Imported Scales

This is a slightly longer story, and has just appeared (more or less as below) in BITSAA's Sandpaper, Spring 2009 (http://sandpaper.bitsaa.org/htm_files/scales.htm).

Hey Sally,

Re: your last email, I hope the rain’s eased up a little there. Not fun when you’ve a few weeks off and have to spend them indoors. Here, on the other hand, the sun’s been blazing away as usual. (That used to be the title of a column by an ex-cricketer in the newspapers here: ‘Blazing Away’. My dad would read aloud from it in the mornings, chuckling at its indiscriminate use of quotation marks ... but of course cricket means even less to you than it does to me.) Remember all that stuff we read about Orientialism and the Othering of the Tropics and what not? I’m no Orientalist or Other-er of the Tropics, but I’ll swear I’ve been spending most of my time sitting with a tumbler of lemon juice, the fan overhead whirring at full speed, staring out at the coconut trees, hot, green and still. It’s only in the evenings, when the sea breeze sets in, that even the trees begin to perk up a little, swaying ever so gently and looking a softer shade of green.

In fact, I’ve been doing so little that my parents and that over-serious brother of mine have begun to get irritated. So the other day, when I told them I had to buy something for a friend at uni, they were more than thrilled to let me have the old Fiat with the driver (or ‘Premier Padmini’, to be exact. Those were the days when we had joint ventures, and foreign makes being manufactured locally under licence, and what not. How fares the Fiat in Italy today? We must ask Fabio when term begins). Not that I couldn’t have taken a bus or an auto-rickshaw, but it just made things easier. Anyway, off I went to the conservative heart of our southern metropolis, a locality named after the peacock but where the only birds you see these days are crows – as in the rest of the city. It’s a place that’s so familiar to me, and yet I struggle to paint a picture of it for you. Suffice it to say that I was on a street densely packed with shops, pavement stalls, the odd temple, and crowds of shoppers – there are still crowds of them despite the competition from the new, kitschy malls sprouting up elsewhere in the city.

The shop was on the ground floor of a two- or three-storey building. I pushed the door open, and felt a familiar sense of relief as I realised there was air-conditioning. I had hardly taken two steps when a severe looking man dressed in white cast a pointed glance at my feet. For a moment I was confused. But of course! I went back outside, a little annoyed that I hadn’t expected it. On one side of the door was a pile of footwear. I shook my sandals off and went back in.

Wood was everywhere: wooden panels, wooden shelves, wooden instruments. There were two connected rooms, one serving as a sort of ante-chamber, where the silver-haired inspector of feet was polishing things with a rag. To my right ran a long windowpane, tinted to keep the sun out, against which were suspended gleaming wooden violins, veenas and flutes. Elsewhere rows of mridangams and tamburas rested against the wall.

‘Vaango,’ said a smooth, assured voice. Its owner sat on a comfortable swivel chair, tucked into an alcove, behind a sturdy desk. On the desk were various bills and a large calculator with the display tilted slightly upwards. The wall behind the chair was covered by garlanded portraits and a glass-fronted display with golden figurines against a backdrop of red felt cloth. A series of bulbs framed the display, lighting up one after another to create the effect of a single light orbiting the figurines.

‘Tell me, Madam. What can I do for you?’

He was generously built, a terylene shirt doing its best to envelop his frame. Large glasses covered his face, and his hair was plastered back with coconut oil (how do I know? You can smell coconut oil from a mile away, especially if you’ve used it everyday for half your life).

‘Sruti-petti...’ I began.

‘What type, Madam? Electronic, manual, with taalam or without taalam – we have all the varieties. Starting from round about thousand rupees to about five thousand.’

I felt a bit out of my depth already. Somehow or other, I had not had the customary Carnatic music classes as a young girl, and although I was no stranger to it in general terms, I sensed that I was about to be pinned down a bit on something I was quite hazy on. An early declaration of my status as a novice seemed to me the best strategy.

‘What do you suggest? You see, it’s for a friend, not for me. I don’t know very much about these things. But I’d like to look at something quite basic to start with.’

‘No problem, Madam. Lakshmi, show Madam the electronic variety sruti-pettis,’ he said, addressing one of the sales assistants behind a long wooden counter – although this seemed a bit superfluous, considering that she had been listening attentively to our conversation. She began to scan the shelves behind her. I stood awkwardly, wondering if I should consider the conversation closed and move to the counter. Desk Man, though, cleared his throat. He was in the mood for small talk.

‘The person you are buying it for, beginner or...?’

‘She’s not learning formally at the moment. She was exposed to Hindustani music years ago, but wants to start learning Carnatic, I think.’

