of South Indian arts can be broadly split into two somewhat unequal phases – 30 days in December, and the rest of the year - which leaves us with the beginning and the end of the Season as the natural stock taking points. Accountants may find that less than satisfactory but then accounting and music have little in common, Sanjay Subrahmanyan notwithstanding. What follows, then, is fodder that has sustained rasikas over the hungry part of the year and which, in all likelihood, will determine the flavours of Season 2008. For reasons entirely related to the limitations of my knowledge, the emphasis will be on music rather than dance.
The media revolution - Oh dear! Did I just break my promise not to sound hackneyed? It’s true, if trite, that the media’s been sniffing around the heels of Carnatic music for quite a while. The internet, in particular, has been a happy hunting ground for those, like me, who can’t walk..err sing/play…the talk. www.rasikas.org, into whose treasures I will be frequently dipping during this post, is one such greenhouse of ideas and opinions. But why does the media deserve special attention in 2008? For two reasons – this: http://sanjaysub.blogspot.com/ and this: http://margazhiraagam.com/ Enough said.
Coming out of the closet – No, we’re not talking about the homosexual musician although I wouldn’t entirely rule out that possibility considering how “straight” carnatic music appears to be, in a world where the Arts attract a disproportionate representation of queer people. The skeletons tumbling out have more to do with spiritual questions and the place of Bhakti in carnatic music. At least two prominent musicians, TM Krishna and Bombay Jayashree, have voiced their ambivalence on the subject this year, while stopping short of confessing their own religious leanings. A flavor of the angst this has generated amongst the rasika community, which is still very conservative, and still predominantly grey haired (oops… that would now include me!) can be gauged from this discussion:
http://rasikas.org/topic/7472/tm-krishnas-preposterous-response-at-nov-fest/
Dance, of course, has always been a little naughtier and while Rukmini Devi Arundale’s cleanliness drive swept the Devadasis away, it was not long before Chandralekhas and Mallika Sarabhais fondled the Art back towards its original Kamasutra-friendly shape. With articulate convent-educated dancers taking over the stage along with their middle class sensibilities, Bharatanatyam’s hide and seek with sex continues. These cycles of prurience and prudishness are, however, united in distancing themselves from religion which in the present context is , at best, of peripheral interest to the secular-liberal ethos of the ruling dance divas. Religious compositions are gradually giving way to secular choreography woven around topics that have more currency. Thus, we have little dance-skits on issues such as women’s empowerment, world peace and the environment once the technical rigors of the Varnam etc. have been negotiated.
Gen Next waits forever – The nineties were uncertain times for carnatic music. The greats from the 50s and 60s were either dead and gone, or well past their prime. TV had, by then, become a staple feature in middle class homes and the cable further strengthened the nation’s collective bondage to the medium.
100 bucks for a month. 100 bucks for a 2 hour concert. Make your choice. Who’s singing? Huh? That crusty old fool who can’t hold a note, or keep his veshti up, for half a second?…Shhh…Saas Bahu are here… Oh, and I hear certain whispers coming in through the ether – the internet they are calling it….
It’s this dismal backdrop that makes carnatic music’s comeback so remarkable. From the jam packed Academy that greeted the debuts of Sudha Raghunathan and Bombay Jayashree, circa 1990, to TM Krishna’s high fives after his cracker of a concert at the same venue in 2000, by the turn of the century Gen X had hijacked carnatic music. The turning point was almost certainly grand show put up by the Youth Association of Carnatic Music, on the eve of the new century – the baton had finally passed.
But that’s where it’s been stuck for a while. Ranjani Gayathri and the Malladis have graduated to the evening slot at the Academy – that great herald of an artiste’s “arrival” - but that’s pretty much it. Schedules are chock full of artistes in their thirties and early forties, few of whom look like exiting in the near future.
