The Cream of Society

The earth has been rotating ceaselessly. It has also been hurtling through space, escaping and yet drawn in by the sun, moving at over a thousand miles an hour. Sitting at our desks, on the topsoil, we have been relatively still, and our cells have oxidized a little more, ageing as we breathe.

I'm listening to Carnatic music. I wonder how many who pause in their routines wish they could appreciate it, know its mathematics, at least to shake their heads and pat their laps at a kacheri.

I remember an evening in Bombay two years ago, on Marine Drive. Couples had gathered by the sea, innumerable, all the way from Chowpatty's gleam of sand in the purpleness to Nariman Point's lighted windows, holding hands in the one place where Bombay allows you to be. And the noxious waters of the sea were before me, splashing and retreating, music for their warm, whispery trysts.

Andy, ~M and I were sitting there, three gentlemen on a Sunday evening. We'd watched a play, a montage of narratives and tableaus drawn from Wallace Stevens's Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, and Andy was enraptured when a bird-like flute was woven into a sequence of dark, shifting, stage-movements, sa-ri-ga-ri-ga-ri-sa, sa-ri-ga-ri-ga-ri-sa, sa-ri-ga-ri-ga-ri-sa...

And so the conversation after the play turned to music. And Andy proceeded to sing Thyagaraja's Endaro Mahaanubhavulu. I might have heard the song somewhere before, but by the time I was in my teens I'd cynically dismissed most devotional songs I 'd come across as scatty arrays of 'I salute X and I salute Y and Z too and I salute...'.

Now Andy had an interesting interpretation while he translated the lyrics, and it's something that I took a liking to and would like to build on. When Thyagaraja begins with a flourish of vandanamus (salutations), perhaps folding his hands to the people in court- all lined up in gold, the who's who, the men who decide, the best and most majestic, the page 3, the product-endorsers- he's actually being sarky. They would in all probability have assumed, picking their teeth, that they were the mahaanubhaavulu (great people) starring in the show. No, my glittering brothers, millions have preceded you, among them those who sought and shared and left behind libraries of work for others to explore, students and masters of the craft I'm learning, whom I humbly acknowledge now. What is an army of thousands , a treasury of millions and more, if you do not care for the nuances of a raga, for perfection of rhythm, intricacy of expression? What is the gilt-edged life worth, if you do not have the heart of a lotus, and kindness and wisdom? What’s a world cup that brings in record revenue if you're blind to the immense grace of well-played cover drives, the loops and drifting dips of a pure, slow left-arm spinner? That is paramaananda, those are the true mahaanubhaavulu.

And while I'm listening to M.S Subbalakshmi's rendition, a voice paid to chime with excitement pops up: 'Congratulations! You have won two free ipod nanos...' I frantically look for the pop-up to close it, cut it off, but it prevails. It's from the website that allows me to play the song in streaming, and is a sponsor's noise.