Something about the way I said it, or maybe the fact that you weren’t there to do the buying yourself, suggested to him that the aspiring musician was not quite in the Carnatic heartland herself.

‘Where is she based?’ he asked.

‘US,’ I said (without the definite article, as one says it in Tamil). No matter how often this happens, I always feel a bit, I don’t know, awkward. I guess I’m just about old enough to have grown up with a feeling that visiting abroad, let alone spending years there as a student, is a privilege, a rare opportunity. So whenever someone asks me what university I’m at or where I am currently ‘based’ (though in this case only indirectly), I have to modulate my voice to reflect just the right tone: nonchalant, yet not boastful.

‘Oh I see.’ He said it in a tone that seemed dismissive and deferential at the same time. ‘We have a lot of customers in US.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh yes.’ US? OS. I had to turn the corners of my lips down as they began to curl into a smile. He continued, ‘They come here during the summer every year. Some of them come during the Season. They attend all the concerts, buy CDs, instruments, notation, everything from our shop. They get a better price here obviously.’

‘Yes, I can imagine. Also can’t be easy to find some of these things there.’

‘Oh, it’s available. But they have to buy it in action.’

I waited for him to explain.

‘Many Carnatic instruments go for action. Some people offer too much – they don’t know the correct value.’

Realisation dawned. I felt that ‘action’ was indeed the appropriate word. After all, isn’t that what it’s all about? The auctioneer banging his gavel, looking up above the rim of his glasses; eyes darting around the room, hands and brochures going up and down, breaths going in and out. Well, as far as I can tell from the movies.

So those who didn’t care for the action came here.

‘Yes. We know the proper value of an instrument, don’t we? We have been in the business for so many years.’ There’s a particularly brahminical ‘we’ that can be used to refer to oneself despite being a single person.

By now, the assistant had climbed down the ladder from the upper shelves and begun taking the boxes out of the boxes. I mean, the sruti boxes out of the cardboard boxes. She showed them to me one by one.

‘This one is thousand two hundred and fifty. Basic model, but manual. If you want automatic, you can go for the electronic one. It’s the latest model. Just switch on and use the Plus and Minus buttons – no need of anything else. It will show you the scale alphabetically also. Taalam also you can add.’

I fiddled around with it for a while. Just the gradual scaling up of the base note reminded me of summer afternoons at my aunt’s place where an old vaadhyaar used to come to teach my cousins. I switched on the beats – you could choose from among several tempos.

‘How much is this one?’

‘Three thousand four hundred.’

That was way beyond the budget you’d set, of course, and I knew you didn’t want most of the jazzy features (you wanted only Carnatic-y features, didn’t you?).

‘How about a basic one, but electronic?’

Desk Man looked up at the assistant. ‘Show her the Elkaysons model.’

This one turned out to be the simplest electronic sruti-petti, and so I chose it. The lady began to pack it quickly and efficiently, and gave me the warranty card to fill as she went about it.

‘Where is this one going?’ a voice asked. I turned to my left to see an elderly maami further along the counter, smiling at me. She was clutching one of the more advanced models I’d been shown.

‘US,’ I said, a little bored to have to say it again.

‘Is it so? This one is going to Canada,’ she said, pointing to hers. ‘My sister’s grand-daughter is learning. Do you sing?’

‘No,’ I said, smiling politely. ‘It’s for my friend.’

‘I see. Who is the guru?’

‘Oh no no, she’s not learning seriously or anything. She’s just interested and wants to try.’

‘Very good. My grand niece learns from M.V. Vaidyanathan. He is based there nowadays. You must have heard of him. You know, sir,’ she continued, turning to Desk Man, ‘nowadays so many people are learning outside. They have everything, they organise katcheris regularly.’

‘Oh yes. Our customers come here from so many countries, US, Canada, Europe. First class, very talented.’ He paused. ‘But whatever it is, you can’t get the training that you get here. Many of the parents bring their children during the school vacation and put them under some vaadhyaar here.’

‘Yes, that’s there.’

‘But sometimes they come here to buy things, and not all of them really know what they’re talking about. But we have gnyaanam of most of the instruments, don’t we? So we tell them what is what.’

Meanwhile, the assistant was done with her packing. I paid and collected the packet. A group of customers walked in, asking for the Gaanaamruta Bodhini and Gaanaamruta Varnamaalika in Kannada. Desk Man looked over at them, and I had my cue. I nodded to him and the Canada lady, and turned towards the exit.

‘If you need anything else, come straight to us, Madam, we will help you,’ he called after me. I looked back and nodded. Outside, as I was putting on my sandals, I saw Silver Hair leaning against a pillar, holding a glass of tea and looking very serious.

So, Sally, when you become a famous singer, remember the story of how you got your first sruti-petti!

Lots of love,
Susheela