It will take more than the inevitability of age for fledgling artistes to find a foothold and the wait is likely to prove too long for most. Youngsters need to be good - damn good - to have any hope of making it to the top. However, Season 08 promises to one in which the juniors sound a warning bell or two in the general direction of the established pecking order. Sikkil Gurucharan, who’s gamely fought it out in the sub-senior slot for 5 years, is one such. The there is Prasanna Venkataraman, whose quicksilver progress is likely to make short work of his tenure in the B-list. TNS Krishna, Balamurali Jr., Abhishek Raghuram, Amrutha Murali, Amritha Venkatesh – afternoons at the Academy this year will be flowing over with talent that is not far removed from the top of the heap.
Unlike 99-2000, 2008 won’t be a watershed year – but it will be one in which the boys play with the men.
Ariyakudi takes a shower – The Ariyakudi format is often credited with moving Carnatic Music out of the stuffiness of royal palaces and into backyards of the unwashed masses. The classic 2.5 hour cutchery starting with a varnam, 2 main pieces, sundry fillers and tukkadas, perfected by the undisputed king of carnatic consumer behavior - Ariyakkudi Ramanuja Iyengar - has been the staple diet of rasikas for close to a century now. Much like the fare on offer at Sabha Canteens, the menu is beginning to go beyond beyond idlis and vadas.
At one end of the spectrum, the tukkadas are pecking away at weightier compositions – women artistes, in particular, are threatening to question the very meaning of the term - on occasion, the tukkada section actually eclipses the preceding items in terms of airtime!
At the other end, artistes are re-inventing the concert format, breathing life into increasingly rare pieces such as Ragam Tanam Pallavis and experimenting with 4 hour concerts. A good part of Sanjay Subrahmanyan’s much written about tour of the US (http://rasikas.org/topic/6748/sanjay-at-south-india-fine-arts-san-francisco-bay-area/ for example) , was spent transcribing the beauty of Hindustani ragas into the carnatic idiom, extending his already well established reputation for handling rare ragas. TM Krishna is another artiste who does not shy away from standing convention on its head – often kicking off with a heavy piece in a major raga and plonking down a varnam in the middle, with an alaapana and swaras added for good measure!
Others are busy building bridges between the classical and the popular. Charulatha Mani’s concerts on film songs set to carnatic ragas are a massive rage with mamas and mamis who’s jumped on to the carnatic bandwagon in the evening of their lives while Anil Srinivasan and Sikkil Gurucharan’s joint venture is a more intellectual one that seeks to fuse western harmonics with Indian melodies.
I will look forward to more of the unexpected in Season 08 and try not to yawn when I hear yet another old-timer bemoan the demise of Ariyakudi’s beleaguered format.
I was hoping to throw in some tips for Season tourists in the unlikely hope that some of them have landed up on my blog for guidance but I think I will save that for another post.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Thinking through a siege
Nothing like a bunch of terrorists to send our chattering classes scurrying for their armchairs and dispensing forth, a broad spectrum of political antibiotics. Which is all very well - our constitutional duty as enlightened citizens and so on and so forth…except that many, if not a majority, of the proposed solutions are really no more useful than the kneejerk reactions of our mantries and netas…
A forwarded mail I received yesterday – from a senior corporate honcho, no less – was one such gem, suggesting that the army take over the country, besides throwing in some subtle insinuations of a communal character (an MNC forum calls for a certain degree of sanitization – his views would probably stink a whole lot more in the living room). And then, my housing society suddenly decides that taxis can’t enter the compound – outraged glares met me when I wanted to know how this would solve the problem.
I hate to sound to sound like a fatalist, and I suppose such wisdom comes cheap when one is not personally affected, but we have opted for a way of life, and are confronted by a uniquely restrictive set of (insert any combination of the social sciences here) circumstances, that makes us particularly vulnerable.
Solutions are available for sure…and these range from “merely” invoking draconian laws to full scale military arrangements. But while a general direction away from liberty is probably inescapable, every-time we get excited about throwing out our politicians or replicating the Chinese/Singaporean model, let us pause and consider the oceans of tinpots and bananas that surround these islands of excellence, if indeed they deserve to be glorified as such…
And while ranting against the emptiness of clichés like “Mumbai’s spirit is intact” and the like, let us also concede: Dammit! It’s true!! We’ve done rather well for a country that has absolutely no parallels in terms of size, diversity or, despite our recent economic success, absolute magnitude of poverty. Here we are, 60 + years after Winston Churchill infamously wrote us off – still whole, still largely true to the spirit of our founding fathers and yeah, still unbroken in spirit – if that’s a cliché, it is one worth repeating a million times.
This is not the first terror attack in the country and, sadly, it is unlikely be the last. Which is not to suggest that things cannot be improved – they can and they should. But in a considered, objective and unimpassioned manner. And when we evaluate our options going forward, we certainly ought to think about where we’ve gone wrong.
But, perhaps, also about what we’ve got right.
A forwarded mail I received yesterday – from a senior corporate honcho, no less – was one such gem, suggesting that the army take over the country, besides throwing in some subtle insinuations of a communal character (an MNC forum calls for a certain degree of sanitization – his views would probably stink a whole lot more in the living room). And then, my housing society suddenly decides that taxis can’t enter the compound – outraged glares met me when I wanted to know how this would solve the problem.
I hate to sound to sound like a fatalist, and I suppose such wisdom comes cheap when one is not personally affected, but we have opted for a way of life, and are confronted by a uniquely restrictive set of (insert any combination of the social sciences here) circumstances, that makes us particularly vulnerable.
Solutions are available for sure…and these range from “merely” invoking draconian laws to full scale military arrangements. But while a general direction away from liberty is probably inescapable, every-time we get excited about throwing out our politicians or replicating the Chinese/Singaporean model, let us pause and consider the oceans of tinpots and bananas that surround these islands of excellence, if indeed they deserve to be glorified as such…
And while ranting against the emptiness of clichés like “Mumbai’s spirit is intact” and the like, let us also concede: Dammit! It’s true!! We’ve done rather well for a country that has absolutely no parallels in terms of size, diversity or, despite our recent economic success, absolute magnitude of poverty. Here we are, 60 + years after Winston Churchill infamously wrote us off – still whole, still largely true to the spirit of our founding fathers and yeah, still unbroken in spirit – if that’s a cliché, it is one worth repeating a million times.
This is not the first terror attack in the country and, sadly, it is unlikely be the last. Which is not to suggest that things cannot be improved – they can and they should. But in a considered, objective and unimpassioned manner. And when we evaluate our options going forward, we certainly ought to think about where we’ve gone wrong.
But, perhaps, also about what we’ve got right.
Thursday, November 06, 2008
Bharat Ratna for Pandit Bhimsen Joshi
Salutations to the Maestro! An honour for the The Bharat Ratna award.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Star-crossed
The scheming sun and his devious light
Have rolled up their blueprint for starless skies.
But now the moon struts across this cloudy night,
Hogging the lustre of a million flashing smiles
One of which, on a clearer, truer eve
Out of the blue, in my garden fell.
And in a wink that took my breath away,
Eloped with a bucket down my well
The fathoms that finite sight forbids,
Blinded night, inflamed, plumbed to light.
And the phantoms that nibble on dawn’s wits,
Entranced by the darkness, slept tight.
Deep inside the tunnel’s tortuous course,
Tired teardrops, poured away their shine,
And rivers of silver, bled on Heaven's shores,
Scattering the smoldering scars of stellar design:
Bedazzled eyes, transfixed in the transposed bowl,
Flickering dreams, dying in the Milky Way,
Defiant embers in the maws of a blackhole -
Together, yet light years away!
Have rolled up their blueprint for starless skies.
But now the moon struts across this cloudy night,
Hogging the lustre of a million flashing smiles
One of which, on a clearer, truer eve
Out of the blue, in my garden fell.
And in a wink that took my breath away,
Eloped with a bucket down my well
The fathoms that finite sight forbids,
Blinded night, inflamed, plumbed to light.
And the phantoms that nibble on dawn’s wits,
Entranced by the darkness, slept tight.
Deep inside the tunnel’s tortuous course,
Tired teardrops, poured away their shine,
And rivers of silver, bled on Heaven's shores,
Scattering the smoldering scars of stellar design:
Bedazzled eyes, transfixed in the transposed bowl,
Flickering dreams, dying in the Milky Way,
Defiant embers in the maws of a blackhole -
Together, yet light years away!
Monday, September 01, 2008
Ashwini Bhide Deshpande at St. Xavier's, Mumbai
Malhar was the theme of the evening and while the rain gods seemed to be busy humming some distant vivadi melodies, Ashwini's garland of malhars was a journey through their whimsical moods....The armada of sound, steered by an array of tilted tanpuras, launched into a plaintive, vilambit chants of the cracked earth hungry for a union with the clouds, gathering pace until the drut brought out the unchecked passion of the Kosi running wild.
She raged on through Megh Malhar, which benefited symbolically, from the claps and flashes provided by the audience. Reconciliation with her devastated subjects was then offered through a string of lighter Ghazals, Kajris and finally, a Jhankaar.
It was clear as day when the concert began - an unambigous blue was still pouring through the Saracenic Arches of the Jesuit auditorium, when it ended. But while I was distracted by the Malhars in the middle, a furious storm must surely have raged...
Gaud malhar - Vilambit, Madhya Laya Drut (cannot remember the bandishes)
Megh Malhar - Chota Khayal - Alaap and Drut ("Shyam Rang")
Lighter pieces including a Ghazal, a Kajri and a Jhankaar.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
The Tree
She drops by my window again, this morning,
Her constant bough heavy with my daily fruit
And her viral roots, deep entrenched
In every nook of my blessed bower.
Her giant parasol spares me, the roving
Attentions of rain and shine. My evening’s rest,
Eternally indebted, to the billowing breeze on which
She ushers me, towards night’s dreamy embrace.
“Ah, my dear, did you see where I went tonight?
A little sapling, under your kindly shade,
Curled around my curious finger and Lo!
Burst into bloom, leapt towards the sky!
She swung me high into the heavens and showed me
The brightness that lay beyond your dreary domain.
How your jealous leaves had denied me
The burning wetness of clouds torched by lightning!
And then, in that headlong vault of passion,
In the mad luminance of the midnight sun, I saw:
That the scheming creeper to which I clung,
Was squeezing the life out of your trusting trunk.
That soon, my deranged dance would fell your head -
Your burdened canopy, my tottering stage -
And we’d both head crashing to our deaths -
You and I, my dear, on our beloved bower.”
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Snapshots from Bangladesh - 1
The Ubiquitous Rickshaws
A close second to the Bengal Tiger as the National Mascot!
Sadarghat, Dhaka
Where the grey clouds meet the grey waters
And hug each other in a tearful union
But there’s no emotion in their embrace
It’s just a ritual in the business
Of keeping Hope afloat on a thousand boats
Boatman in Sadarghat
What was that, again, about the economy being rudderless?
The Old
The New
The Old and the New!
Bangladesh's 4 Coloured Map
Silver for rivers and clouds
Brown for the earth and her people
Green for endless paddy fields and the visitor’s envy
And black, for the incongruous stripe of progress slicing through the land
The Tea Resort, Srimongol-Sylhet
The frog-filled swimming pool, the metal TT table and tennis courts with speed breakers add to the charms of this gloriously dilapidated retreat nestled among the tea estates in Srimongol-Sylhet
The Tea Resort wakes up…
...and that's saying something!!
The frog-filled swimming pool, the metal TT table and tennis courts with speed breakers add to the charms of this gloriously dilapidated retreat nestled among the tea estates in Srimongol-Sylhet
The Tea Resort wakes up…
...and that's saying something!!
Cha Khaben Dada?
With some lemon, if you like...
A Railroad through the Rainforest
Lawachhara National Park, Srimongol
Actually a pineapply shot from the top...
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